‘Friend of the Devils:’ Was the Grateful Dead’s 1978 show at Duke one of its best-ever?

In April of 1978, the Grateful Dead rolled into Duke University inside a pair of black limousines to deliver a blistering four-hour show marked by goofiness, spectacle and rare moments of flash — most notably the understated Jerry Garcia “windmilling his arms” with a mile-wide grin on his face.

Anybody who crammed into Cameron Indoor Stadium that night remembers the intensity of their playing, so spirited that the normally staid Garcia actually jumped in the air and, in a fit of joyful experimentation, pounded a steel drum. Adding to the oddity, the Dead’s chef Leonard “Cy” Kosis joined them onstage to bang pots and pans.

“The place was rocking and everyone was into it,” said John Rottet, retired N&O photographer, recalling the first of 83 Dead shows he attended. “Everyone was nice and mellow.”

Good, but best Grateful Dead show?

In their meandering 30-year career, the Grateful Dead played more than 2,300 shows from Magoo’s Pizza Parlor to the pyramids at Giza, and picking a favorite is like choosing the tastiest Skittle.

But now the Dead’s official podcast makes a daring and edgy argument that the ‘78 Duke show ranks among the greatest-ever, an assertion laid out in the latest 90-minute episode called Friends of the Devils: Duke University. For those unacquainted with Cameron Indoor outside of Coach K and fans painted royal blue, the entire show can be downloaded or bought as a three-CD set.

With more than 5 million downloads, The Good Old Grateful Deadcast throws down this gauntlet into a legion of Deadheads who enjoy bickering over best-of lists more than finding a free ticket hidden inside a tempeh burrito. Their best version of “Bertha?” Their best “US Blues?”

It is, to say the least, Big Talk.

“This is a show that holds up as one of the best, certainly one of the best shows of 77-78,” said Dead archivist and legacy manager David Lemieux, as the podcast begins. “It’s one of the most unique shows because of the energy they brought. Duke was the one that I think just head and shoulders above everything a little bit.”

The start of Duke campouts

Much of the fun from this podcast comes from reconstructing the Triangle’s Deadhead scene in the mid-’70s, in which Duke is credited with having more ardent fans because so many students came from New York — the Dead’s East Coast stomping ground.

Bob Wagner, well-known taper of Dead shows, recalled being a student on the UNC-Chapel Hill campus back then and putting an ad in The Daily Tar Heel asking to make trades. He got two responses.

But in Durham, a student named Jo DiMona got wind of the Duke show early and decided to camp out in front of the Cameron Indoor kiosk two days in advance. More than 300 students joined him, appointing substitutes to keep their chairs occupied while they attended class.

“I sat there and I resolved I’m not going to move,” he says in the podcast. “I wanted to buy the first tickets.”

As far as anyone can tell, the Dead’s ‘78 show marks the first mass campout for any event at Cameron, coming two years before anyone at Duke heard the name Krzyzewski.

For this alone, the show deserves history’s nod.

But as the band arrived, it left behind another piece of local lore. One of the founding Dead members decided he wanted to buy a Duke T-shirt before the show. The podcast won’t say which member, but drummer Bill Kreutzmann was photographed wearing it on stage.

But on the way to the campus store, the mystery Dead member got mobbed on the way by a merch salesman who failed to recognize him.

“I wouldn’t ever pay money for anything by the Grateful Dead,” he sneered.

“We mean the house lights, dummy”

Duke ‘78 stands out for a lot of reasons: It was broadcast live over the campus’ 50-watt radio station, and the show was filmed end-to-end — footage from which can be seen now on grainy black-and-white YouTube videos.

It is also a little-known fact — at least for me — that Perry Como used to record his radio shows inside Cameron because they were sponsored by Chesterfield cigarettes — made by Liggett and Myers, with its Durham headquarters nearby. So the show made sure to spend generously on Cameron’s acoustics.

But haters point out that the Dead’s show started on a shaky foot that night.

The soundboard didn’t pick up Garcia’s mic until the fourth song, so the recording most people hear omits his voice entirely. Along with that, the band pleaded for the Cameron staff to lower the lights, rumored to be brightly lit to catch marijuana smokers.

“You people in the administration or in the management of this building,” said guitarist Bob Weir, “don’t think that you’re slipping our notice. We still haven’t seen you turn off those lights up there yet.”

“We don’t mean the spotlights that are focused upon the stage here to illuminate ourselves,” bassist Phil Lesh chimed in. “We mean the house lights, dummy!”

But glitches aside, the band soon got so animated that Garcia was bouncing his head and swaying side-to-side through solos, and Weir smiled at him throughout the show like he’d just hit a three-pointer at the buzzer.

“The energy that Jerry put out,” said DiMona on the podcast, “he actually at some point jumped up in the air, windmilling his arms. This isn’t something you’re used to seeing from him.”

List Shmist

We live in an era of rankings, of best-ofs, of top-10 lists.

It’s not enough to enjoy a taco. How does it compare, numerically, to every other taco you’ve ever eaten?

The Grateful Dead, perhaps more than any other band, would shun this kind of evaluation, famously playing a wildly different show every night and inviting fans to record them all.

Best show ever or merely better-than-average, it’s fun to have a 46-year-old concert revived and scrutinized, debated and rehashed like it happened last night. It’s fun to hear aging doctors and lawyers tell stories of the day they tossed Frisbees on the quad in Durham and saw Jerry Garcia step out of a limousine, on the way to a big night.

Listen to the Deadcast podcast

You can listen to the Duke episode of the Deadcast at https://bit.ly/3XZuHcM .