Beacon Theatre
I had joined the Deadhead fan club at some point before the 1976 tour was announced. (Similar to how Denis McNally talks about it, I had a "skull and roses" album on vinyl, and I had written to the address printed inside that album.)
Through their newsletters the Dead expressed a frustration with being forced by their own success into having to play large arenas where the sound was compromised. The amazing but impractical “wall of sound” they had used before their break had been retired. The GD had been on a hiatus but had released the "Blues for Allah" album, and the landmark 1975 show at the Great American Music Hall in SF had been broadcast on the radio which gave fans a chance to hear them in newly polished form. (One of my first and best loved tapes at that point, the SF show later became the first "From the Vault" release.)
The Dead were saying they wanted to do a tour where fans would again have a chance to see them in venues with good acoustics. Phil Lesh was quoted in one newsletter saying they wanted to "get the Mother rolling one more time." So I put in for tickets through the fan club and received a pair of tickets to both Beacon shows just as I had requested. It seemed to me at the time there was no other practical way to have gotten tickets to these shows. But I did have High School final exams during the week of the shows and I gave one pair (for the second show) to a friend.
I came to the show with friends from Long Island and took the subway up to the west 72nd street station for the first time. When we came out the subway we saw the whole scene of hippies, tour buses and people who were begging for tickets, implanted there on Broadway. Inside the Beacon, it was smokey and dirty, with people sitting on the stairs and the floor all over the place. This was way before the Beacon was renovated and it was an old theater that showed its age.
People walked in, saw the set up, and yelled in excitement seeing double drum sets up on the stage for the first time on the east coast since 1971. Sitting in my seat in the rear half of the Orchestra before the show I was astonished to see a dude jump down from the balcony down to the orchestra, just in front of us. He landed safely in the still sparcely filled seats underneath the overhang, and then scampered up toward the stage. There was no problem moving around after the show started and I moved into the aisle, getting up very close during both the first and second sets. I was standing directly below Donna by the time she approached the mic during Music Never Stopped to sing "There's a band out on the highway..."
It was great being able to see them all so close - Bobby rocking and getting the audience up, looking up at the balcony as he pushed the band through the second set through Around and Around.
The recent versions of the soundboard tapes of this show are super great and sound almost like a studio recording in some sections, with both drummers especially clear and prominent. Keith Godchaux’s piano shines throughout. Much more depth in the recordings than my earlier soundboard copies, and without the sort of wooshing or warbling that negatively categorized some of the earlier generations of tapes.
The Deadbase review notes the second set’s unusual mix of tunes and the unusual space break in Help on the Way (actually its Slipknot, clocking in at over 13 minutes). The Lazy Lightning ] Supplication combo that opened the Kingfish studio album and which was part of my Kingfish experience the previous year was now pulled into the GD repetoire, as they focused on the tunes of more recent vintage. Blues for Allah had been the first studio album to come out after I was already into the Dead, and the focus here on those songs, including Crazy Fingers, made this show especially memorable for that.