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It’s always fun to be pretty much anywhere in America on Independence Day, but of all the awesome cities and towns south of the border the only place for me to have been on July 4th, 2015 was Chicago.
Though the whole city was decked out in red, white and blue for the holiday weekend it looked to me like Chicago was flying the colours of The Grateful Dead, and they would have had considerable reason to. Being selected as the city (ultimately one of two cities) to host the Fare Thee Well Grateful Dead 50th Anniversary shows was an honour that brought tens of thousands of tie-dyed revellers to town for the weekend, and I was pretty happy to count myself among them. The city was rolling out the red carpet for us, with pre-parties and aftershows everywhere and countless of bars and restaurants flying their freak flag for the weekend in an effort to draw in all those old hippy dollars.
My hotel was going above-and-beyond, even hiring a Dead-based bluegrass band to play free concerts in the courtyard. I went down for the afternoon set and made a bunch of new friends, all of us bopping away to the familiar bouncy tunes and getting primed for the evening courtesy of the cash bar and barbecue the hotel had set up. To their credit the hotel was cool with people bringing drinks down from their rooms and a good time was had by all.
It was a pretty quick stroll from the hotel to the lot, and after the prerequisite walkabout I headed into the venue. I was happy to see that the bracelet fiascos of opening night had been ironed out and I made it onto the floor with no trouble at all.
It very exciting to stand in the middle of so much anticipation. As the minutes went on upwards of 70,000 waited and waited for the magical first notes of what was predetermined to be an unforgettable evening. When the band walks onstage the sound of the crowd is nothing short of empowering, almost overshadowing the opening notes of Shakedown Street.
And theeey’re off!
I spent much of the first set circling around and scanning the enormous crowd. From my vantage point near the stage it looked like 360 degrees of blurry, pulsating energy, a wash of humanity on their feet dancing and swaying in uncommon time. Word was that these were the biggest crowds every to squeeze into this Herculean stadium, and no doubt one of the happiest.
I had GA floors for all three nights so at the setbreak I opted for a change of scenery. I was concerned that being close to the stage might not be the best view of the inevitable Fourth Of July fireworks so I headed up into the seats.
I found a couple of empty seats in the front row of a random section in the 100 level and spent the setbreak chatting away with m’lady. At shows like this it’s common to just grab any seat that’s available. Lots of people never see their actual seat at a Dead show, and if they do come back for their seat they’ll usually just find somewhere else or at least be pretty cool about the whole situation.
So I was surprised when behind me I heard a gruff voice coming towards me “Hey, what are you two doing in our seats! You lousy seat-stealers!”
I turn around and coming towards us with mock anger is Dan and Mark, two friends from Ottawa. Remarkably, the seats we had selected were theirs. I didn’t even know they would be in Chicago for these shows, and here in a crowd of 70,000 people we were sitting in their seats. What an amazing coincidence.
Better still they told us that the two seats next to them had been empty for the entire first set so we moved over two places and the four of us enjoyed the second set together.
The fireworks were indeed quite spectacular, and though our view would have been better if we had found different random seats my appreciation for serendipity made me pretty happy to be sitting where I was for the second half of the evening.
I shunned the many aftershows opting to celebrate with friends in and around the hotel (mine or theirs, I don’t recall).
Todd Man Out 