TMIGDH: the Laryngitis Tour of 1978

(TMIGDH = This Month in Grateful Dead History)

This post first appeared in the Phish.net forum on January 10, 2018.

Back in 1985 and 1986, when I first started tap[e trading], I was low man on the totem pole. As a result, my older “guides” in college were rather pushy and aggressive as to which tapes I was “allowed” to tape. For some reason, I always preferred the raunchy, the weird and the obscure, and quite often, I was not privileged to spin them!

For example, I might want a crummy sounding Avalon Ballroom with an off-the-rails early That’s It for the Other One or an underwater audience from Pittsburg in 79 because my brother was there, but oh, no. No, no, no! I had to fill my first 10-box with 2-11-70, 4-29-71, 9-17-72, 6-10-73, 6-18-74 (which became one of my all-time favorites), 9-25-76, 9-3-77 (remember, this was pre-Betty Board dump and Cornell didn’t automatically top all lists), etc. I willingly obliged them, of course, and I am forever indebted to their judgey generosity. Still, I craved obscurity.

There has always been something that has attracted me to the stuff no one else listens to or the stuff that other dismiss as “sucking.” Well, for some reason, outside of McArthur Court, Horton Field House (yes, it’s HOT), the first Red Rocks run of the summer (July not August), or New Year’s Eve, no one ever stumped for 1978. That year was just seen as a “meh” year, or a disaster, depending on who you spoke to in taper circles. Prior to Betty’s big dump, and maybe it was just in my circles, too, 1971 was seen as THE year. In part, I do believe this is because there were so many crispy radio broadcasts and soundboards. No matter.

Little by little, I started to focus in on 1978. Everyone said, “Don’t bother, 77 is better.” OK, sure. But, like I mentioned before, I like the raunch. Also, I’m that kind of stubborn person who will seek out the opposite out of cussedness, and for a while there, I became somewhat of a 78 aficionado, or so I thought. It was the Red Rocks recording that first made me realize (one stoney Walkman night) that 78 had more psychedelic juice in its pinky finger than 77 had in any of its plucked eyebrow perfectionism. Oh boy, this is for me.

Of course, I found sloppy shows all over the place. But when the music took flight in 78, it was a bubbly melange of heady Mu-Tron envelope filtering and noodley wandering of the sort to which my flights of fancy were inclined. Once on that path, I discovered one of my all-time favorite weirdo shows, the Cleveland Music Hall on 11-20-78. That Jam-> Drums-> Jam-> Jack-a-Roe was the type of tasty treat that I was looking for on my quest. Of course, the Hamza el Din jams from October’s Winterland run and the best Capitol Theater (Passaic) show, ever, a few days after Cleveland on 11-24, became stalwarts in my playlist.

It’s funny to think back on, as this was before I had, or anyone I knew had, a DeadBase. In fact, I didn’t have regular access to a DeadBase until I “settled down” from touring in 1992 (landing in PDX of all places . . . good place to land). That book was like magic. I’d browsed some in passing since first spying one, but this was when I delved in deeply. Imagine my surprise when I discovered an entire run of shows in 1978 that I’d never ever heard of before! A California tour in January? My imagination went wild. What would that have been like? I imagined heady folks hitching around the state, mellow scenes fully saturated with quality L and relaxed crowds, roses and unsmoked numbers piling up on the stage. I had to have the tapes.

After much wrangling and searching around PDX, my taping companion (she was a recently relocated Eastie, too) and I tracked down each and every one of those January 1978 shows. We were doing it the old way, too, Blanks and Postage with lots of treats shipped along to our friendly taper sources. Some of them were simply mailed across town, names and addresses pulled from the bulletin board at the store Think Good Thoughts on Hawthorne. Others were links she’d developed through the pages of Relix. (Oldsters, here, know the drill.)

Much to my delight, this was the laryngitis tour! Jerry’s smoking habits (Persian, base, Camel straights and weed) didn’t help him heal from a bout with the flu, ahem, ahem, and so some of the shows, the two nights in San Diego in particular, are almost all Bobby. Of course, this sends Jerry’s guitar playing off like a rocket. I can’t sing, but I sure as hell can play! I was in taper heaven, and yet, many of the tapers hadn’t been too excited to share these as they considered the material “garbage not worth listening to,” blah, blah, blah. In fact, my taping buddy was of the same mindset, and so it became my duty to sort, catalog and dub. (What a month of rainy nights that was!)

Here I am, now, 40 years after this January California tour, stricken with laryngitis, sucking on a Cepacol, wondering how Jerry managed to keep it together at all, still imagining what it must’ve been to tour Dead in 1978 htichhiking or driving around around California, some purple barrels and a doob in my pocket. I love it, warts and all or because of the warts? There’s something appealing about a band who is barely keeping it together and yet powering on and on and on through the rust. Some of Mike Dolgushkin’s reviews back in the day suggested that Jerry might’ve been on his last legs! It’s funny to consider, too, how on the same day that the Dead limped through their Bakersfield show, the Sex Pistols were flaming out on stage at Winterland some 300 miles north. Their final show.

With the interwebs, that sense of mystery and discovery is gone for me. It’s all available with a quick click. However, I hold out that some young freak out there somewhere will also want to rediscover the off-the-beaten-track Dead like I once did, on a headful, imagining a tour that still growls out of the speakers with a raunchy urgency. (Who knows, maybe it could be 100 years from now, maybe then even hearing the moss accepting rain drops in Ladd’s Addition.)

Thanks Jerry, and remember, Bobby fans are people, too!

Swing Auditorium, San Bernardino, CA (1/6/78)
Golden Hall, San Diego, CA (1/7/78)
Golden Hall, San Diego, CA (1/8/78)
Shrine Auditorium, Los Angeles, CA (1/10/78)
Shrine Auditorium, Los Angeles, CA (1/11/78)
Arlington Theater, Santa Barbara, CA (1/13/78)
Bakersfield Civic Auditorium, Bakersfield, CA (1/14/78)
Selland Arena, Fresno, CA (1/15/78)
Sacramento Memorial Auditorium, Sacramento, CA (1/17/78)
Stockton Civic Aud., Stockton, CA (1/18/78)
McArthur Court (U of Oregon), Eugene, OR (1/22/78)