Fellow head Paul Martin and I had learned to fly while grad students. We flew to Denver for Christmas, and tried to fly home in time to catch all the Winterland shows. I had never missed a Winterland show since my first three in November 1973 when they opened with Promised Land at my first show ever, right after I moved to the Promised Land. We had a very bumpy and exciting landing after our first attempt to fly west, but our Cessna made little progress into this wind. We had to wait a few days and fly back on Dec 31, so actually making it to the show on time was a huge accomplishment.
We were thwarted by an unusual Colorado meteorological condition known as Chinook winds, over 70 mph.
Once at the show, I danced and juggled near the rear with scarves that glowed in the black light. This usually drew a circle of heads watching the scarves glow and float to the music. My most striking memory of the show was Lee Oscar’s harmonica floating through the music.
Being in the rear, I had no idea what or who this was, thinking perhaps the mystical plane I was on made Jerry’s guitar sound unusually ethereal. Having started the day taking off in a Cessna in Boulder, I was too exhausted by breakfast to remember much about it. The one thing I remember was Bobby announcing after the last encore something like “Uncle Bobo is feeding everybody breakfast!”
~ David Wilkins