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Grateful DeadGrateful Dead Live at Campus Stadium, UC Santa Barbara on 1974-05-25 (May 25, 1974)

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Description

Set 1

U.S. Blues, Mexicali Blues, Deal, Jack Straw, Scarlet Begonias, Beat It On Down The Line, Brown Eyed Women, Me & My Uncle, Sugaree, El Paso, China Cat Sunflower-> I Know You Rider, Around & Around

Set 2

Promised Land, Ship of Fools, Big River, Tennessee Jed, Truckin'-> Let It Grow-> Wharf Rat-> Beer Barrel Polka-> Sugar Magnolia-> Goin' Down The Road Feelin' Bad-> One More Saturday Night, E: Casey Jones

Other artist(s): Maria Muldar, Great American String Band, Elvin Bishop

Individual Files

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Reviewer: Vstar83 - - February 11, 2012
Subject: Great Show, Recording and Story
Great recording of a very unique show. Alot of intensity here, one of my favorites.

Reviewer: Sir-Mix-Alot - - April 25, 2011
Subject: GREAT FOB!
Super cool FOB recording of the WALL OF SOUND. Well preserved and rich sounding...lots of bottom end. The high end is a little muddy, but who cares....this is one of the better recodings of the Wall of Sound on the Archive. Also, check out Rob Bertando's Hollywood Bowl recording from 7-21-1974, another benchmark recording of the WALL.

Great story about burying the tape deck to aviod getting busted carrying it in....very creative.

Reviewer: Bouncin7 - - February 25, 2011
Subject: Love this show
While in the process of downloading my cassette collection to iTunes, I'm zapping this one now and I must say, what a treat. Sounds fantastic blasting out of my bose dock system off iPod. The energy is crazy good Jerry's playing rip and fast furious on Jackstraw and Mexicali. My tapes are going up for display as I digitize my world for 2011 and beyond iPods and all. Thank you for taping this, uploading and thank you archive.org. As Phil says at the end of Jackstraw, "Thank YOU!" The best organization next to The Dead. This show is a must have! Shake it!

Reviewer: FellStreetJamPhan - - February 9, 2011
Subject: An absolute treasure!
A great audience recording of a great '74 show and an even greater story detailing how it "came to be!" Sincerest thanks to all who had a part in recording this way back when and, more recently, getting it on here for all to enjoy!!

Reviewer: jointathan - - January 4, 2011
Subject: buried deck gets automatic 10 stars
All us deadheads laughin' all the way and this wall o' sound aud takes the cake. This show set list wise doesn't win the sweepstakes, but this recording along with the story makes me remember all the awesome nonbestever's I attended.

Notes

In Jeremy Witt's own words...Dec 2010:

I attended the Dead show at UC Santa Barbara in May, 1974, accompanied by friend Paul Handelman and my Sony TC-152 cassette recorder and Sony microphones. The weather was great, dry, sunny, and warm. Par for Santa Barbara in late May. The stage was ringed with the enormous sound system that filled the stage and went up probably thirty feet all around the stage.

On May 25,1974, we were three weeks away from graduating from high school in San Mateo, CA, and had a thoroughly entertaining drive down the coast.

Santa Barbara had suffered a major oil spill in 1969, the beaches were still not their pristine selves. The university was not nearly as popular then as it is now. However, there was a real college atmosphere for this show, with many UCSB students as well as students from other California schools in attendance. Paul and I had already gotten accepted to Santa Cruz and Cal respectively, where we were to start in the fall. The girls were very cute, in a more southern California blonde way but still with the underwearless style of the era and also very much into dancing. My large tape deck kept me out of trouble there.

The deck was "portable" with slots for four "D" batteries, but it was really a full sized cassette deck of the day, including the dolby noise reduction system. I used BASF 120 minute cassettes, and held the mikes by hand, and recorded the show with the Dolby system on.

As I had some problems with getting the deck confiscated by authorities (including Bill Graham in person at the February shows at Winterland earlier that year), we decided to bury the deck for the Santa Barbara show inside the stadium the night before the show. This worked okay, due to several layers of plastic seal. We had also considered smuggling the deck inside a watermelon, but this proved impossible so we opted for digging instead. These details of what I would stoop to humor me at this point as a 54 year old CPA. As tape recorders got steadily smaller and better, these kinds of smuggling shenanigans were no longer needed.

The first set of the day was the Great American String Band. I remember this as being an absolutely great set of bluegrass, featuring Richard Greene on violin, David Grisman, and Jerry on banjo. The sound was great for this part as the crowd was quiet and the weather calm. I lost this tape somewhere down the road, as it became popular in my Cal dormitory the next year. Maybe somebody somewhere has a copy, as I would love to hear it again.

I recall that Maria Muldaur played also, though I do not think that I recorded it. I was busy trying to hook up with my girlfriend Francine Lyons, who also attended the show but did not show up where I was supposed to meet her. Accordingly, I frantically searched but wound up dateless.

We did run into a number of other familiar fans. Bill Walton, then a senior and the basketball center at UCLA, was standing about ten feet in front of us (we were probably 100 feet back, in the center slightly towards the Jerry Garcia side of the stage.) We had to move further over so Bill's big red head did not block our view. I did a mock interview of Bill, as well as several of my friends. I had yet to learn to keep my mouth shut during the show. Some of the voices I recognized on the tapes include above mentioned Paul (now a doctor of osteopathy in San Rafael, CA, friends Jay Abrams and Donny Hamlin of San Mateo, and several others whose names have been forgotten for posterity.)

As far as the show goes, I remember that it took off from "US Blues" on at a fast pace and good sound from the get-go. High points were Scarlet Begonias, Brown Eyed Women and China Cat in the first set, then Promised Land, Big River, and Truckin and Sugar Magnolia in the second set. With Deal, Around and Around, Going Down the Road, and One More Saturday night sprinkled in, this was the classic 1974 rock and roll show by the Dead. The piano on this tour was louder than in prior shows of 1973-1974, a trend which got irritating in the humble opinion of this Dead fan later in the tour - especially the show in Oakland the next month. While I taped that one also, I think I recorded over the cassettes because Keith was louder than Jerry from where we taped. The mix was much better in Santa Barbara.

We had also attended the show at the Cow Palace that March that featured the new massive "wall of sound" system, then in Reno and Oakland. Along with Cow Palace, the Santa Barbara show stands out in my memory as a beautiful day and one of the great Dead shows of the era - a special time in my life.

Jeremy Witt

-meta data image of Bronze Garcia Hand Statue
courtesy of The Santa Barbara Bowl Foundation



[[caveat emptor- despite some flaws and age, tape pauses and hand held movement, this is one unique recording and quite a document of the feel of "being there"- GEMS]]