Grateful Dead Spring Tour 1985

This series of tapes will all start with this intro. Eric Britt, Charlie Hulme and I had secured a contract to install audio and DJ equipment in a Holiday Inn in Cherry Hill NJ. We had been doing this work for a few months as a team and this was to be our first major traveling gig. For travel reasons Eric and I drove up with a bunch of installation equipment and some of the smaller supplies for the job while Charlie was going to fly in and meet us for the actual install. When we arrived in Cherry Hill the manager told us the job had been postponed by a week to 10 days. We called back home and asked Dave Dalzell what to do, he said stay up there, the hotel will provide us with rooms and as soon as the delay can be worked out, we will start. The date was March 25th, 1985. The Grateful Dead had just started their spring tour in Hampton VA on the 21st and were in Springfield MA on the 24th and 25th. They were headed to Nassau Coliseum for three shows starting the 27th. 

I called John Hance and invited us to his house for the shows, and he agreed as he was already housing several of the Executive Crew amongst other guests. This was when Eric met JJ, and the conversations those three days between them were epic, being two giant crystals of humans which they are. This was also to be Eric's first time seeing so many shows in a row, ten total. I'm not certain, but have checked with him by now, that this might have been his first travels to Maine, Massachussets, Philadelphia etc. We kept checking in with Cherry Hill and they kept moving the install date back until we were able to catch all the shows from March 27th through April 8th. And since Philly is so close to Cherry Hill we didn't have to travel far to pick up Charlie at the airport on the 10th!

This was truly a meeting of the minds, Sean had his bread van going during this time and there are several stories of folks sleeping outside of Chris Kidwell's apartment on the roof of said van the night between the two Portland shows! Sean and Gary were there as was Mike Davis, of course Pinney, John Borg and their crew, also iirc. The GDTS ticketing tour books for this tour cost $250 for 14 shows.

From a technical point of view, this tour featured new Oade Brothers customizations of my first 1982 vintage Sony TCD5M and the second late 1984 deck both completed in the winter of 1985. They customized the mic inputs by changing out capacitors and adjusted the bias to use metal tapes. We also had them do this on Tom's deck. I should reach out to Doug and ask exactly what they may have done to the mic inputs for historical clarity, but we were running OADE modded equipment even in the analog days! We also switched to using Maxell metal tapes as exclusively as supply allowed. The TDK's always seemed to have drop outs or a tape would get stuck in someones deck, they just seemed less reliable at the time. Our microphone selection was either the Beyer M201's or the Beyer M88's as no binaural recordings were made on this tour as I recall they had been broken. Each mic rig had a small light stand we used for most shows, in fact I do not recall hand holding on this tour. One final tech note to point out that although there was an Official Taping Section (OTS) behind the soundboard, for only one of these shows were we there. We typically ran in front of the board about 20-25 feet, putting us 50-60 feet from stage most nights especially at GA shows. There were usually 6-10 people surrounding the mic stand, set in between several other groups of people doing the same thing. Per the executive crew plan, often the crowd noise near the mics was very limited!
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Eric's story:

This was the tour I began to be a DeadHead. As Kyle says, my first trips(!!) to NY, NYC, Maine, RI, and Penn. 
It was all a blur, and all crystal clear!
Everything and Everyone was foreign to this suburban Texan and was so very familiar.
Driving into the City for the first time, listening to EARLY hip-hop, thinking, man, this music was made for this place, hanging on the corner across the street from Crazy Eddie's while others crossed and grabbed up some tapes for the shows. Driving through the Lincoln Tunnel for the first time. Just unreal memories. Meeting John Hance, my forever long distance guru. Meeting the rest of the crew! Chris, Tom, Shawn and of course meeting Greg. Love Ya Greggie!
 
Please understand that I NEVER danced to music, even my first Dead shows, I would stand, listen and observe. 
But by the 3rd night of Nassau I was beginning to move, I mean I couldn't help it just trying to not bump into others around me, but then, I couldn't NOT dance! It was all starting to make sense! If one can ever make sense of a Dead Show!!
At break that 3rd night I decided I would go to the bathroom during the set, rather than the break when the lines were so long, and I decided that instead of heading back to our group I would just find a spot in the crowd to groove. It was a revelation! A stranger in the crowd, finding spots and moving into them like a Jedi Master, well, maybe a Jedi Pawan...gliding and rockin' in the crowd, moving WITH the crowd, with the People! Man. There is Nothing else like a Grateful Dead Show!!
Walking up to the show one night, maybe the night the glass near the entrance was broken, I spied a kid with an Army jacket like I wore in HS, but with 'Howard Sperm' written in it. I laughed, having NO idea who Stern was... Later I would become a huge fan. And, oddly enough, when Jerry died it was, among others, Howard who helped me through it all with laughter. 
I digress.
So, let's talk about getting into shows with no ticket. Providence. Smallish venue, there were NO tickets to be had, and most were sold for way over face value. I had given up. Realize that a bunch of Frat Rats were working the doors, Kyle had let me know this before the rest of the crew went in. I checked out the side entrances, the Fire Exits!! And there was a line of freaks handing over $20 to get in. I thought, damn, that's high considering the show was almost half over, but after awhile they were taking $10, in front of me was a really skinny dude with really long and not well kept hair who only had change, by now, they were taking $5, the dude didn't have 5, I gave the Frat Rat $10 and told him it was for both of us. So my first miracle experience was a gift. 
Now, compare that to Nassau where most of the tickets bought in the lot were fakes, lots of peeps were not allowed entry due to having spent over face, even double, for fakes. I am CERTAIN my tic for the 3rd night, bought from a mob looking dude in a big car outside the lot was a fake, but I got in, and my tic was torn so I got about 10% of it.
So, Cumberland County Civic Center.
Wow. These were the shows.
The 2nd set of the 2nd night, 4.1.85, was disjointed and as a result, weird!!!
It ended well though and upon exiting the venue, IT WAS SNOWING!!!!!! OMG, SNOW!!! It was crazy and we were all giggling, but we could not find John, no one had seen him, we got back to the place we were staying, and no John. Sometime later he shows, and all I recall him saying was 'but what did they play?!?, What did they play?!?'. We all roared with laughter, John, in his inimitable way had summed up the evening perfectly. [Ed. note- the major 3 inch snowfall had occurred as the previous night's show let out (3-31-85), BUT there was more light snow after the second night's show]

Philly was next, but that one is mostly a blur. A crowded crazy blur.

Good Times Like These Will Never Come Again.
Thanks Guys, for being there and inviting me along for that crazy ride. 
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Sean and Gary's story:
I am still in the process of reprocessing this time line,  ;-) < TO BE CONTINUED >
 