When the Dead invaded Telluride
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- Created on Monday, 15 March 2010 22:15
- Written by R. Scott Rappold
As a recovering hippie, I couldn't resist this story.
Jam band Phish is considering putting on a two-day concert in Telluride. While the band has a long history of playing the southwest Colorado town - a string of shows in the 1980s became a live CD - things have changed, and they are big enough today that the event would cause crowds and traffic that could bring the town to a standstill.
As they debate the concert, folks in Telluride are recalling the last such event, a pair of Grateful Dead shows in 1987. The Telluride Daily Planet takes a look back, to remind people whose memories are probably a little hazy:
Did it even happen at all? The time the Grateful Dead came to Telluride? The weekend — Aug. 15 and 16, 1987 — has entered into myth alongside Butch Cassidy, and is sometimes seen as both the town’s finest hour and its darkest night. It’s often brought up as an example of all that Telluride is capable of … in good ways … and bad.
The good…
When Telluride was trying to raise piles of money to acquire the Valley Floor, then-mayor John Pryor rallied his town by saying: “they said we couldn’t bring the Grateful Dead … and we did.”
The bad…
“Disaster,” wrote a commenter on the Daily Planet’s Web site. “People were sleeping in residents’ yards … constant aggressive pan-handling.... Citizens of Telluride were outraged during and after the show.”
Read more here.
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