Garcia said “We were great for seconds on end.” I was lucky to see Jerry play for about 1,000,000 seconds exactly. Thanks for your 1,000,000 views here . Dave Davis wrote this blog for 500 posts and 5 years from 2015 to 2019. Contact me at twitter @gratefulseconds

Friday, August 26, 2022

The Field Trip Continues into Boulder, Dead Attract 32,000 and Earn Biggest Payday to Date, September 3, 1972

 Most of us are most familiar with the very last Dick's Picks (36) on the very last CD (4) when we were blessed with a 50 minute slice of Folsom Field in JGMF's Boulder town on September 3, 1972:

  1. "He's Gone" > (Garcia, Hunter) – 10:30
  2. "The Other One" > (Weir, Kreutzmann) – 28:57
  3. "Wharf Rat" (Garcia, Hunter) – 10:16

but this show is totally underrated.  Whole show is here https://www.dropbox.com/sh/6um5ud1om68j601/AADzXPO2PyZgSN42ODnWa17Fa?dl=0



Awesome The Other One  This show is not even in the top-20 of most people's 1972 shows but the great Mind Wonderin' review gives it five stars with an A+ set one and an A set three. 


But 50 years ago this week, the Grateful Dead played their first gig after The Field Trip at Kesey's Farm, which is also a famous show.  This was the first Grateful Dead gig to attract more than 30,000 fans at student ticket prices of $3.50 and $4.50 for  other fans.  The Colorado gig generated $133,456 in ticket sales so the Grateful Dead gig income was a record $57,000, almost double their guarantee of $30,000.  previously, the Dead had a similar guarantee in Hartford and Jersey City in July 1972 with upside but Boulder proved to attract the largest crowd   It would take Summer Jam at Watkin's Glen to break this record for a Dead pay-day, which was then broken again exactly five years from Boulder in Englishtown, New Jersey on September 3, 1977.  Serendipity the Dead played a monster three song medley starting with He's Gone at that show too.

The Dead went on to play 13 more shows in September 1972, 10 at small theaters like the Boston Music Hall and the Hollywood Palladium as well as Baltimore Civic Center, Philly Spectrum and a return to Roosevelt Stadium that they had just played in July.  For September, all the shows and expenses for the month were about breakeven, with the exception of the monster Boulder income, which went almost entirely to the band members/partners  in the form of cash dividends and tax payments.  This is a trend for the band through much of the 1970s and start of the 1980s, where the band plays a lot of gigs at relatively smaller places (think June and July 1976, followed by  Colt Park and Roosevelt and a cancelled outdoor London gig) which kind of break even and then a Big Show that can flow to the Band Members, or a Grateful Dead movie or to help Keith and Donna get a house.