Most of the firsthand accounts are from the mid 1980s-era. Also, the topic of "audience fireworks" and how that came about was never mentioned. I am personally interested to know when and how the fireworks-freaks began their pyrotechnics. A reviewer of GD's first Roosevelt Stadium performance, in Jersey City on July 18, 1972, said: "This was the beginning of the era of huge stadium shows -- I believe this was the biggest crowd the Dead had played to that point. And they lived up to it -- they destroyed the place."
I haven't listened for fireworks in the audience recording of this 1972 Roosevelt Stadium show, so I don't know if the audience used any there. But by 1973, the fireworks were incredible at the outdoor shows in the northeast corridor. I've never seen anything like it, but my tapes from the 1973 shows at RFK Stadium and Roosevelt Stadium are full of audience fireworks. Also, some of my GD friends from NJ that I went to shows with in 1973 brought along a lot of fireworks and set them off at these shows.
I had been to many concerts from 1971 to 1973, at many venues in NY and NJ, by many bands, but not the Grateful Dead yet. I never saw fireworks in the audience at any other shows in this period. I also never saw audiences this huge -- not even close to this huge. The Watkins Glen summer jam in July 1973 was 600,000 people, and I was there. So I'll represent the tapers from the 1973-era of the early big venues. The 1973-era was also the prototype-era for GD's Wall of Sound developed by Alembic.
During the past twelve months, I released two more uncirculated 1973 GD recordings of shows I taped at Roosevelt Stadium. When Matt Smith transferred these tapes for me on professional equipment, he also transferred the two RFK Stadium shows of GD in June 1973 that I taped. This was a major upgrade in sound quality for these RFK tapes, which I previously circulated four years ago. My tapes sound excellent now, and they put you "right in there with the crowd". These shows are available on the Live Music Archive. This is the first time I've mentioned this news here at the Festivarian...
high resolution copies of my tapes are 24-bit depth, at 96 kHz sampling rate:
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Grateful Dead Live at Robert F. Kennedy Stadium on 1973-06-09•
Grateful Dead Live at Robert F. Kennedy Stadium on 1973-06-10•
Grateful Dead Live at Roosevelt Stadium on 1973-07-31•
Grateful Dead Live at Roosevelt Stadium on 1973-08-01CD quality copies of my tapes are 16-bit depth, at 44.1 kHz sampling rate:
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Grateful Dead Live at Robert F. Kennedy Stadium on 1973-06-09•
Grateful Dead Live at Robert F. Kennedy Stadium on 1973-06-10•
Grateful Dead Live at Roosevelt Stadium on 1973-07-31•
Grateful Dead Live at Roosevelt Stadium on 1973-08-01
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