Grateful Dead
Date 1983-06-18
Saratoga Performing Arts Center
Saratoga Springs NY

Set 1:
d1t01 - Intro
d1t02 - Bertha ->
d1t03 - Jack Straw
d1t04 - Bird Song     /
d1t05 - Mexicali Blues ->
d1t06 - Big River    **
d1t07 - Althea       ** /
d1t08 - Hell In A Bucket
d1t09 - Deal

Set 2:
d2t01 - Tuning
d2t02 - Scarlet Begonias # ^ -> Fire On The Mountain
d2t03 - Playing In The Band ->
d2t04 - Space> Drums ->   //!
d3t01 - Space -> The Wheel ->    &
d3t02 - Playing In The Band ->
d3t03 - Morning Dew ->
d3t04 - Throwing Stones ->
d3t05 - Not Fade Away ->  ///
d3t06 - Touch Of Grey
d3t07 - Encore break
d3t08 - Don't Ease Me In ->
d3t09 - One More Saturday Night

show notes
Very unique segue between Morning Dew and Throwing Stones.

Recording Notes
** on Master we overtaped from 1/3 through Big River until end Althea by putting side A tape 1 in deck rather than side B at the tape swap between Throwing Stones and Not Fade Away. Fortunately, we had several patchers and the first in line, Sony TCD5M had the clean copy so the Big River|Althea is 1st gen.
/   paused between songs while band tuned
#   Something changes at 2:38 a speaker or amp blows then they crank it up.
^   7:38 they pop white noise through the PA twice
//! missing most of drums and some space- deck must have shut off without us noticing.
&   Another wild change in volume as the vocals get much louder
/// Tape swap; fade out at start of Touch of Grey, missed about 10 seconds

Our location was directly in front of one repeater stack consisting of 2 Meyer UPA1's. At some point (#) the vocals got overdriven in that stack, maybe one amp blew, but the vocal sound is oddly overdriven while the rest of the sound is not. We have been led to believe the PA system's repeater delay stacks must have malfunctioned during most of this second set.

Master: AUD MC Beyer M201's X-Y 8'up > Sony TCD5M no dolby
        Maxell MX90 x 2
First Gen patch: [Same mics]Sony TCD5M no dolby Maxell UDXLII 90
Cassette copy: Sony TCD5M> Denon DR330
Location: ~150 feet from stage, 40 feet from lawn rail on lawn DFC
Transfer: Nakamichi CR-5A (24/96) > Tascam DR680|SD > i7Windows7
          Audacity > cdwav editor > TLH flac level 8
          This is xxx bit copy
Mastered: Executive Crew Fran Walsh Kyle Holbrook Mike Yacavone Olvy Johnson Rick Cantor
Transferred: Kyle Holbrook

=============================================================================
The tour story for this show could be a novel. I'll "try" to keep it as concise as a novel could possibly be. Rick Cantor inspired this show and Fran's birthday sealed the deal for our crew- we had an amazing time!

The Dead announced this show after spring tour and we knew we were going to make a huge party of it especially as it fell on my then GF's birthday. 15 of us started out from Syracuse at various times. My crew consisted of Rick, his girl Andrea, and Fran. We were to be the "advance crew" and showed up about 10 PM the night before the show. The park rangers knew not what was going to hit them, they kept trying to make groups of heads NOT sleep by driving through and shining their headlights on us. SPAC is a rather large State Park and there was no way they could patrol all of it in order to keep the heads from sleeping on the grounds. Skip, Viki, Mike and Olvy and Phil, Steve and Bob also came from Syracuse. Tom, John Borg and crew were supposed to meet us later in the afternoon once inside.

We waited in line all morning having gotten a spot about 25 feet back from the front. At one point a local newspaper reporter came through asking us questions. He asked Skip if he was a hippie, and Skip replied with an answer I held true to in all my days of following the Dead- "no, we are hippie wannabees, looking for a good time with a band that was around for the original hippies in the sixties". At most times during my touring journeys, I tried to live that way, and certainly repeated the line many times. The Lawn ticket says $8.00, I recall them selling cash entry at the back entrance we were at for $10.00. They were just taking the cash and folding it into these plastic buckets with locks like a casino had back in those days. As we streamed into the back area of SPAC I recall heads running BACK toward the fence, I never understood until later that evening. We ran toward the front of the lawn winding up in a spot about 40 feet from the walkway behind the seating under the pavilion; I estimate we were about 150 feet from the stage.

We had such a large group of people we knew we could put the mic stand in the middle of us and provide some space between mics and loud audience. We stuck the end pole in the ground carefully aiming the XY T-Bar with Beyers straight ahead to be on an even horizontal plane (we were practicing the things we discussed about spring tour). We then noticed the PA company had put these repeater stacks up all in a row with the back of the pavilion and then also back up on the top of the lawn aiming into the large field consisting of the back area of SPAC. Apparently this was a good thing they had all those speakers in the rear as more than 38,000 tickets were sold and certainly more than that were actually in the park that evening. It FELT crowded. So directly in front of us were these two Meyer UPA1's which plays into the story or rather IS the story of the sound quality of this specific recording.

The first set and second set are very different; officially because Jerry's guitar amp gave out somewhere early in the first set and stayed out all set. He sure made up for it with some great singing, in my opinion the bands' vocals all show are top notch aside from the typical flubs here and there. UN officially because somewhere in the Scarlet one of the UPA1's in front of us gave out and/or its' amplifier blew as the tonality of the vocals got very harsh. We sort of heard it live, but once listening at home we could hear it right away. Near the end of the show we committed the cardinal sin of taping; as the show length got toward 90 minutes we decided to put in the first tape side B to catch the rest of the set as we had no tape 3 ready. On top of that, we had a patcher and couldn't locate his first set in his backpack and of course he was not in the dead fucking center of the lawn at SPAC with 38,000 other people, so we decided to let his tape run until the end. Unfortunately for us I put in Side A instead of Side B of Tape 1, so we recorded over the Big River > Althea. Luckily we had the patcher's deck so were able to get a first gen of the recording right away at home as for some odd twist of fate, he never showed up to retrieve his backpack after the show. We knew he was from Rochester and had exchanged phone numbers at the beginning of the show so he did get his gear back within the next few days.

Some reviews of this show call it legendary. It was noteworthy for being the first time the Dead were allowed to play at SPAC, thus breaking an attendance record set by the WHO in the early 1970's. There was a crowd pleasing combination of light rain and lightning over the roof of the pavilion to the North of the park during Fire On the Mountain and the 25 minute length of Scarlet > Fire. I believe this was my first time hearing Playing in the Band on both sids of drums live. The double encore. The MORNING DEW!

One final important note from me is that Rick Cantor inspired this day for us and his favorite combination of Grateful Dead songs was played this day- The entire second set, the complete Playing in the Band heading toward the powerful Morning Dew were some of his favorites which added to the enjoyment of the day for me. Rick was the first person to show me a Grateful Dead tape which led me to meet Dave Prescott which led to this recording essentially. Then to many years of recording and archiving live music. For that, I am eternally grateful to Mr. Cantor! Love and hugs to Rick and all of you.

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