It’s Rambler Room Day, everybody, and that’s the funkiest fake holiday there is, even moreso than Rex Manning Day. BUT, Enthusiasts, you have all let me down. We have a crisp SBD and acceptable AUDs from the show, and a good handful of pictures–more than exist of, say, the Great American Music Hall show that became One From The Vault–but we lack the most important prize from this impromptu performance: a reason. To date, no sufficient answer has emerged to a simple question:
Why the fuck did this show happen?
Every other accidental gig can be explained. The OOPS concert in ’81 took place because Garcia and Bobby had played a few acoustic tunes at the Melkweg and convinced the rest of the band to return to Amsterdam with them on a day off. The acoustic set at the Mill Valley Community Center in 1980 was due to Justin Kreutzmann’s friendship with a kid that hung out there; besides, the Dead were in the middle of their Warfield/Radio City residencies and were therefore in acoustic mode. But this was 1978, which means the band hadn’t done any non-electric performances in eight years AND they were in Chicago, so it wasn’t a locals-helping-locals type deal. Again I ask:
Why the fuck did this show happen?
- Was Bobby banging/trying to bang a Loyolita?
- Was everyone so desperate to get away from Keith and Mrs. Donna Jean’s fussin’ and a-fuedin’ that they walked into the first student union they saw and started bashing out Everly Brothers tunes?
- Uhh…
- Hm.
- I got nothing else.
Enthusiasts, someone must know. And if someone doesn’t know, then someone must be visiting Terrapin Crossroads soon and should demand Phil resolve this incredibly important conundrum.
Picture stolen from the great Jesse Jarnow, whose book, Wasn’t That a Time: The Weavers, the Blacklist, and the Battle for the Soul of America, is available at Amazon, and at your local bookshop (assuming it still exists).
Hunger Week is still a thing. Go Jesuits !!
https://luc.edu/hungerweek/index.shtml
I searched a few newspaper archives and learned:
* Nothing about the Rambler Room
* And we dodged a bullet in late 1978
“Bob Weir is rumored to be planning an expedition to Africa to record some African Folksongs”
Dallas Park Cities News dec-27-1978 page 8.
I worshiped Cheap Trick, (and Mimi Steinburg) in 1978 so I really don’t know.
We need to get to the bottom of this thing.
I was at that show and I can tell you why. There was a nun (Sister) at the school who is friends with Bob Weir. She asked Bob if he would do a fundraiser to help raise money to buy canoes for a small impoverished tribe in Africa. He agreed. My friend was a big Grateful Dead fan and he had heard about the show and I went and bought two tickets for $5 each. The tickets were for “Bob W and friends.” There was about 150 people there and we all sat on the floor . At the end of the show they auctioned off a pair of tickets for their show that night at the uptown theater. Believe it or not I had some money on me and i bid $200 which no one else matched. They took me up on the stage and thanked me and gave me the tickets and I went to the show that night With my friend.