This was night when I got it. I started seeing the band at the beginning of 1979, but this was a spectacular venue and I was lucky enough to be there. I paid face, or 15 bucks for my ticket and as I walked in, someone offered me 60 bucks for it. I told him no and went inside. Everywhere there were people wearing day-glow and the smell of you-know-what was in the air.
We had great orchestra seats and settled in. The ‘”evening with” format was a great idea and the standouts for me from the acoustic set was the Birdsong and the Monkey and the Engineer along with Ripple.
Between the acoustic set and the first electric set a screen came down from the ceiling and we were treated to an old B&W cartoon of elves bottling sunshine into liquid form and one elf in particular who accidentally was splashed by the stuff trying to get help from the town below. It was run by evil men in long black robes and the people there were sad and depressed. As the little elf ran through the town, they shut their doors and windows. It caught the eye of the elves on the hill bottling the sunshine, who launched an all-out war on the town below. Everywhere a bottle shattered, desert was turned into paradise and vultures were turned into beautifully feathered birds. It was *very* cool.
The second set started with one of my favorite songs – Mississippi Half Step that segued into Franklin’s Tower and the rest of the show took off from there.
I know that critics of the run say these shows are uneven, but to me it was a defining moment in my love for the Boys and I never looked back. The Uncle John’s >Playing > Drumz >The Other One > Black Peter was superb as Jerry took our mood right down to a crawl before Bobby raised us up with Around and Round into OMSN.
Dick Latvala always mused that when the GD played US Blues as an encore, they felt they had performed a great show, and I certainly felt they did as well that night!
I have this show as an aud on CDR and I pull it out to enjoy every so often.
Thanks for letting me share my memory.