Pat's Summer Tour '95 Notebook

Hello and welcome. My name is Pat Terpstra. I'm 41, I teach wood shop at a high school in Grand Rapids, Michigan, and I have seen the Grateful Dead 89 times. My first show was Watkins Glen, New York, on July 28, 1973, the day of the Summer Jam with the Allman Brothers and The Band, when I was nineteen and had about six hundred thousand people standing between me and the stage. I couldn't hear half of it and I didn't care. I've been going back ever since.

Being a teacher means I'm a summer tour man. Spring tour happens during the school year and Fall Tour happens during football season, so for twenty-two years my Dead shows have mostly come in June and July, in amphitheaters and stadiums in the Midwest, in the heat. This page is my notebook from Summer Tour '95. I keep a real notebook at every show, a little spiral one that fits in my back pocket, and I'm typing it in a little at a time.

On this page:
The Count | Deer Creek | Soldier Field | Lot Tips | My Tape List | Fall Tour '95

The Count

My wife Sandra has been to eleven of these and says eleven is plenty. My buddy Floyd, who I roomed with in college, is somewhere in the 120s and won't tell me the exact number because he knows I'd try to catch him.

The 1980s were my big decade, mostly because of Alpine Valley up in Wisconsin, which was close enough to drive to after the last day of school and far enough to feel like an expedition. We lost Alpine after the 1989 shows, and I still miss that hill. These days Deer Creek, down in Indiana, is our home venue, and Chicago is three hours away.

I had tickets for four shows this summer. I saw three. Read on.

Deer Creek - Sunday, July 2, 1995

Show #87. Deer Creek Music Center, Noblesville, Indiana. Floyd drove, I navigated, and Willard (more about him under the tape list) met us there with his gear. We had lawn tickets for both nights, the 2nd and the 3rd, ordered by mail back in the spring.

From my notebook: hot and sticky all afternoon, rain that threatened and never came, a full lawn by the time the lights went down. The first set was loose and friendly. The second set was the better one; things really got moving in the middle, and for about twenty minutes there I forgot about the heat, the traffic and everything else. Jerry looked tired to me, but I've been saying that for a couple of years now, and he's still up there.

Now the part I don't enjoy writing.

There were a lot of people outside the gates who didn't have tickets. That's nothing new; there have been more of them every year. But this time, during the show, a crowd of them went over and through the fence at the back of the lawn. From where we sat we could see the commotion up the hill, and then a stream of people coming down onto the lawn who had never gone through a gate. The police had their hands full the rest of the night, and getting out of the parking lot afterward took us longer than the show did.

On Monday morning, the 3rd, we heard at the campground that the second show was canceled. The venue and the police and the band had decided it couldn't be done safely. In 22 years I have never once heard of them canceling a show because of the crowd. Floyd and I sat at the picnic table with our coffee and didn't say much. Then we packed up and drove home, and I've got a ticket stub for a show that never happened stapled into my notebook.

I want to be fair about this. Most of the people in that lot were exactly who they always are: families, old-timers, kids at their first show, people who sell grilled cheese and wouldn't hurt a fly. But the ones who went over the fence didn't just cost themselves a show. They cost twenty-some thousand people with tickets a show, they cost the town its patience, and they put the whole thing at risk. I don't know what you call those people. I don't call them Deadheads.

The band's letter. After Deer Creek the band put out a letter to the fans. I'm not going to copy it here, but the gist of it, as I read it, was this: the people who tore down the fence had cost everybody that show; this kind of thing puts future tours in real danger; and if you don't have a ticket, don't come. Stay home. I agree with every bit of it, and I'd have said it more bluntly.

We skipped the two St. Louis shows on the 5th and 6th, as we'd planned to all along. I cut the grass, took Sandra to dinner and got my notebook in order.

Soldier Field, Chicago

Saturday, July 8, 1995 - Show #88

Up at five to beat the traffic around the bottom of Lake Michigan. A stadium show is a different animal from an amphitheater: a sea of people on the field, the upper decks full, the sound coming at you a half second late if you're up high. We were on the floor, about two-thirds of the way back, which is where I like to be. Security at the gates was serious, and I was glad of it. Everybody I talked to in the lot had heard about Deer Creek, and nobody I talked to had a good word for the fence people.

The music: a solid night. The first set was mostly the good old ones, the second set stretched out the way I like, and the space in the middle was long and strange, which is how it should be. Setlists when I type them up from my notebook.

Sunday, July 9, 1995 - Show #89

The better of the two, I thought, though Floyd says Saturday. A gentle evening, a breeze off the lake for once, and the stadium lights coming up over the crowd at the end. They sent us home with Box of Rain for the encore, and I walked back to the car humming it. Setlists when I type them up from my notebook.

That's the end of Summer Tour '95 for me. Three shows instead of four, but I came home happy, and I've got the stub from the 9th up on the bulletin board over my workbench next to the other 88.

Postscript, written today: we were lucky with the weather in Chicago. The heat they've had there this week has been terrible. It's on the news every night, and people have died, mostly old folks shut up in their apartments. If you've got older neighbors, go knock on their door.

Tips for the Parking Lot

Twenty-two years of lots, boiled down. Some of this I learned the hard way.

1. Have a ticket. If you don't have one, stay home. After Deer Creek I don't think I need to explain this one.
2. Order by mail. The band's own mail-order ticket office is the best way to get good seats, and it's how I've gotten my tickets since the mid-'80s. Call the Hotline for the dates and the deadlines, and follow the instructions to the letter. They mean it about the envelope size.
3. Water, a hat and sunscreen. Stadium lots are acres of blacktop in July. I carry a gallon jug and a towel. Drink the water before you think you need it.
4. Write down where you parked. Row, aisle, light pole, whatever there is. At night every lot looks the same, and every third car is a Volvo wagon.
5. Pick a meeting spot before you go in, and a time. You will lose your friends. Everybody does.
6. Pack out your trash. Leave your spot cleaner than you found it. Venues are deciding right now whether they want us back, and they're deciding it partly by what the lot looks like on Monday morning.
7. Be nice to the neighbors, the ushers and the parking attendants. They didn't ask for tens of thousands of us.
8. Don't buy or sell anything illegal. There are more police in the lot every year, and some of them are wearing tie-dye. I've seen good kids hauled off in handcuffs, and it's not worth it.
9. Eat in the lot. The grilled cheese and the veggie burritos beat anything inside the venue, and you're putting money in an honest pocket.
10. Mind the tapers. If you end up near the taper section, keep your conversation for the parking lot. They're working.

My Tape List

Here's what I've got, by date. I'm happy to trade. E-mail me your list. If you're just getting started and don't have anything to trade yet, I'll do blanks and postage for up to three tapes: send me good high-bias blanks (Maxell XLII or TDK SA, 90s or 100s, no normal-bias, please) in a padded mailer with return postage, and I'll send them back full. No selling, ever. These are for trading.

SBD = soundboard. AUD = audience. The generation is how many copies away from the master my copy is, as best I know it.

About Willard: he's a science teacher from Kalamazoo I met in the lot at Alpine in 1985, and he's been taping from the tapers' section ever since. He made my copy of his Deer Creek master the week after, and it sounds fine, fence and all. He's promised me his Soldier Field tapes as soon as he's caught up.

Most wanted: anything from Alpine Valley I was actually at, which is most of them. Write me.

Fall Tour '95

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since June 1995.

Write to me: [email protected]

Last updated Sunday, July 16, 1995