Was looking at a topic on Reddit that asked what your first concert was. Mine was the 5th Dimension concert in, I think, 1970 (Homecoming?), but I can’t find it on the 5th Dimension’s list of concerts.
Anybody else remember that one?
Mike Nolan
The only Concert at NU was the Grateful Dead in WR.
Loudest place I’ve ever been, including the flight deck of an aircraft carrier.
Go B1GCats
rsl
5th Dimension - 1972.
I helped put on the 1973 Homecoming concert with the Dead at McGaw.
There are a bunch of stories around that particular gig, but one of the best was our attempt to mitigate the horrible acoustics of that old cow barn. We used military parachutes hung from the rafters with a rented cherry picker to cut down on the echoes.
The only ground level entrance to McGaw was through a normal overhead garage door and the cherry picker was too tall. We ended up having to let the air out of the tires and leverage the front end of the truck up a little to get it in the door.
We got about half of the parachutes up when the fire marshall came by and asked whether or not those had been treated with fire retardant. They hadn’t so we had to take them all down, dunk them in a 55 gallon drum of fire retardent, and start over. It was pretty clear that we didn’t have time to let them dry, so Lindsay Davis and I had to hang them wet. That meant that they were really heavy. As we got near the end, the fiberglass man-bucket started to crack. The crack grew larger with each successive run. By the last one, one whole side of the bucket was cracked and the floor was starting to go. But we were young, foolish, immortal, and soaked with fire retardant.
The parachutes did little to improve the acoustics, but the visuals were great and that show probably set a McGaw Hall crowd record (10K).
Andy Frances and Lindsay returned the cherry picker the next night and parked it in a dark corner of the rental lot with four almost flat tires and a suspicious crack in the man basket.
As far as volume, there were a number of bands that were way louder than the Dead. MC5 was probably the loudest I ever heard. The Who were right up there too. Pete Townshend blames his hearing loss and tinnitus on his foolish youth. At least I walked away with lifetime protection from spontaneous combustion.
Jeff
Can’t be 1972, because this was essentially the first time my (future) wife and I went out together (not exactly a date more like “We’re both going to the concert so why not go together”), but by Christmas 1970 we were definitely a couple because that’s when I met her parents, and we were married in 1972. (And on September 17th we’ll celebrate our 53rd anniversary.)
Almost has to be 1970, but I can’t find anything online about Homecoming that season.
I remember the opening number of the set was “One Less Bell to Answer”, which they had just released.
Mike Nolan
Maybe in Daily Northwestern archives - see:
https://dailynorthwestern.com/print-archives/
I just signed up for that, it may take a day or two for the account to get activated.