| Band | Grateful Dead | ||
| Venue | San Quentin State Prison | ||
| Location | San Quentin, CA | ||
| Date | 2/15/1968 - Thursday | posters | tickets, passes & laminates |
| Comments | Afternoon concert. See Deadlists Digests #589, 591, and 593 and the listings for 02/14/68 and 03/07/68. At the conclusion of 02/14/68, an announcement was made saying that Country Joe and the Fish, the Dead, some members of Jefferson Airplane, and "some of the other bands" would be at San Quentin the next afternoon. DeadBase has listed a "free afternoon concert on the lawn outside the prison" on 03/07/68 for several editions. Either they have the date wrong or there was another concert on 03/07/68 as well. David Minton: "That 2/14/68 reference to a prison show has to have been the very first time I saw any musicians in California. My old lady (there is a quaint expression that you can't get away with anymore) and kid #1 had landed in Berkeley sometime around then (took 3 months to get the '50 Chevy panel truck there from Connecticut!) and I vividly recall going to a prisoners benefit on a point overlooking San Quentin. Garcia, Cassidy, one of the guys from the Charletans, maybe Barry Melton from CJ&Fish were playing on flatbed trucks. I think there was a strike on in the prison." An article also appeared in the Ukia Daily Journal on 2/16/68. An excerpt: by Gordon Sakamoto Five hundred hippies danced and sang on a grassy knoll outside San Quentin Prison Thursday in a show of sympathy for the men behind the walls. The songfest involving long-haired, bearded young men and sack-wearing girls was to coincide with a threatened strike of prison inmates which never materialized. The Grateful Dead played for the flower children on the sunny hillside overlooking San Francisco Bay... ... The Grateful Dead rock group set up their electronic gear on a flatbed truck and the music blared for about three hours. Convicts may have picked up a few strains of it before their afternoon meal. The hippies trickled away as darkness came. |
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| Recordings | None in circulation as of 2/02. | ||
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| Contributors | David Sorochty, David Minton, Brian Pollard | ||
| Caretaker | Send an email with updates | ||