Grateful Dead
May 25, 1974
Campus Stadium UCSB
Santa Barbara, California 


Recording Info:
FOB Audience Recording by Jeremy Witt
Preserved in posterity for 36 years by Jay Abrams (jra-sm) 

Recording Equipment: Sony TC-152, Sony Mics, BASF 120 minute cassettes, Dolby B
Analog to Analog Transfer June 1974: Sony TC-152 -> Teac 1230 - Scotch 150, 7" Reels at 3 3/4 ips
Transfer by Jim Blackwood Dec 23 2010
Editing and Mastering by Jamie Waddell on the GEMS Edit Station at 24 bit 96 kHz
Weiss-Saracon for 16 bit 44.1kHz conversion   TLH for FLAC8   SBE Free

a **GEMS** Porduction   www.shnflac.net  12-25-2010

Set One

01. U.S. Blues
02. Mexicali Blues
03. Deal
04. Jack Straw
05. Scarlet Begonias
06. Beat It On Down The Line
07. Brown Eyed Women
08. Me And My Uncle
09  Sugaree
10. El Paso
11. China Cat Sunflower >
12. I Know You Rider
13. tuning
14. Around And Around

Set Two

15. The Promised Land
16. Ship Of Fools
17. Big River
18. Tennessee Jed
19  Truckin' >
20. Jam > Space > 
21. Let It Grow >
22. Wharf Rat
23. Beer Barrel Polka Tuning and Equipment Malfunction
24. Sugar Magnolia >
25. Goin' Down The Road Feeling Bad >
26. One More Saturday Night
27. Encore: Casey Jones



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]]



f0104ad6892099c8b3f9bfe76adeacc6 *gd1974-05-25.gems.track.01.flac
776bc7853f3c65021b83b38955b4c6fe *gd1974-05-25.gems.track.02.flac
0674d5c9655c36fc90d3eaaba27348c7 *gd1974-05-25.gems.track.03.flac
2f27f6568d50ace9af821a478b06f5bf *gd1974-05-25.gems.track.04.flac
899ed7d6b686dc86edaf2d9ce307cbb5 *gd1974-05-25.gems.track.05.flac
2be9b673e87f09fcf9fa705267ab78d9 *gd1974-05-25.gems.track.06.flac
e9675b3fca0960c8df6ff00c2bca8d3a *gd1974-05-25.gems.track.07.flac
fc462e0416561bc026b48fab247d37f9 *gd1974-05-25.gems.track.08.flac
771d392bce6f18bd95e4c71a5c57674e *gd1974-05-25.gems.track.09.flac
4904c387275d163f87fc3af83653a458 *gd1974-05-25.gems.track.10.flac
894bc1f396ddc2240f4fd457a1b9292b *gd1974-05-25.gems.track.11.flac
defca74eafb2084b1fbaf000418ed387 *gd1974-05-25.gems.track.12.flac
48817d20e6ffc61949305204edec14a6 *gd1974-05-25.gems.track.13.flac
7a09871074be15028e9296a83912508a *gd1974-05-25.gems.track.14.flac
0d086a9273860f91c7e7f65b0a7cece8 *gd1974-05-25.gems.track.15.flac
cace9543cbf9e5afcb4c6a4f1a4494ce *gd1974-05-25.gems.track.16.flac
f2478c3d6bdd8eb409e5b51590f3dce3 *gd1974-05-25.gems.track.17.flac
278d19801dc3449d84dd40d7e407bcb1 *gd1974-05-25.gems.track.18.flac
56a3a67ad33c7e92153b84cfc0649f72 *gd1974-05-25.gems.track.19.flac
9bb7c8fa66301c96cdae7942569de792 *gd1974-05-25.gems.track.20.flac
47352d33abce47dc8a259814bac9aee1 *gd1974-05-25.gems.track.21.flac
0ac7bea46c6b6c69af001cb658370ece *gd1974-05-25.gems.track.22.flac
88b8a35217813cee7eabbfbf177857e9 *gd1974-05-25.gems.track.23.flac
91da0f3425c98dea29c005aa1a92fb3d *gd1974-05-25.gems.track.24.flac
bb2b8dd34cc8c75093144bfee8a822a2 *gd1974-05-25.gems.track.25.flac
21d18fa58655dd6b614c00888332a241 *gd1974-05-25.gems.track.26.flac
84ed70ec2d585dd043173edc3630781c *gd1974-05-25.gems.track.27.flac


