The Best Of The Grateful Dead Projects Series

The Best Of The Grateful Dead Projects Series

 The year of 2005 was a ridiculous treasure of riches for Deadheads.  The internet website, www.archive.org (a.k.a. Live Music Archive or simply, “The LAMA”) was launched and every show ever played by the Grateful Dead could be instantly downloaded on demand for free.  It seemed too good to be true.

 Here's the Feb 9, 1973  Show at Maples Pavilion, Stanford.  My freshman year, early winter quarter.

Physics 1, Linear algebra, English, German and Chemistry.

This was quite an experience, my first big wild show.
I'd been to a big show in San Diego - Chicago & Santana, as I recall, at Balboa Stadium, and saw the Doobie Brothers as an opening act for Dan Hicks, or maybe the other way around, at the sports arena.
But I was still a nerdy little kid out of white-bread southern california conservative upbringing, and seeing stoners (and more, but I really didn't even know about LSD) just jammin to the most incredible band - playing and playing and playing...  With the floor bouncing up and down...  *really* bouncing

that concert plus a group freshman trip to Henry Africa's on Polk with faculty resident Kennell Jackson later in the quarter, and my freshman seminar on "visual thinking" with Karel Deleeuw let me know that there was a lot of world out there that I hadn't explored.  I learned a lot and grew a lot that year, and had a lot of fun as well.