Billy Joel welcomed 2019 with a 26 song, 160 minute set at the Nassau Coliseum in Uniondale, Long Island. It was the first time in 25 years that Billy Joel played a New Year’s show at the Coliseum. At midnight he played the traditional “Auld Lang Syne” paired with “Only the Good Die Young.” The Coliseum was sold out and Billy really seemed to be having a good time, while he wore a New Year’s top hat.
Billy Joel kept New Year’s spirit by playing New Year’s themed songs like “This is the Time,” “I Loved These Days” and “Souvenir.” As it got close to midnight, Dick Clark’s New Year’s Rockin Eve with Ryan Seacrest appeared on the screens and the crowd counted down to 2019. As confetti exploded and Billy sang “Auld Lang Syne,” a banner reading “Billy Joel: 34 Sold Out Shows” was unraveled from the ceiling of the Coliseum, commemorating the milestone.
The setlist included all the usual hits. He threw in a couple of breaks throughout the show like Cream’s “Sunshine of Your Love” and Derek and the Dominos’ “Layla.” He also did a cover of Joe Cocker’s take on The Beatles “With a Little Help From My Friends.” Kevin James made an appearance during “Uptown Girl” and Gavin DeGraw, who opened the show, joined Billy on stage for the final song “You May Be Right.”
Setlist: Big Shot, Miami 2017, The Entertainer, Vienna, The Downeaster Alexa, Big Man on Mulberry Street, This is the Time, Movin Out, New York State of Mind, Don’t Ask Me Why, The Ballad of Billy the Kid, I’ve Loved These Days, Allentown, She’s Always A Woman, Auld Lang Syne, Only the Good Die Young, My Life, The River of Dreams, With a Little Help From My Friends, Nessun dorma, Scenes From an Italian Restaurant, Piano Man.
Encore: We Didn’t Start the Fire, Uptown Girl, It’s Still Rock and Roll to Me, Souvenir, You May Be Right (with Gavin Degraw).
The Grateful Dead’s 2021 Dave’s Picks have been announced, and includes a show from September 1973 at Nassau Coliseum in Uniondale, which features the first ever version of “Let it Grow.”
This show has been a long time coming in the Dead’s archival release series, as September 8, and the night before, were the first run of live shows the Dead played following the previous month recording Wake of the Flood at the Plant Studio in Sausalito, CA. Once the band was finished mixing the next record, they hit the road for the first leg of Fall Tour 1973 with a pair of sold out shows at the home of the New York Islanders.
David Lemieux said of the release:
I first started working for the Grateful Dead in 1999, and was fortunate to work alongside Dick Latvala, who became my friend and mentor, I was turned on to 9/8/73 by Dick. He spoke so eloquently of this terrific show, certain that it would be released on CD some day as part of the Dick’s Picks series. In Dick’s own words, during a rundown of his thoughts on 1973 Grateful Dead, he said “That takes us up to the September run. Well right away 9/8/73 sticks out begging for attention. Even the night before (9/7/73) had fairly thrilling versions of “TLEO,””Jack Straw,””PITB,” “WRS->Let it Grow.”
There is not a weak moment from “Truckin’” through the ending tune “Sugar Magnolia.” Even as good as this night must sound, the following night things really explode. I really can’t put my finger on it because from the songlist, there is nothing apparently compelling. Well, you guys will soon find out what I mean, since I intend to release this one whenever the time is right.”
This show is a fantastic example of the Dead being fully firing on all cylinders. The September 7 show also features exceptional music, and almost two hours of that show are included in the Dave’s Picks Vol. 38, including “Bird Song” and “Playing In The Band.”
Dave’s Picks volumes sell out quickly and are only on sale four times a year. Last year’s shows included 10/29/77, 6/23/74, 4/20/84, and 3/26&/87. Order your 2021 Dave’s Picks here.
Phish has a storied history at Nassau Veterans Memorial Coliseum, one highlighted by Island Tour performances in April 2 and 3, 1998, and one of their most notable performances of the ‘2.0’ era, February 28, 2003. The Uniondale venue has played host to Phish seven times, most recently on December 1, 2019. 1999
Phish would return to Uniondale on October 7 and 8, 1999, nearing the end of their Fall Tour, with two shows to follow in Albany that would close the tour. Newsday reviewed the first of the two nights, saying, “The Britney Spears of the world come and go, but Phish, the shaggy Vermont jam-band that has never had a hit on the radio or video, is proof that quality music can survive in a mass marketed world.”
The first set on October 7 was highlighted by three songs – an 18 minute “David Bowie,” a “Gotta Jibboo” with an ever-rare “Dave’s Energy Guide” tease, and to follow, a set closing “Fluffhead.” The second set would feature an inventive ‘Mike’s Groove,’ with a nearly an hour of music packed in between “Mike’s Song,” (featuring Trey on keys) “McGrupp,” “Prince Caspian,” “Golgi Apparatus” and “Weekapaug Groove.”
Also notable was the encore, which featured three songs – “Rocky Top,” “I Am Hydrogen” and “Julius” – the stand alone “I Am Hydrogen” being played outside of the typical “Mike’s Song” > ” Weekapaug Groove” for the first time since Halloween 1987, and almost as rare, being played in an encore slot.
Set 1: NICU > My Soul, Dirt, David Bowie, Frankie Says > Possum, When the Circus Comes, Gotta Jibboo, Fluffhead
Set 2: Boogie On Reggae Woman, Heavy Things, Tube, Back on the Train > Mike’s Song[1] > McGrupp and the Watchful Hosemasters, Prince Caspian > Golgi Apparatus > Weekapaug Groove
Encore: Rocky Top > I Am Hydrogen > Julius
[1] Trey on keys.
Fall 1999 tour map via Todd Puckett
After the barn burner of the night before, October 8 would still have some tricks up its sleeve, particularly in Set 2. The first set was somewhat standard, beyond a “Meatstick” that brought Sofi Dillof to the stage for the dancing portion of the millennium tune.
Set 2 opened with “Halley’s Comet” and then ventured into a 20-minute “Tweezer” which featured a jam that was reminiscent of the Siket Disc tune “My Left Toe.”
After a fantastic mid-set “Harry Hood,” Phish began to play the opening notes of The Who’s “We’re Not Gonna Take It,” and appropriately brought to the stage Phish lyricist Tom Marshall, singing “My name is Tommy” to a rapt audience. The track from Tommy was played to perfection, as Phish is well versed in The Who‘s catalog, particularly Quadropheniafrom their Halloween 1995 show at Rosemont Horizon in Illinois. Turning into the “Listening to You” portion of the song, the energy in the room can still be felt as Marshall belts out the remainder of Townshend’s lyrics and Phish tears through the rock n roll overture.
Even though Nassau Coliseum is shuttered for the time being, and may not reopen, the performances Phish and others have made there have secured the venue’s legacy for generations of music lovers.
Among the many guitars in the cache of Jerry Garcia, “Wolf” stands as the most legendary of them all. “Wolf” was customized by luthier Doug Irwin, and was delivered to Jerry ahead of his appearance at a private show for the Hell’s Angels on September 5, 1973 in NYC.
Late in 1972, Garcia came across the first guitar Doug Irwin made for Alembic, which he bought on the spot for $850. He then asked Irwin to customize a guitar for him, and “Wolf” was born. Made from amaranth/purpleheart and curly maple with an ebony fingerboard and twenty-four frets, which were inlaid with African ivory (the first fret is mother-of-pearl).
The original version had a peacock inlay, later followed by Irwin’s eagle logo in its place. Later, a cartoon wolf licking his chops was placed by Jerry Garcia just below the tailpiece, which gave the name to the guitar. Irwin would later inlay the sticker into the guitar, which was labeled as “D. Irwin 001.” The guitar would cost Garcia $1,500, or around $8,700 in 2020 dollars.
“Wolf” would be played for two decades, becoming his most well known guitar and played across countless recordings, concerts and even in “The Grateful Dead movie.” Here, Irwin discusses the intricate detail of “Wolf.”
A few years after I delivered Wolf to Jerry, the guitar took several tumbles during Grateful Dead’s European tour. The first, a fall of about fifteen feet off the stage onto cement, had no effect on the guitar at all, but the second incident caused a crack to appear in the peghead. When Jerry finally brought me the Wolf for repair, the crack was actually very minor, but a stitch in time, saves nine. Repairing the crack wasn’t much of a problem, but having the guitar again made me reassess my early inlay work, and prompted me to reface the peghead with ebony and replace what I determined to be a poor excuse for a peacock with my signature eagle inlay cut from mother-of-pearl.
“Wolf” was played throughout the ’70s and ’80s, alongside “Tiger” and “Rosebud,” also designed by Irwin. “Wolf” was brought out of retirement in 1989 when Jerry explored using a MIDI synthesizer, and was played for the last time with the Grateful Dead at Oakland Coliseum Arena on 2/23/93.
In 2002, “Wolf” was purchased by a Deadhead, who later auctioned the guitar off for a great cause. The anonymous fans said:
I’ve been a fan of The Dead since I was a kid, and playing this iconic guitar over the past 15 years has been a privilege. But the time is right for Wolf to do some good. My wife and I have long supported the efforts of the Southern Poverty Law Center, and if ever we needed the SPLC, we sure do need them now.
Anonymous owner of “Wolf”
“Wolf” would be auctioned off at a price of more than $1.6 million, a bid that was matched by an anonymous donor, raising a total of $3.2 million for the SPLC.
The first show that Jerry Garcia would play “Wolf” at was a private show dubbed “Pirates Ball” on September 5, 1973, a private Hell’s Angels party aboard the S.S. Bay Belle. Performing with Merl Saunders in New York Harbor, the ship was known as the “largest marine ballroom afloat,” and was renamed to the Sound Line later after the show. The show also featured Bo Diddley, Elephant’s Memory and Mission Mountain Wood Band.
The S.S. Bay Belle, later named Sound Line
The guitar can be see in the movie/documentary Hell’s Angels Forever, directed by Richard Chase, Leon Gast, Kevin Keating, and Lee Maden.
Setlist: It Ain’t No Use, Favela, You Can Leave Your Hat On, Mystery Train, Harder They Come, Think, Finders Keepers
Wolf’s first appearance with the Grateful Dead was at the Nassau Coliseum on September 7th, two days later. The Dead were off the road for a month, and were refreshed getting back to business. Donna Godchaux was pregnant at the time, with her husband Keith having taken over keyboard duties from Pigpen a year prior.
This show marks the debut of Weir/Barlow’s “Let It Grow,” and one of the last “Bird Song’s” of 1973 before the song was shelved for a few years. Highlights include “New Potato Cabooose,” the jam that arose from “Playin’ in the Band,” a hefty jam from “The Other One,” and the “Eyes of the World” that followed.
Deadheads reported a heavy police presence that evening, with many fans arrested at or after the show. Cops reportedly drove on the sidewalks as the show ended and attempted to clear the crowd. They also seemed to use their batons to clear the area in front of the band between sets. This would influence the Dead’s decision not to return to Nassau for many years, until January, 1979.
Setlist: September 7, 1973, Nassau Coliseum, Uniondale, NY
Set 1: Promised Land, Sugaree, Mexicali Blues, They Love Each Other, Jack Straw, Looks Like Rain, Deal, El Paso, Bird Song, Playin’ In The Band
Set 2: Here Comes Sunshine, Me & My Uncle, Loser, Let It Grow-> Stella Blue, Truckin’-> Drums-> The Other One-> Eyes Of The World-> Sugar Magnolia, E: Around & Around
On August 4, 2015, Billy Joel played the final show at the original Nassau Coliseum. Billy played for over 3 hours at the 43 year old arena with a setlist that touched on every decade of his career. The thing that made this show special was the way he built the show specifically for a Long Island Crowd. He had many Long Island anecdotes including his first gig at Holy Family Church in Hicksville, and fights he had in a Northport restaurant.
The place went crazy when Billy said “I’d like to bring out a fellow Long Islander and one of the great songwriters of our time” and out walked Paul Simon. It got even louder when he played the first few notes to “Me and Julio Down by the Schoolyard.” They also did a duet of “Homeward Bound” and then a horn section came to the stage and they played “Late in the Evening” for the last song with Simon. Later on, another Long Island native, Kevin James came out and did the intro to “Miami 2017” before Joel took over the song.
It was Joel’s 32nd concert at the Coliseum and the last before the $130 million renovation and featured Michael DelGuidice to open the show. It was a sad event for fans like myself who grew up going to Islander games and concerts at the Coliseum our entire lives. They couldn’t have picked a better person to end that chapter of the Coliseum’s history. That’s probably why Billy also reopened the arena on April 5, 2017.
Setlist: Movin’ Out (Anthony’s Song), Zanzibar, Summer, Highland Falls, Everybody Loves You Now, No Man’s Land (first since 1995), Just the Way You Are, The Entertainer, The Longest Time (with Doo wop tribute intro), The Downeaster Alexa, Me and Julio Down by the Schoolyard*, Homeward Bound*, Late in the Evening*, The Ballad of Billy the Kid, New York State of Mind, Miami 2017 (Seen the Lights Go Out on Broadway)^, Until the Night, Allentown, Goodnight Saigon@, Keeping the Faith, She’s Always a Woman, My Life, Captain Jack, I’ve Loved These Days, The River of Dreams, Scenes From an Italian Restaurant
We head back to the Island for this week’s Jerry Sundays installment with a Grateful Dead show at the legendary Nassau Coliseum from 1979. The band played two shows here earlier that year in January, more than five years after their first appearance in Uniondale in 1973.
Now, in the middle of hockey season, and at the peak of the NY Islanders hockey dynasty no less, the Dead played three shows at the famous arena that surrounded Halloween. This was still the dawn of a new era of Dead as the band was still breaking in keyboard player Brent Mydland, new to the band as of April that year.
The tone for this evening is immediately set through a ferocious “Jack Straw” that starts the show off in grand fashion. Weir’s vocals are matched in intensity only by the lead guitar fills supplied by Jerry Garcia. “They Love Each Other” ends with a flippant comment from guitarist Bob Weir afterwards about Russia “bombing Staten Island” that evening. The Cold War Era was truly a different time. A robust and particularly uptempo “Mama Tried” that follows seems to take the place of the usual early show “El Paso” due to the “Mexicali Blues” that starts up immediately afterwards.
Another gem from this first set is a crisp version of “Peggy-O,” with delicate vocals and guitar play both handled wonderfully by Garcia. The swaying emotions that the cover of this traditional ballad brings with it would be a staple of Dead and Jerry Garcia Band shows for years to come. This one has a smooth delivery thanks to an in-sync rhythm section that motors along behind Garcia effortlessly.
The first set “Candyman” features even more howling guitar play from Garcia and the “Looks Like Rain” that follows is filled with even more emotional guitar fills that accompany nicely with Weir’s vocals that steadily build in ferocity as the song develops. And the newcomer gets a first set contribution as well as the Mydland-penned ballad “Easy To Love You” makes one of its earlier appearances.
But the true “meat and potatoes” of this show is the opening sequence of the second set. Some consider this longest “Scarlet Begonias” > “Fire On The Mountain” combination that the band has ever played. And they would have a legitimate argument as this one effortlessly stretches out past thirty minutes in all. Garcia and Mydland start hooking up as the “Scarlet” jam progresses and this carries all the way into and through a “Fire” that more than lives up to its name.
The rest of the second set is certainly no slouch, but the extended break and rabid fan reaction after these first two songs marked the end of something special. The “Terrapin Station” that follows later in the set features more of the same relaxed tone in some of its transitional sections that stretch out a little longer than usual. This eventually gives way to a “Playin’ In The Band” that races through its composition and serves up another psychedelic offering with more heavy Garcia-Mydland interplay steering the collective ship.
A late second set “Black Peter” gives Garcia’s guitar the spotlight and a chance to blissfully wail away again. And the “U.S. Blues” encore hits all the right notes, courtesy of more passionate playing from Mydland. But the legendary “Scarlet” > “Fire” pairing that opens the second set is what makes this show so special – one of the greatest versions of one of the band’s greatest pairings. In other words, just another typical New York Grateful Dead show.
Grateful Dead 11/1/79 Nassau Veterans Memorial Coliseum Uniondale, NY
Set 1: Jack Straw, They Love Each Other, Mama Tried-> Mexicali Blues, Peggy-O, Minglewood Blues, Candyman, Looks Like Rain, Don’t Ease Me In, Easy To Love You, Promised Land
Set 2: Scarlet Begonias-> Fire On The Mountain, Samson & Delilah, Terrapin Station-> Playin’ In The Band-> Drums->Space->Black Peter-> Good Lovin’
It was March 29, 1990 when saxophonist Branford Marsalis joined the Grateful Dead at Nassau Coliseum for much of the show. Notably, the version of “Eyes of the World” stands out, as it was released on Without a Net in September 1990, and later rereleased on Spring 1990 (The Other One) box set in 2014.
Branford Marsalis had not planned to sit in with the Grateful Dead for more than “Bird Song” that night, as he recalled in talking to Rolling Stone in 2014.
“I came up for “Bird Song,” and after the set was over, I said, ‘Thanks for letting me play, guys.’ And they’re like, ‘No, no, stay! Play the second half of the show. We’ll do “Dark Star”.’ That had no significance to me. I’m like, ‘ “Dark Star”? Okay. What is it?’ ‘Oh, you’re gonna love it. It’s free, it’s out.’ ‘Great, I can play out.’ They start playing that lick, and the audience goes bananas. Later, I started getting these phone calls on my private number: ‘Man, you were great last night. Thanks for getting them to play “Dark Star”. They haven’t played it in six months.’ I’m like, ‘Who are these people?’… There was almost nothing [the Grateful Dead] couldn’t play—and make it sound authentic. When they played a song by The Band or Bob Dylan, they played it with the same spirit as The Band or Dylan. They didn’t feel the need to write their own arrangement of it. They were all listeners. There is a point where musicians who establish themselves stop listening to music and start listening to their own rhetoric. The Dead didn’t do that. It was obvious in the way they approached a song.” – Branford Marsalis, to Rolling Stone magazine
Discover Grateful Dead shows from over the years across New York State with our interactive map below
Anyone who experienced the Spring 1990 shows, or has listened to Without a Net can attest to the benefit Marsalis brings to this version of “Eyes of the World.” The extra element of saxophone layered within the Dead classic gives it a proper place on a pedastal as one of the best versions of the song.
“After they whip through a bright first set featuring mostly live staples like ‘Bertha’ and ‘Ramble on Rose’, Marsalis joins in at the start of the second set for stellar, extended takes on the more exploratory side of the Dead catalog. His airy improvisations on classics like ‘Eyes of the World’ and ‘Dark Star’ sound brilliantly natural here, and what’s most palpable is the sense of exhilaration and mutual respect between these two forces of sonic trailblazing.”
