Friday, August 27, 2010

Stevie Ray Vaughan in 1983

It was a Sunday evening, and I had already gone to Grateful Dead shows at Frost Amphitheater at Stanford on the Saturday and Sunday afternoons, and I was exhausted and wired, but I went to see Stevie Ray Vaughan at the Keystone Palo Alto anyway. I was right at the stage, to the left of SRV's mic in the middle of the stage, and quite close to his wah-wah pedal. After he played two of his fast instrumentals, he stepped over to that pedal and started doing this crazy stuff with it, and I could not really see him, but I watched his left-handed shadow playing on the back wall. Here's what he did (from a different 1983 performance):



And the moral of Stevie's story is: don't ride helicopters during storms.

3 comments:

Mrs Crocodile said...

How wonderful you posted this! Sadly, I had it stored in the annals of my memory but suddenly a flood of memories of a concert in the Casino Ballroom of Avalon on Catalina Island and the words "I'm a voodoo child" came back and I was dancing with my very faithful air guitar...
yours,
Mrs Crocodile

Anonymous said...

I also went to see the Dead that day and went see Stevie that night. I was right in front of the stage where he was playing . Oh my god could that man play.

Andrew Shields said...

Then we stood right next to each other, Anon!