Jerry Garcia Band; Dr. John

Bands: Jerry Garcia Band; Dr. John

Venue: Capitol Theatre, Passaic NJ

Date: February 13, 1981

Quality: Uncirculated program; Cover art.

Comments: I directed lights for the Dead at Stony Brook in the 60s and 70s, and for Jerry Garcia Band as a City Lights touring gig. Way back in the 60s, I designed a “bright flash” special effect for a Dead show, coordinating the use of this deadly blinding light with Jerry Garcia. Unfortunately, a static charge accidentally ignited about 20 Press-40 magnesium flash bulbs—about 5 feet from Jerry’s face—just as he took off on the pedal steel guitar. One of these bulbs is bright enough to light up the entire Queen Mary for a front-page photo. Propelled entirely by photons, Jerry’s whole body snapped back as though he’d been punched in the face by a heavy weight prize fighter. He never missed a beat. When he regained his vision later on in that same tune, he patiently peered out into the room until he found me hiding behind my wall of dimmer boards, looked me squarely in the eye and mouthed two words. After that, Jerry became increasingly shy of light. Having proved the effect of the effect, however, we built a better fail-safe mechanism, used more and bigger flash bulbs, placed them in ferrotype reflectors and sold it to Edgar Winter’s White Trash...