I am a recovering Deadhead. But I had a good job I had to be to on Mondays so I never got to live the Dead Culture or follow them much.
Before The Dead were the phenomenon they eventually became they were a West Coast band that traveled farther occasionally. I would get my yearly exposure with their West Coast swing through Seattle, Portland, Eugene then on to California. I never got to go farther than Eugene, but the shows I did see here were always special.
In August of 1982 I was done with work for the Summer and getting ready to head back to school. I had couple weeks of free organizational time to prepare, but The Dead were coming to Veneta, OR - site of the Oregon Country Fair and a similar event at the same site 10 years earlier. One of my roommates got a call from a friend in one of the bands saying come on down, so we rallied the troops and put together the road trip.
Most of what I remember of the day was great music and a very hot and dusty venue. The random naked people added color and we even caught a glimpse of our State's local Merry Prankster. It was pretty special, but we didn't really prepare all that well and were getting hungry so we decided to wander around to see what we could scare up for grub. The experience that was about to present itself was a one-off blessing.
We initially wandered toward the stage as that's where most of the vendors were, but somehow got disoriented (good chemical cocktail?). We found ourselves bashing through a very large blackberry patch. We were both getting pretty torn up and bloodied but then somehow, we just popped out into a groomed, manicured area with huge tables covered with all varieties of scrumptious food. My first comment was, either this is really good acid or we are probably not supposed to be here. Our answer to that was about to present itself.
The music that had been playing stopped and a horde of people started rolling toward us. Our first thought was to split as quietly as possible but then we heard a "Hey Guys,"...and figured, Shit, we are busted! But it was not to be. One of the big burly stage hands calmly walked over with a big smile and said, "Hey, you fellas look a little lost and beat up, so how about we feed you and get you straightened out. You can meet a few people from the band and then we can point you back to where you need to be"... well dang, Score! So for the next 30 minutes or so we got to mingle with Rock star celebrities and crew people. We saw Jerry and the band but had no real interaction. We were simply having a really good time with the stage crew and they were feeding us like royalty. When the time arrived for the show to start back up our dude loaded us up with some last food and they shooshed us on our way in the most polite manner imaginable. It was like we were welcomed guests,...by accident, and it rocked.
After the shows we had to stop at a local pharmacy for some first aid supplies, then got a cheesy little hotel room in Eugene. We all took a quick shower. I soaked my feet in the tub with epsom salts while I picked blackberry thorns out of my feet and patched up what I could. When our stage hand dude said, "you guys look a little tore up," he was being kind. I had a hard time walking for a few days after. Every good adventure comes with a price.
If you would like to listen to the actual show, go back to the main page here, click on Clownboy Radio and type Veneta in the search box and it'll load up for you. Some die hard Deadheads argue about setlists, tired old tunes, whether Jerry was on point,...yadda, yadda, yadda, woof, woof. But for me, it was a great show and the lunch was epic.