Best Dead concert I ever saw was in 1978 in an old movie theater in downtown Atlanta.
My good college buddy Joe had grown up in San Francisco, had seen them umpteen times, and was a true Dead Head with every recording, legit and bootleg, ever made. He had tickets for both of the consecutive nights the Dead would be in Atlanta.
He was so blown away by the show the first night that HE GAVE ME HIS TICKET TO THE SHOW the next night. An unbelievably generous act, as I had not been able to stand in line to get a ticket when they went on sale due to an exam that day, in which the shows sold out in a few hours.
Well, anyway, as though the ticket was not great by itself, it was seated with some other friends, all of whom were maximum partiers in the Dead tradition. Not only did we all have excellent herb and plenty of it, but I managed to score a half sheet of some extra strong and clean 4-way blotter, which I of course distributed to my friends.
There were 8 of us together, five other dudes, one of them's girlfriend, and sitting next to me, Sally, a to-die-for tall, buxom Nordic-looking blonde, who lived in the dorm next to mine, that I'd been trying to get the attention of to no avail for months.
I ate no less than 3 hits (3 4-way hits = 12) and was tripping mightily to the 5-hour-long concert. The Rococo style of the old theater featured elaborate woodwork, complex wall paper, and a swirling pattern carpet, all of which was going totally ape-shit due to the little squares of paper I'd placed on my tongue.
Sally was tripping on the two hits I'd given her, and we were touching and hanging onto each other throughout the show. Believe me, I was in no state to be hitting on her or any woman, but the show coupled with the acid bonded us. In fact, pressed against each other and having similarly faded jeans on, it appeared to our hallucinating minds that we were joined at the hip.
We smoked weed constantly throughout the long concert, and during a long drum solo, Sally and I meandered down into the lobby, wading though what looked like foot-deep multi-colored syrup as the faces of those around us morphed from childlike to adult to old age and back again. She and I continued to melt inextricably one into the other. Beautiful to begin with, Sally looked at that point like a radiant angel.
I don't even remember how we got all the way back to campus, but I will never forget walking with her up the looked-like-melting-stacks-of-sticks-of-butter stairs to her dorm, she opening the bending-like-rubber door, and silently removing all her clothes as I did likewise, our unblinking eyes glued to the other's.