Show Documentation

[BillK522]

During the Grateful Dead years, tracking 

setlists was an obsession.  Obviously, there was

no instant information portal, and unless you

wanted to wait for a Dupree's Diamond News

or Golden Road, first hand accounts were

best avenue to accurate records.  I attended

night education classes at Maryland and met

a fellow Head.  One night after class he showed

me these scrapbooks he had made to follow his

shows.  Dates, venue, lists with stubs, stickers,

pictures, etc. relating to occurrances that evening.

He was a few years older, and had seen some 

fantastic shows starting at Stanley Theater 81.

I was immediately hooked.  Bent my handwriting

for more ornate setlists.  Collected the Calvin and

Hobbes comics from the Washington Post. We

did our books together during a run at Cap Centre.

Good Times.  Every show I had pen and paper,

Transscribe into the book, glue in the stub, and

couple Calvin's or the sticker someone put on

your shirt at the show.  Looking back on them

now such a lovely stroll down memory lane.

Today's open question, to what degree was 

your Grateful Dead show attendances documented?

How about your DSO show attendances?

One long beautiful blur?

A stack of ticket stubs?

Can you identify every show you were at?

Feel free to share.

 

Praise DSO.

[Ammagamalin Crew]

I can tell you every show in my 200+ history of GD and Jerry Band's and until I started teaching and had to learn 90 students' names I was able to tell you exact setlist for the first 150 shows. I have notebook pages of setlists from my Midwest and East Coast friends from fall 87-Spring 88 while I was still in school in Laramie and making weekend trips to the southern and northern California shows along with the whole Rocky mountain tour from RR to on the rail at Park West. Also have an 8x10 photo from 1985 that has the year's complete setlists on the back side. I'm a pen and paper lister at every show since 1992 through all the DSO shows. We got into a deal with a DAT taper that got us every 1990 show by going in on the equipment with him. Listed all Emmylou's until she started giving me her stage setlists in 1996. She gave me several handwritten setlists from her tour bus when there were no stage copies. A lot of lists came from running the D5 with the AKG460 hornhat FOB. 

I will admit that my first show, 2nd night RR 83, was a blur ~ tripped really hard at both my first two

[Greg from Chestertown]

I have All of my Grateful Dead ticket stubs in a frame. Got snuck into Radio City so, no ticket stub but I have a 8x10 hand written xerox flier from a guy selling glossy photos of the band on stage. My roommate wrote the set list on the back of that. Good thing, because my handwriting sucks. I tried keeping up a list during shows but am not so sure I ever pulled off a whole show’s list. I found it to be a distraction during the show, kept me from getting lost in the music. Of course, we’re talking about my brain. If I didn’t write it down at the beginning of the tune, it would get lost to eternity. Recalling set lists sometimes would take days. Younger heads need to understand, word of mouth was pretty much it for information about the Grateful Dead. Keeping track of set lists had to be done. People would be lined up using pay phones at set break to call their friends and tell them what was played. I remember running into a high school class mate in the spectrum lot eight years later. The first thing he said was, “they played ripple in Baltimore”. People who didn’t make it into the show would swarm the people leaving the show, “What they play?, what they play?”. “Any show stoppers?”. If you had a list from the previous night, there was a crowd around you in the lot. The discussion would be happening. I didn’t know they had brought back Attics until I saw it on a flier someone handed me after a show that had all the set lists from that tour. I learned about Good Lovin/ LaBamba/Good Lovin from Pierre Robert at Wmmr in Philly. He talked about the MSG show that Dark Star Orchestra just recreated. I  had tickets for the upcoming Saturday night in Philly. I was pretty sure that if we got a good Lovin in Philly, we were going to get the La Bamba. Sure enough…

    It was history in the making, it turns out. List keepers and tapers are why we have what we have now. Once the technology advanced, the resources were already in place. Especially with Dark Star’s live shows but also with the internet, I have been taken back in time, to shows before I got started and also conquering new horizons with original set lists. I had probably only heard a hundred shows before the internet. I now seek out a new show every morning, listen to the whole thing while I go about my day. Within the last few years, the number of GD shows that I have heard has gone through the roof. It also helps that the cassette player in my truck finally wore out.
         Strangers stopping strangers…just to see what they played. 

[bs69]

Back in the GD days we had a coffee table with a glass top,  all the ticket stubs went under the glass top giving it a unique look

[Tea]

Got a couple still lying around.  There’s a few with birdsnest handwriting that end after 3 songs. Sometimes hurling through space, time, and dimension, is a bit distracting 

[2muchfun]

16 hours ago, bs69 said:

Back in the GD days we had a coffee table with a glass top,  all the ticket stubs went under the glass top giving it a unique look

I still have about 50 of my stubs. Used a collage of them to make a gif to print on my envelope used to score Dead50 tix from mail order.

2 are full tix…11/5/77 my third show. Crowd pushed through glass doors.

7/2/95 no show Deer Creek.

First stub 5/4/77 my first show

Last stub 7/9/95 no explanation needed.

 

The stories this baggie of stubs could tell…..

 

[John A]

I used to write the setlists on the back of the ticket stubs. Required a "tiny font" level of penmanship. 😲

 

After abut 35 shows I could have told you the setlist for every one. Then suddenly the memory bank overloaded and said ability went poof!