Grateful Dead Watsonville - 1983

During this period, the Grateful Dead and Bill Graham Presents were experimenting with different venues around California. While the site was pleasant, and the afternoon weather was great as always, the facility lacked the parking to manage thousands of Deadheads arriving at once, and the venue was somewhat overwhelmed, in the genial pleasant way that Deadheads used to do such things.

The show attracted about 11,000 fans. And it may have been the biggest show ever in the county’s history, at least it was the biggest show at the time. The existing stage at the fairgrounds was far too small for the band, so a new makeshift stage was built beside the old stage. My personal remembrances were waiting on line for the doors to open with a large sign reading “No weapons,” which to me and my friends seemed very funny given the audience, and dancing behind the bleachers and all over what was basically a big open field.

At the time, the Dead was an enormously famous touchstone of the 1960s San Francisco sound. But, knee-deep in the Reagan era, the mainstream of music fans were more focused on post-punk acts like Talking Heads and U2. Though still able to command devotion from legions of fans in the burgeoning Dead subculture, the band was at the same time out of fashion with the times. They were still several years away from their mainstream resurrection.