My first Dead show was at RFK Stadium, 6-10-73, and what a show it was! Wet Willie opened, followed by the Allman Bros. and then the Dead. It was their 1st tour after Pigpen died. It was a cloudless, HOT day. It had to have been 100 deg. Firehoses were turned on to spray down all the dancing bodies. The show started at noon with Wet Willie (listen to "Drippin' Wet" recorded live that same year). The Allmans came out and played for hours and hours and they also were Hot Hot Hot. They looked to me like a bunch of sweaty construction workers hard at work. Then right at sundown the Dead came out. I remember being stunned by the sound of the first chord of Morning Dew. It was so loud and deep. (Of course the little purple microdots helped.) This was back when the dead usually had about thirty people hanging out behind their tie-dyed amps with kids & dogs wandering on and off stage. One memory stands out--During Sugar Magnolia the crowd on the ground turned chaos into order by spontaneously forming several huge concentric circles, one inside the other, everone holding hands dancing and turning like big cosmic wheels to the music. I was up high in the stands looking down on this while huge dust clouds from 1000s of dancing feet filled the space inside the stadium. It was truly awesome. By the 3rd set I was stage front and center again to see the Dead joined by Dickie Betts, Gregg Allman, Butch Trucks, and Howard Wales (not Merle Saunders) play for another hour or so. It was all over by 2:30am

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