Dead of the Day: 03-23-1974
Cow Palace
Daly City, California
One look at the setlist, and you know the Dead were up to something. But they were not just playing a massive group of tunes on this day; they also debuted the complete Wall of Sound and brought out the first Cassidy and Scarlet Begonias. What’s more, the music itself is phenomenal, particularly once the band settles in. By Black Throated Wind the boys are firing, pulling out a luscious jam halfway through and making it clear the crowd was witnessing something special. As the rest of the show unfolds, magic pulses forth at regular intervals. Billy and Phil are just amazingly on throughout the night, and Jerry adds his usual, which is to say nothing less than amazing, stratospheric guitar riffs throughout. While the scorching beauty that is the Playin> UJB> Morning Dew> UJB> Playin is surely the highlight of the night, there are moments that will glisten your eyeballs, tingle your extremities, and make you downright spacey. The China> Rider, for example, is quintessential Dead perfection with Phil bombing away through the transition and Jerry going all-out on the jams. There is also something quite wonderful about the Weather Report Suite, as it comes as a kind of unexpected treat after the Rider, extending the first set even longer and reinforcing the sense of possibility that is the essence of that tune. But enough; just give it a listen and take in the magnificence of it all.
The Wall of Sound had been evolving for some time and can be clearly dated back to late 1972 and early 1973 when Bear, Healy, and Mark Raizene got together with Alembic, which had itself been founded by Bear as an offshoot of the Dead’s own technical development, to create a new sound system. Over the next year, they designed the various microphones, amps, and speakers and, above all else, figured out how to get it all to work together in a seamless, efficient fashion. What eventually debuted at the Cow Palace was a massive PA system – the biggest at the time and second largest since – of around 28,000 watts that provided distortion free sound without degradation at over a quarter of a mile and served as its own monitoring system. The system took so long to setup that the Dead had two of them, complete with the necessary scaffolding, so that they could be playing one venue while a road crew was already setting up at the next. Because of the cost and complexity, the band only toured with the Wall of Sound through the beginning of their hiatus in October 1974.
The crowd at the Cow Palace on this night was the usual motley assemblage of Deadheads and a completely out of place cadre of teeny-boppers and their parents. The Dead had bought airtime and gave away tickets on the San Francisco Top 40 station KFRC, drawing in a completely unsuspecting group of concert-goers. Making matters worse for the regular crew, San Francisco’s finest were out in force to protect the young attendees and their parents from the nasty hippies. An army of cops waited at the doors to pat down and search every long-haired ticketholder, resulting in more than a few Heads being hauled off. Whether any of the straight-laced kids or their parents got turned on – to the music or anything else – that night is an open question.
Parts of this show were released as Dick’s Picks 24.
Yesterday’s Dead of the Day:
Other March 23rd Shows and Recordings:
- 1972 – Academy of Music – New York, New York
- 1975 – Kezar Stadium – San Francisco, California
- 1981 – Rainbow Theater – London, England
- 1986 – The Spectrum – Philadelphia, Pennsylvania
- 1987 – Hampton Coliseum – Hampton, Virginia
- 1991 – Knickerbocker Arena – Albany, New York
- 1992 – The Palace – Auburn Hills, Michigan
- 1994 – Nassau Coliseum – Uniondale, New York
- 1995 – Charlotte Coliseum – Charlotte, North Carolina
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