Grateful Dead
Date 1983-08-21
Frost Amphitheatre
Palo Alto CA

d1t01 - tuning
d1t02 - Cassidy
d1t03 - Dire Wolf
d1t04 - Me and My Uncle
d1t05 - Big River
d1t06 - Althea
d1t07 - Little Red Rooster  //
d1t08 - Big Railroad Blues
d1t09 - Let it Grow

d2t01 - Samson and Delilah >     ^
d2t02 - China Cat Sunflower > I Know You Rider ///
d2t03 - Playin' in the Band >
d2t04 - drums >
d2t05 - space >
d2t06 - The Wheel >
d2t07 - Throwin' Stones >    //
d2t08 - Not Fade Away
d2t09 - encore break crowd
d2t10 - Baby Blue
d2t11 - Johnny B. Goode      *

//  Tape Flip
/// Tape Swap
^   Loud crackle from PA at start
*   Missed start as we had started taking gear apart

Source: MAC Beyer M201's X-Y 7'up > Sony TCD5M no dolby
            TDK MA-R90 x 2
Location: ~125 feet from stage, DFC
Transfer: Nakamichi CR-5A (24/96) > Tascam DR680|SD > i7Windows7
          Audacity > cdwav editor > TLH flac level 8
          This is 24 bit copy
Mastered:    Executive Crew Kyle Holbrook Chris Kidwell
Transferred: Kyle Holbrook
==========================================================================================================================
The tour story:
The back story:
Chris Kidwell and I were in Portland ME preparing to drive to Syracuse to drop me at home and for Chris to pick up Tom and head out west for the late summer tour. They had planned this trip and Chris was in his Saab which now I recall so well as I wound up taking Tom's place. This after Tom called Chris and said he had to be home for the first 10 days of the trip and couldn't travel with us as planned. Originally we were going to travel in two cars but now we had to alter the plan. As we drove to Syracuse I came up with this plan to tell my girlfriend Fran and the guys that I have no choice, I have to stand in for Tom in Chris' car. I had about 4 hours to prep! We had to gather all the new toys we had made for the mic mount we had built on the new very lightweight stand all of which Olvy and Mike had helped to locate and build. We also made plans to meet Tom and whomever made the trip with him hopefully by Eugene.

We took off in the Saab and it took about 55 hours to get from Portland to Syracuse to San Francisco with Chris having driven the majority of the way out until well past Illinois. We met my friend Howard Terry who we were staying with in the city (as Howard called his adopted city of San Francisco). We arrived about 4 AM the day of the first show, August 20th.I'm pretty sure we made the show but we did not make a recording. (This may also be the reason that we met Aaron Yamaguchi)

On this second show day I recall eating dim sum in the market district and heading to the show. Howard drove like a New York cab driver which made this trip down to Palo Alto humorous (really almost any car ride with Howard was an experience). We wound up setting up on the Jerry side of the board just below the soundboard riser. The Frost Amphitheatre is a picturesque venue with the Stanford university clocktower behind the stage and the beautiful tree lined landscape all along the sides. I remember families with strollers all along the top of the hill toward a flat area then under the trees were people laying down, lounging and grooving. The Cassidy opener is a masterpiece with a funny vocal duplicate line by Bobby. The band came out with the intent to play hard. At one point, during my first set highlight of Althea, the tonality of Jerry's guitar and vocal just floated in that pristine California air. I know Chris also keyed on this tune because afterward all during our travel up the coast to the Portland show he kept singing and replaying "this space is getting hot"; what a version it is! The boys ripped into a Big RR Blues with Jerry just searing into two long solos. The set ending Let it Grow was a Bob Weir standout although there was some great drumming and guitar playing during the jams, the second interlude is so mellow at times it seems listening back now that the moments of spareness, just a few tones from one or three instruments per melody string are what makes this song so masterful. Ahh, that Bobby and Jerry symbiosis was beautiful in those moments.

The Second set is short. It is also extremely well played aside from two or three vocal flubs. Samson and Delilah reminded us it was a Sunday with Bobby doing his usual early 80's theatrics during his vocals. The drums and space are some performance- representative of the best of that interlude in this timeframe. On this specific recording the drums were captured very nicely with the ability to hear each drummer's individual cadences and kick/snare combos. The China > Rider > Playin sequence is so so nice. The band at it's finest, in a finally sunny afternoon, considered a hometown show for them so probably many family members attending and they certainly enjoyed themselves throwing down a classic Grateful Dead set for the Sunday faithful. The transition into Wheel out of Space startled me the first "re" listening, it is so subtle; they are spacing out then within 20 notes they are sliding into the intro of the tune. I am biased as Wheel is one of my favorite Jerry/GD tunes, but this version seems special to my old ears. Brent's keyboard and harmony vocals added so much it's often tough to recall he was only in the band 3.5 years by this point. The Throwing Stones > Not Fade Away combo was starting to become a twosome but this is still in the middle stages of the evolution of the way they orchestrated it. More aggressive vocals and less time comping between verses is how I characterize this days' styling. There is a very long, slow outro of the NFA drumbeat and Bobby hitting harmonics with Jerry leaving about 60 seconds before Bob at the end. They do a strong Baby Blue encore, leave the stage then surprise everybody, I think Bill Graham too, by coming back on and ripping out a Johnny B Goode second encore! "old man voice": "In all my Dead shows I saw less than ten double encores, rare indeed".

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