From: caherty@wizard.nrl.navy.mil (Frank Caherty)
Newsgroups: rec.music.gdead
Subject: Re:   Favorite venue?
Date: 30 Sep 92 20:25:50 GMT
Article-I.D.: uvaarpa.1992Sep30.202550.14557
Reply-To: caherty@wizard.nrl.navy.mil
Organization: The Internet

Dave Fischer writes:

|Without a doubt, of all the places I've seen, it's gotta
|be Compton Terrace...The beautiful December Tempe weather 
|didn't hurt either, and the great people of Arizona, and 
|the feeling of being on a reservation where Native law 
|(supposedly) prevails (strict alcohol rules, that is, but 
|much more sensible enforcement).

Aha!  The _new_ Compton Terrace.  The _old_ Compton Terrace was
in Tempe proper, just under one of the approach paths to Sky Harbor
Airport.  Whew!  Quite a sight, facing the beautiful western
sunset, listening to the Dead jamming out behind me, then turning 
around to get a look at the Boyz only to see a HUGE silent 727
coming in at what looked like tree top level.  I was the subject 
of much mirth as I hit the ground.  Then there was the year I got
ahold of a pair of 3 ft. diameter Helium balloons, one fluorescent
green and the other fluorescent yellow.  Had 'em tied on to 75 feet of ny-
lon cord about 25 feet apart with one of those green-yellow glowinthedark
necklaces between 'em.  The idea was to give the friends I was supposed 
to meet a way to find me.  Turns out one friend, Jan Terry, told *all*
her friends to meet her at the blanket with the big blond guy with two
balloons.  Thing is, I only told her I was going to get one small balloon
but the lady in the store gave me a great price on the two big ones when
she found out what I was going to use them for.  Jan was one of those 
peripheral visionaries - she could see the future, but only around the
edges.  There we were, Barbara and I, sitting in the middle of the amphi-
theatre on our blanket, as people in ones, twos and threes walked up,
looked at the balloons and said "Here's th' guy with th' balloons, this
must be where the party is".  After this happened a half dozen times or 
so, we kind of got used to it.  Turns out Jan had _lots_ of friends, and
they all had a few friends...  { Except for this one skinny little weasel
with the most obnoxious voice and Brooklyn accent imaginable.  He had
attached himself to the group, in the hope that the balloons contained
a gas other than helium ;-).  He spent the whole goddamned show yelling
in this nasal, whiny voice: "Gawrseeyah, Gawrseeyah, Jewwwwwwy Gawrseeyah, 
the gwreatest m*therf*cking guitawwh pwayewr in the whole gawdam worl'".
He'd get tired of yelling that after a while and he'd slime his way over 
towards Barbara and I (and John and Mary Reed and Tom Ott "t, o, m, o, t, t,
if that's not simple enough for ya, yer out o' luck") and stand around
whining "C'mon Fwank, lemmee fly the balloons, c'mon lemmee flyem, c'mon
whaddya think i'm gonna do, bweak 'em or somethin'?"  Then he'd wander
off and start up with the Gawwrseeyah speil again, punctuated by the
occasional "Dats wwight, jes' anotha f*cked up newyawkah, bowrn in a gawdam
bawn wid de door open...Gawwrseeyah...."}  Barb and John and I would take 
turns reeling in the balloons (they were on about 75 feet of cord) and then
letting them Zooooom! on up into that clear blue Arizona sky.  As we danced 
around, the balloons were boppin' and bouncin' around 50 or so feet up.
People would wander up from the front or rear of the crowd, look up at the
balloons to get a fix on their position, then head off in whatever direction
they were supposed to go.  As night fell people around us with flashlights
were shining them up at the balloons, and taking turns at it to keep from
wearing down the batteries too much.  Eventually I got *so* tired of that
little weasel wheedling me about flying the balloons, that I let him reel
out some cord and release and reel in the balloons a couple of times.  Each
time, he wanted to reel out more and more string until he had the cord strung
across the laps and blankets of a dozen people.  One of them finally got
pissed off enough to burn through the string with a match or a lighter.
When the weasel released the balloons that time, off they went into the
desert sky.  Well, Jan and Mary were out wandering in the crowd, and had
turned around to get a fix on the balloons to find their way back to 
the blanket just in time to see them go sailing off into the night.  When
they finally got back to the blanket and found out what happened, they
turned on the weasel and he exercised the better part of valor and split.
We were able to spend the rest of the second set in relative peace and
thankfully I've never run into *that* particular assh*le again.  On the
rare occasions when we get that group together again, all anyone has to 
do to bring out a cringe and flush of anger is to say, sotto voce;
"Gawwrseeyah, Gawwrseeyah, ......"
 Whew! Compton Terrace!
Regards,
Frank.