12. Saint Of Circumstance > | 1987-06-13 | Grateful Dead

2:36:05
Taper:
OldNeumanntapr
Transferrer:
OldNeumanntapr
SHNID:
gd1987-06-13.167900.EC7.Cardioids.OldNeumanntapr.flac1644
Source:
OTS; Superscope EC-7 Cardioid Condensers (Near Coincident) >Sony TC-153SD (TDK HX-S 90s)
Lineage:
Cass Masters Transferred: Sony TC-D5M >Tascam DR100mkII (24bit/48kHz) (June 2024) WAV >Audacity (Amplify By 7.7db, Index Tracks, Down Sample To 16bit/44.1kHz, Minor Edits [Tape Flips], & Fades) >FLAC (Level 8) + Tags Via xACT 2.53
Taper Notes:
View NotesOldNeumanntapr Notes:
This was my very first Ventura Grateful Dead show! We had tickets the PREVIOUS year in 1986, but that was a disaster for both me and the band. Since my ex wife worked at the Cal Poly University Library in San Luis Obispo, she was never able to get Friday's off from work, so we left that year on Friday evening and missed the phone message on our answering machine (remember those?) from a friend telling me that he heard on the radio that the Ventura Fairgrounds Dead concerts were cancelled.

I had had just gotten my '67 VW bus out of the shop after having a new transaxle installed, because it kept popping our of fourth gear, and I TOLD them to replace ALL the fuel lines, because I had been smelling gas at times. They replaced the rubber lines but not the metal line that runs from the gas tank, through the firewall, to the fuel pump. The bus had been sitting for months while I saved up the $600 needed to replace the trans, and I guess that the points in the distributor had gotten corroded. We got all the way down to Gaviota right by the ocean north of Santa Barbara and we were listening to my cassette that I had recorded from the LP 'Live Dead on the stereo. Right in the middle of 'Dark Star', the bus just quit running and we coasted to a stop on the side of the 101 freeway. It wouldn't start, so we flagged down a car and got a ride to the nearest gas station about seven miles south. (The only car that would stop was an old Ford Granada with some sketchy people that looked like they hadn't bathed in a while but I wasn't complaining. A ride is a ride!)

Once we got to the Chevron station, the tow truck driver gave us a lift back to the bus. He asked where we were headed and I told him that we were going to the Dead shows at Ventura Fairgrounds. He told me that he heard a rumor that the shows were cancelled and my heart sank.  This was to be the first shows that I was planning on recording with my Sony TC 153SD and Superscope EC-7 cardioids that I had recently purchased from a friend of a friend who had worked at Pacific Stereo in the 70s and bought them new.

The tow truck driver looked at the motor and scraped the points with a screwdriver and the bus started up! YAY! We were ambulatory once again! When we arrived at the Ventura Fairgrounds about 11 PM , there was a lot of somber people milling around and a yellow-shirted venue staff member with long blonde hair was telling everyone that Jerry was in a coma and the shows were cancelled. He was telling everyone to head to Cachuma Lake, north east of Santa Barbara, for camping. We had come all this way apparently for nothing. I had mail order ticket, batteries and blanks for my tape recorder, a full ice chest, and provisions for a weekend of camping and concert going.

I thought we should go and gas up the bus before leaving town, so we stopped at a cheap station and I filled the tank. I had only owned the bus for a  short time and I was unfamiliar with its idiosyncrasies. Later, I was to discover that when the front windshields had leaked, the water had shorted out the high beam headlight relay that is mounted on the inside of the front wall under the windshields. When I hopped out of the bus, my knee must have bumped the lever that activated the high beams, so when I got back into the bus and started her up I was distraught to find that the headlights did not function. I had parking lights and dash lights but no headlights. I thought I must have blown a fuse. if I would have just clicked the level the low beams would have come on and we would have been back on the road, and possibly died.

I had no other option but to find a quiet side street to park for the night and try and drive up to Cachuma Lake in the daylight hours. We went back to the fairgrounds, with only running light, no head lights, and parked on the street just to the south where a lot of condos were. My bus was a camper and had a folding table and folding bed in the back so we were fairly comfortable for the night. (That was back when I was only 21-years old and didn't have to pee three times a night! Oh the good old days!)

I woke up the next morning with one Hell of a headache. Another of the bus's little secrets was that I didn't know that the gasket on the fuel cap was bad, and that since we were parked on the street with a camber, gas had run out of the full tank and flowed all over the street right under where we were sleeping.

I also noticed that the metal fuel line, where it runs through the firewall into the engine compartment, had a crack and was leaking there too. Apparently the rubber grommet had fallen out years ago and every time the engine moved on the motor mounts it rubbed that metal fuel line back and forth across the exposed metal opening in the firewall. This of course was dripping gas directly onto the heater boxes on the driver's side!!!!

We walked all over downtown Ventura before we found a Kragens. I managed to limp the bus there. (We were in the intersection right downtown when in saw white smoke coming out of the defroster. I stopped the engine, grabbed my fire extinguisher and jumped out yelling 'Fire!' It was amazing how many hippies scatter when you yell fire in an old VW bus!) I rolled under the back and sprayed the fire extinguisher over the bottom of the engine. Fortunately it hadn't caught fire yet, but was getting close. We got to Kragens, driving a block at a time, and I borrowed a hax saw. I bought two hose clamps and a piece of rubber fuel line. I took out the metal line, being careful to block the outlet of the full fuel tank, and cut the good end off the metal line. I scraped it back and forth along the pavement to file it down and used it as a coupler to join the two fuel lines together. It worked that way until I sold the bus.

If we hadn't of had the trouble with the headlight relay it is extremely possible that we would have suffered an engine fire from the fuel leak on the gas line and possible died in the flames. I guess it was a blessing. (And I'm an Agnostic!)

We drove to Cachuma lake, met up with some Deadheads that had some killer 'Goonybird' acid tabs with cartoons of little airplanes on them. They had the acid and I had a case full of live music recordings. We had a nice party.

The ranger kept driving by that night as we were sitting by the fire and he would roll his window down and say, 'Go to bed!' This one Deadhead named Mikey, from Oakland, would look at him and say, 'But Sir! We're Not Tiiiiiired yet!' Too funny!

So yes, You could say that I remember that weekend well. :)
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I told you THAT story so that everyone would understand why the 1987 Ventura shows were so meaningful to me. We camped, in the bus, in the parking lots and bar-be-cued our dinners and recorded some good shows. On Saturday, June 13 1987, I met my friend Gene. He patched a Marantz 420 into my Sony TC-153SD and we have been friends ever since. Later Gene would buy a grey-market Sony TCD-D10 DAT and we would ship it back and forth from coast to coast recording Dead shows!

This was also my very first 'Morning Dew', a song that I had always been fond of since hearing it on the first Dead LP when I was just out of high school in 1983.

I just recently transferred the Saturday show, but my Sunday '87 Ventura cassettes have WOW distortion so I think I waited too long to transfer them.

I used a photo of my ticket stub for the artwork.

Do NOT Convert To MP3.
Enjoy! Share freely, don’t sell, play nice, don’t run with scissors, etc. ;)