When our Class of '73 Reunion Leadership came together for the first time earlier this year (no, that is not our picture above), it was amazing how our conversations kept coming back to the events of Saturday, October 21, 1972.
Anyone remember that day in the fall of our senior year?
That's when the Grateful Dead came to campus and performed a free concert on Alumni Lawn. Remember the Mickey Mouse ears some one put on Kirkland Hall clock that day?
With apologizes to R. Kelly and Tyrone Davis (both whom had hit songs using the words I am about to paraphrase), do you ever wish you could turn back the hands of time and re-live a little bit of that performance?
Well, you can!
Go to this link and you will find streaming audio of several of the songs in the second set from that Grateful Dead performance beginning with "He's Gone."
This appears to be a recording of the actual performance at Vanderbilt. Pretty cool, huh? The site will also give a complete run down of that show, listing every song that was played in the order they were performed. Unfortunately, only a portion of the second set is posted on the site to be played.
Please take a listen, then share your memories below about that special day while we were at Vanderbilt.
As for myself, I have a couple of memories to share from that day. I spent most of it taking the LSAT exam at the Law School (you can be sure that was a lot of fun. :)
Then when I came by WRVU (located right off Alumni Lawn in Neely Auditorium in those days), I spent the rest of the afternoon helping sell concessions out of one of the front windows of the building.
For our hungry disc jockeys and news people, some of us (we called ourselves the News Council) started a operation upstairs outside the studios we called "The News Council's General Store."
We kept it stocked with candy bars, pop tarts and other kinds of junk food (hey, we could eat that stuff in those days) so no one would ever go hungry during their air shift. We used the honor system for people to pay for what they ate, and that worked pretty well most of the time.
Not surprisingly on the day the Grateful Dead came to campus, some of the folks who ran the operation, saw a chance to make a little extra $$$, so we started literally selling stuff out one of the front windows of Neely Auditorium.
I think we did so well we had to run out to the Giant Foods store next to 100 Oaks Mall (our main source of food stuffs) to replenish our supplies a couple of times during the afternoon.
So what our your memories?
Please leave them below.
And be sure to relive the memories of that special day on the Vanderbilt campus, October 21, 1972, by clicking the link above and enjoying the Grateful Dead just like we heard them almost 36 years ago!
1 comment:
I also remember remember the gift that the grateful dead left us at WRVU. The morning after the concert they were missing a rather expensive and complex (for 1972) equalizer board. The offer was there would be no questions asked for its immediate and safe return.
Well, the next morning WKDF proudly announced that it had been returned to them. So when Mike Anzek, our programming director at WRVU, and I found an equalizer board on the front steps of Neely the next morning, we saw it as the hand of fate giving us a much needed piece of equipment.
We had it mounted in the production room within the hour. So all those rotational spots and jingles at WRVU that year were electronically enhanced and "sweetened" that's to the Grateful Dead!
Steve Womack
Wrvu73@Cox.net
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