Curtis Hixon Convention Hall, Tampa FL 12/18/73

Hi Eric...I know the band made a tape of the show on the 18th, 'cause while I was backstage, I
sat for awhile with the guy doing the bands recording. As i recall he had a stereo nagra (yum!) a
pair of JBL monitors and a small mixer. He also had a salt shaker full of a white crystalline
substance.....

When I was at the free outdoor show at Vanderbilt University over Thanksgiving 1972, I took a
bunch of pix with my trusty ol Nikkormat camera. I worked part time at a camera store in the
Lab. When I got back, I had taken some of the better shots of the band and made them into four
4X5 inch black and white prints. I then sandwiched these to sheets of Kodalith ortho film and
made a large format negative with only black and white....no grayscale. These 4X5 inch hi
contrast negere then blown up to 16 X 20 prints.

I took these prints to Tampa on Dec 18th early in the afternoon and went over to Curtis Hixon
Hall. I found the stage manager out back of the hall (Sam Cutler I think) anyway, I showed him
the Pix and asked if I could give them to the band. He said sure, and led me into the hall and
pointed to the dressing room. When I went in, there was no one there, but Garcia's guitar was on
the table. There was another door there, and I tried it. It was a private restroom, and Garcia was
sitting on the john. I excused myself and waited outside. When he came out, we talked a bit. As I
recall, he was real excited about their 'wall of sound' It was this new differential miking setup
they had where they used two mikes close up out of phase with each other and worked on of
them closely for vocals. Any sound from the PA stacks behind them would enter both mikes, and
not cause feedback because of the phase cancellation. For the first time, the band was able to
hear the same mix as the audience without a feedback problem.

Garcia was unrecognizable, almost. He had lost about 30 pounds and shaved his beard off since
the Nashville show [a year ago]. Anyway, he took me and the pictures out on stage during a
sound check, and the other guys got a look at them as well. He handed them to the stage
manager, and then who knows what happened to them. They were nice enough to give me a
backstage pass for the evening of the 18th, and it was great fun.

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After a careful listen to my Tampa Tapes, I can find no Tennessee Jed, or Me & Bobby McGee.
What I do have is: Me & My Uncle, Don't Ease Me In, Looks Like Rain, They Love Each Other,
[End of a story by Weir, who says "Thanks for listening], Brown-Eyed Woman, Beat It On Down
The Line, Peggy-O, [Garcia says Wouldn't you rather hear White Rabbit, Man], El Paso, Deal,
[end of my side one] Jack Straw, China Cat Sunflower, Know you Rider, [Band takes break]
[Story by Weir about throwing flowers on stage, concludes with "If you're gonna throw flowers,
throw them at Bill." Phil adds..."That's Bill, not Phil." Promised Land, Bertha, Greatest Story
Ever Told, Row Jimmy, [end of my side two], Weather Report Suite, Instrumental [strains of
Wharf Rat], Dark Star, Feedback, Drums, Eyes of the world [I've got a side change on my reel to
reel dub during Eyes, but not on my master cassette.] Wharf Rat, Sugar Magnolia, and for the
encore...Uncle John's Band.

By the way, I found  some notes I had made regarding the 12/18/73 show while putting together
a demo reel years ago...I actually used two different mikes with the Sony TC-126, not the two
EV RE-15's As I mentioned earlier. The mikes were a Shure Unidyne IV Cardioid, and an AKG
D-1000E. The cassette masters were processed through a MetroTech 5 band equalizer during the
dub to Reel to Reel. As far as I know, my Reel to reel dub was the only tape I made copies for
others from. I used a pair of SAE elctro-static reference speakers to EQ the cassettes during the
dub.

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The first 30 to 40 minutes I was backstage and the guy who was helping me was a little shy
about holding the mikes up and pointing them at the PA stacks, but I got that straightened out
early in the set. The original masters, on CRO2 tape, were quickly transferred to reel to reel
(Scotch 207 1 mil tape) at 7.5 i.p.s. I reauditioned the masters vs: the reel to reel dub, and the
reel to reel dub seems to have held up better. The cassettes seem to have lost some of their
original luster. Anyway, the reel dubs sound great.