Ithaca is Grateful: Furthur at Barton Hall, 2/14/2010
Sunday, February 21st, 2010
Most of us at Cornell know Barton Hall as the campus gymnasium, or the building where our most awful final exams take place. But unbeknownst to many current Cornellians, there exists a group of individuals out there for whom Barton Hall is more than a giant room with excessive echo. It is the site of the most legendary performance of one of the most influential bands of the century: The Grateful Dead. It is no wonder then, that Dead enthusiasts that follow the band around the country would flock to the Dead Head mecca of Barton Hall for the Furthur concert on February 14th, 2010.Although I really like the Grateful Dead, I had never attended any of their shows or met any true Dead Heads until this concert (save my mother, who achieves honorary Dead Head status for having attended the Grateful Dead’s 1977 concert in Barton Hall, and some of her ex-Dead Head friends.) In the week before the show, I received the much-talked-about emails from the Cornell administration and police, warning me to watch out for Dead Heads sleeping in my dorm or picking through the garbage of dining halls. Many of us wondered why school officials were so nervous about a bunch of hippies storming Cornell’s campus for the weekend, so at the concert I sought to find out for myself who these Dead enthusiasts actually are.
I arrived at Barton Hall over an hour before the show was set to start, with the specific purpose of talking to as many people as possible. Everyone I approached was extremely friendly and glad to answer my questions and share their experiences. Many of them couldn’t even tell me how many Dead concerts (which includes the Grateful Dead or any post-Grateful Dead bands) they have been to, most estimated that they had attended well over two hundred since the 1970’s. Others, who were a bit younger, only started following the band recently and had only gone to between ten and fifty Dead concerts over the last ten or fifteen years.
Surprisingly, out of the twenty-five people I talked to, only one had been to a Dead performance at Barton Hall (no, not the 1977 one, the Phil Lesh and Bob Dylan concert in 1999.) Even those who had followed the Dead from coast to coast to see 200+ concerts over the last forty years never made it to the epic Barton Hall, where the Grateful Dead and post-Grateful Dead bands have performed numerous times since the 1960’s. This seemed statistically impossible to me, but it only added to the excitement for the show. Many felt that Barton Hall is a truly legendary place, and that they were really becoming a part of history by attending the Furthur concert there. Some were dismayed by the lack of booze and food, but that didn’t seem to detract from the anticipation that saturated the air in the minutes before the concert began.
As soon as Phil Lesh and Bob Weir hit the stage, I was transported into another universe. Not only was the music phenomenal, the energy in Barton Hall that night was unparalleled and truly out of this world. The area up near the stage was filled with throngs of people swaying, singing along, and smoking their joints, while in the slightly less crowded back area of Barton Hall, I spotted several people having intense spiritual experiences, repeatedly twirling in circles with their arms outstretched and long skirts billowing around them. The camaraderie and vigor of the audience permeated the foundations of the building, and transformed it into a unique spiritual and musical utopia.
I won’t comment further on the kinds of substances individuals managed to bring into Barton Hall despite the security checks and police presence, but during the intermission I did take note of the Wharf Rats (www.wharfrat.org) table set up near the merchandise. The Wharf Rats is an organization whose membership consists of concertgoers that have pledged to live alcohol and drug-free lives. They attend as many concerts as possible in order to provide support to other concertgoers who may need them. During intermission, I stood silently by their table for an Alcoholics-Anonymous-esque group discussion, where many admitted to struggling with drugs and alcohol. One man proudly announced that this was his third time attending a Dead concert in a completely sober state, and another, a Cornell alum, discussed how his involvement in The Wharf Rats changed his life.
While Furthur concluded the night with a fantastic performance of I Know You Rider, the uplifting energy of the audience reached a mind-blowing peak and shook me to the core. I was completely absorbed in the music, but I couldn’t help but notice a man a few feet away from me with the full Dead-Head getup- the dreads, the beard, the eyebrow ring, and the hippie clothes – clutching a rose, swaying with his eyes closed, and sporting the most blissful and true smile I have ever seen. I realized that contrary to popular belief at Cornell, a Dead Head isn’t a homeless hippie that warrants warnings by university administrations into sending alarming emails to their students. The Dead Heads seemed to think of themselves as people who live for the music and the cascade of epic experiences that they could never have otherwise.
