Raceway Park, Englishtown NJ, 9/3/77 In the Summer of 1977, I was a young and budding Deadhead, just licensed to drive, spending much of the summer cruising around and altering my consciousness. Scarce months before, I had attended my first show.
I knew more of the Dead's songs by this point (though not all of them - during the Englishtown show when my friend Scott identified the song that just started as Looks Like Rain, I lifted my gaze, inspected the clouds and concurred), and was seriously wearing a groove in more than one Dead album. So when the man on the radio announced a Dead show with the New Riders and the Marshall Tucker Band at a place somewhere in New Jersey that I only knew of due to the countless drag racing ads they inundated the local media with, well, I was quite interested in going.
I don't know if I needed or actually got permission from my mother to go to this thing, but one way or another, I got a ticket - general admission of all things - and eventually so did Scott. Scott is the fellow who has the distinction of turning me on to the Dead, and he even got a ticket for, and made arrangements with, Adam, a schoolmate of his from South Orange, New Jersey, so we wouldn't have quite so far to schlep on the day of the show.
My mom let me take her '73 Duster, a tank compared to my regular wheels, a piece-of-crap Vega that within a month would start eating a can of oil a day, and several days later would die an ignominious death on Interstate 95. This provided for smooth travel. We were so sophisticated, we even brought a little portable tape recorder with a lousy copy of the Passaic show that was on the radio a few months before and tapes of a few of our favorite Dead albums or sides.
The show was set to start at 1:30. We hit the road pretty early in the morning. This was a good thing, for there was just one little road running the last 5 miles into the concert area. We couldn't go faster than an idle anyway (glad I was driving that automatic!) due to the throngs who were walking down the middle of the street toward Raceway Park. Eventually, we and countless others simply pulled off the side of the road, parked, and joined the parade.
We went in the gates, getting us onto a large field ringed by trailers and dotted by perhaps a dozen speaker towers. We managed to get up rather close, maybe within a hundred yards of the stage. All three of us were amazed by the scene. We were literally in the middle of a sea of heads stretching off a quarter mile in each direction. I was getting a glimmer of an idea what Woodstock must have been like.
The New Riders came on first, and they were a pleasure to listen to. My strongest memory of their performance is their introduction of Panama Red late in the set. Something along the lines of "This song's about someone who's coming up behind you," and thousands upon thousands looked over their shoulders in unison.
Next up were Marshall Tucker, hot off a big hit album, who also pleased the crowd with their countrified sound. As a matter of fact, for about a sixth of the 150,000 in attendance, they were the main feature. A good number left the show before the Dead ever took the stage.
During the long break between Marshall Tucker and the Grateful Dead, we were treated to the Ultimate Rock MegaFestival Cliche - a woman giving birth at the show. Lots of announcements from the stage, asking folks around her to give her room, and they brought in a medical helicopter. Later on in the evening, we would hear that mother and baby were doing fine.
Given the enormity of the day, the Dead show was almost an anticlimax. They did not perform exceptionally for the most part, especially by 1977 standards. Donna was audibly sick and her singing suffered as a result. However, the show did have quite a few high points - a nicely drawn out Mississippi Half Step in the first set, the Bertha/Good Lovin' (my favorite of the Keith & Donna era) and Estimated/Eyes in the second set.
But the highlight of the show had to have been the three song medley that made up the last 40 or so minutes of the set. It started with a long, smooth, mellow He's Gone that led into a jam that gradually picked up the pace, ultimately giving birth to a smoking Not Fade Away. Great jams throughout the song, but it will be remembered best for the end of the first verse when Donna put together her last ounces of energy and sent forth her most famous scream. Primal, out of tune, intense.
After NFA there was a momentary pause, then a fanfare on drums, then Truckin! No big deal nowadays, but this was the first time they had played it since the hiatus. Not that I knew that at the time (I barely had an inkling of the hiatus itself), but there was excitement in the air and the crowd rocked. A short peaking jam at the end, and they brought the set to a close. Oh yeah, they encored with Terrapin.
On our way out, we encountered a Deadhead in search of a ride to Paramus. Given the state we were in, we had no objection to going an extra 20 miles up the Parkway. He quickly fell asleep in the back seat. Somewhere along the highway he woke up. At this point, that little tape player of ours was belting out What's Become of the Baby. Our poor passenger seemed about to freak out when the knowledge hit him. He sighed, "Oh, Aoxomoxoa," and was all right from there on in.
When we got to Adam's house, we found out that the show had made a big splash in the local media, complete with helicopter shots on the evening news. His mother (and later mine) said that she didn't realize it would be so big.
Big in more than one way. For at least one teenager, the show was one of several major rites of passage he would experience during that period. There was a certain new-found independence, an unshackling with respect to taking long journeys, that was effected on that day. For years afterwards, articles and photos from the Post and Daily News (the Times was above printing anything more than a brief article) proudly sat upon the wall of my bedroom. The show also cemented my fate as a Deadhead who would go on to attend over 50 subsequent shows and do more than his share in keeping Maxell financially afloat.
Kenneth A. Kaufman - visit his web page at by clicking here!