And that was it. The Dead played four more shows at Winterland, and then split up. The now-famous Wall of Sound system was sold to Bill Graham. With the exception of a few local San Francisco gigs—I saw them again in March, 1975, when they played Kezar Stadium in a benefit concert...
When Reich hit me with the question, I hadn’t really listened to a Grateful Dead album since their first one and had only recently (in early ‘71) heard “Casey Jones” slip into my ears. The truth of the matter is that I was an original Grateful Dead freak. The first time I ever...
But it was all over. Bear had disappeared, the original PA was gone, someone had turned up the houselights, and the audience was melting away. A good night, a potentially great night, had been shot by a combination of promoter burn and Dead incompetence, and at one AM it didn’t matt...