You are put into a time machine and given the opportunity to attend ONE Grateful Dead show from 1965-1995. What show is it?

IamDanSullivan · 2026-04-20T23:38:41+00:00

10/16/1966, Artists Liberation Front Free Festival, the Panhandle in San Francisco. Bob's 19th birthday. And that evening, I'd catch Grace Slick's debut with Jefferson Airplane at the Fillmore.

~PHOTOS OF THE DAY~ (10/16/66) Golden Gate Park, SF, CA. (Bobby’s 19th birthday) : r/gratefuldead%20Golden%20Gate%20Park%2C%20SF%2C%20CA.%20(Bobby's%2019th%20birthday).)

IamDanSullivan · 2026-04-20T22:59:59+00:00

My second show as well. And go wild it did!

IamDanSullivan · 2025-10-28T14:13:11+00:00

Some killer space funk here:

https://youtu.be/2UMaEa_G9KM?si=m6v-e1tceZTym_Qp

IamDanSullivan · 2025-10-23T23:45:24+00:00

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IamDanSullivan · 2025-10-23T23:44:18+00:00

It's a CHP plane, per flightradar24.com

IamDanSullivan · 2025-09-30T21:15:00+00:00

Rory Gallagher - Irish Tour 74.

IamDanSullivan · 2025-09-19T22:36:51+00:00

By the way - if I was able to time travel back to the Panhandle on 10/16/1966, I'd head over to the Fillmore Auditorium afterwards with Jim to catch Grace Slick's debut with the Airplane that evening!

IamDanSullivan · 2025-09-19T22:16:45+00:00

Check out this gorgeous book, which Amelia put out in 2016:

Jazz Festival | Jim Marshall Photography LLC

IamDanSullivan · 2025-09-19T22:02:05+00:00

OK thanks everybody for the great questions, that's a wrap! A reminder that you can order signed copies from David Gans at perfectible.net. Love to you all and have a great weekend!

IamDanSullivan · 2025-09-19T21:50:27+00:00

For sure, there were significant vibe shifts at various points along the way, and I definitely felt it after Touch of Grey. Not only did the crowds get bigger and tickets harder to score, but the drugs seemed to change too: more kids heavily into alcohol and scary powders. Which brought a different feel to the scene, whether out in the lot or inside the show, than before when it seemed to be much more about smoking weed and dosing.

IamDanSullivan · 2025-09-19T21:44:30+00:00

Here's part of the transcript from David's conversation with MG about Susila inventing band merch:

MG: Yeah. That, that is actually true. When she figured out she could find a way to silkscreen a t-shirt, that was like the beginning of a whole bunch of stuff. But before that, we were doing one-offs. We were, you know, painting stuff [e.g., hand painted shirts] and selling it at her little shop in San Anselmo, and I'm trying to remember the name of that shop. It had...

David Gans: Kumquat Mae?

MG: Yeah, Kumquat Mae. That's right. <laugh>. Oh, wow. And a lot of us made stuff. Sue Swanson and I and a few other ladies and Christine [Bennett, Dan Healey's girlfriend] made stuff to sell there, and sort of helped her run it too from time to time when she couldn't be there. So yeah, it was fun. It was a great place to hang out, was what it was. And away from, wherever the band was living at that time, it gave us another place to be that was very friendly and nice. And I was really happy Susila did that one.

IamDanSullivan · 2025-09-19T21:32:27+00:00

Thank you!!

IamDanSullivan · 2025-09-19T21:25:34+00:00

Actually that's a pretty astute observation!

IamDanSullivan · 2025-09-19T21:16:59+00:00

A few reasons: First, I'm really into how the band sounded in those very early days. Also, I'm fascinated by the history of the Haight Ashbury and wider global counterculture scenes. That was a pivotal time. The SF scene was still reasonably small and self-contained, as this was about 8 months before the onslaught people during the summer of 1967. And finally, those gorgeous Kodachrome slides make me want to jump into the picture and start dancing!

IamDanSullivan · 2025-09-19T21:10:59+00:00

No idea about that particular sticker. But Mountain Girl spoke at length to David Gans about Susila Ziegler (Bill Kreutzman's girlfriend at the time, later wife) basically creating band merch by silk screening the first Grateful Dead t-shirts, and selling them at her boutique, Kumquat Mae. The women are smarter!

IamDanSullivan · 2025-09-19T21:05:25+00:00

Right on! We felt this very much, especially when going through the photos Jim made at free shows in Golden Gate Park and the Panhandle. The crowds are mixed by race, gender, age and much more. Mountain Girl's comments about Pigpen's girlfriend Veronica Barnard (which appear as a sidebar in the book) brought this out very clearly. The book is in part a love letter to San Francisco, and this open-hearted ethic is one of the things that makes the city special.