My FIRST DEAD SHOW EVER!!!!! I will never forget it, from the lot experience to the show itself, everything was amazingly eye-opening. I remember driving my little brother and his friend to the lot. They had tix from his friends’ older brother, but I didn’t. We walked around looking for a miracle for me, found cool tour shirts, hip heads, yummy grill cheeses, and lots of “Not Fade Away” tie dies. We met a cool older bearded head on roller skates. He was going to sell me a ticket for $15.00!!! When he opened the envelope to give me the ticket… a sheet of paper w/ little perforated squares fell on the ground. I said, “you dropped something.” I really didn’t know what it was (at 15 yrs old) and he miracled me the ticket for saving his sheet!!!!! When I got into the show, the ticket was first row overlooking the floor and next to the entire Radiators band!!! They were cool and I told them how much I liked seeing Radiators shows. Ed Volker said that if I liked them, I was gonna “shit bricks” for the Dead. I didn’t tell them had only heard the “Skeletons from the Closet” cassette tape that I had been listening to all day. Of course they didn’t play a single song from that tape. It didn’t matter, the show was magical and I spent half of it in the aisles and corridors mystified by the heads. I had no idea that over 70 shows later I would NEVER hear another TLEO!!!! My first and last TLEO was that night. Most of my friends were at the show, but I hardly saw any of them and didn’t care. I bought some cool stickers (I still have) at set break. I didn’t dose, but felt like I had. I knew then that I was going to be going back for more of Jerry and the Boyz. I didn’t expect the Dead to look or sound the way they did. Of course I am a “touch head.” This show touched me so deeply and in so many ways. W/in 2 yrs I was living in Cali, living and loving the Head way. I never looked back. That show reinforced that I could be that free flowing person that I wanted to be, that others were doing it EVEN in the 80s… that the free spirit of the 60S WAS ALIVE AND WELL IN THE CIRCUS PARKING LOT OF THE DEAD SHOWS! I KNEW THAT NIGHT AND FOREVER THAT I WASN’T ALONE AND THAT WE ARE EVERYWHERE. I just wished they had played more New Orleans shows b/c a whole army of NOLA heads were born that night. Me and my boys still jam acoustic on the front porches of the bayou and reminisce about that show!!!!