Holleder Stadium (Rochester, NY)
Another outdoor summer's end concert on the first weekend of September. This was the last time I slept over in a lot for a show, and the only time I did so to gain priority in admittance to a (general admission) show.... We drove up from Ithaca the night before. The friendly folks in the parking lot kept us up late and someone thought they would let everyone know, loudly, when the clock struck 6 am. So we were among the first hundred people to bolt onto the field when the gates opened, and stake out our spot. But the trade-off was that we were mostly sitting in the sun all day on what ending up being a brutally hot day. The Dead's equipment truck was late and by the time we sat through two opening bands, and the equipment delay, it was a longgggg day.
Fans of the Good Rats - a LI club-scene band, screamed "rats!" in excitement as black rubber rats were thrown from the stage to the audience toward the end of their set. The sun was still blazing late in the afternoon when the Dead came on, and by that time I was wearing a yellow towel on my head to reduce the sun stroke I felt in my sleep-deprived head. I could see the band real well during the show from about 30 or 40 yards back, on Jerry's side. At one point Jerry looked straight at the towel on my head and literally made a goofy face at me, like hey, "it cant be that bad that you need to wear that thing on your head."
It was my second show with Brent on keyboards, and interesting to really see him up close this time - right up front with his long hair, energetically playing hammond organ and electric piano. I was pleased to see him playing a Fender Rhodes, as I had bought one just a couple of years back in time, inspired a lot by Keith Godchaux's playing, although Keith played it mostly in 74 and 75 and had migrated from an acoustic grand to the Yamaha electric in 1977. In those early shows with Brent he just killed it on electric piano and organ, changing the Dead's entire sound, playing unique rocking and funky percussive styles on the Rhodes (and adding grand piano by the time they did the acoustic sets in 1980).
When Brent was hired and started playing with the band in early 1979 there was no publicity about him - no announcements or anything that I ever saw - a stark contrast to today’s over-hyped world. My appreciation for all of what Brent brought to the band and his songs has only grown and grown over the years.
The show is written up in Deadbase and tapes of this show rate very highly among fans; a wonderful recording is available on the Archive.
At the end, all the hassles of driving up the day before, trying to sleep in a parking lot with people screaming, and then sitting through the good rats on an excruciatingly hot day.... was worth it.