No one was. Along with John Scher, the gregarious, Jersey-based promoter who had started booking their east-of-the-Mississippi shows, both men knew that the corridor between Washington, DC, and Boston had been teeming with Deadheads. In 1970 alone the band played seemingly nonstop in the New York area and built up one of their most rabid followings. But today’s concert in Englishtown would nonetheless be a test and a gamble. The nearby raceway, its name immediately recognizable to anyone who’d grown up in Jersey and heard its ubiquitous “RRRRaceway . . . Park!” radio ads, could hold up to ninety thousand people. Aside from their participation in festivals, the Dead rarely if ever played to that many paying customers, and no one was 100 percent sure whether that many would pay. The weather was another miserable factor: by the time all the members of the Dead began arriving in Englishtown the Jersey Shore’s notoriously humid summer heat had blanketed Raceway Park. The tickets had begun selling briskly, a positive sign for the Dead but bad news for local municipalities, who were horrified at the thought of tens of thousands of unruly rock fans descending upon their suburbs.
