Concert Memories: Grateful Dead, Louisville, KY 07/06/1990

The Grateful Dead at Cardinal Stadium in Louisville was my first real concert.  Let that one sink in for a moment.  Seriously, I remember seeing a couple of local bands at festivals, I remember a cover band/don't do drugs act playing at my middle school.  BUT, my first real concert was this one. 

Check out that "Ticketron" ticket, by the way.

I do remember that even our crappy seats for this show were over 20 bucks, which was pretty expensive for the time.

I went to this one with my cousin Matt, who had just gotten his driver's license.  I wasn't old enough to have mine yet.  The Venue, Cardinal Stadium, was big enough to almost hold the entire population of our hometown of Owensboro.  AND, as I said before, this was the Grateful Dead.  We were way out of our league at that time.

We heard that we should get there early, and we did.  I remember us walking around the parking/vending area.  The whole vending thing at Dead shows was a lot of fun too.  I bought a couple of bracelets from a guy, and when I said this was my first Dead show, he gave me a couple extras!

It was a HOT day.

We went in to the stadium and hung out some.  Bruce Hornsby was the opening act, and we loved him.  We were big Don Henley fans at the time too.  He performed "The End of the Innocence" which he had written with Henley, and we loved it.

The Dead were great too, but I think this show gets better in my memory than it was for me that day.  My cousin and I were pretty darn tired by the end of the day.  We didn't realize that the Dead performed such marathon shows.  Plus, there is a LONG break between sets and opening act.  I remember them opening with "Hell In A Bucket" and also doing a lot of songs I had heard off of the Skull & Roses album, one of my all time favorites.

A few side notes....  I mentioned before that the $20+ for these tickets was pricey at the time.  It is almost funny to me how out of hand concert ticket prices have gotten.  I remember listening to a radio show maybe 10 years ago where they talked about good concert values coming to my area over the summer.  I don't think they mentioned a single show under $80.

Again, this was a Grateful Dead concert.  We saw a LOT of things that were totally new to us this day.  I don't want to mention most of them, but I do recall that I saw two women making out.  First time I ever saw that!

I remember a giant dancing skeleton puppet that was very cool.  I remember reading a newspaper article the next day that a LOT of Deadheads were busted for drugs at the show.  I also remember all of the Deadheads that we interacted with being very friendly.

This would be one of the last Grateful Dead shows with Brent Mydland, who would die a few weeks later.

I would get to see the Grateful Dead a couple more times before Jerry died and the band folded.  I would get to see some of the Dead's side projects here and there too (mostly RatDog).  I have friends who count their Grateful Dead concerts in the hundreds.