History Of New Jersey Concerts – The Local Concert That Drew Over 100,000
As we do everything we can to avoid crowds, we think back to a late summer day in 1977 when an estimated 100,000 to 150,000 people descended on a New Jersey town for one of the biggest concerts in New Jersey history.
And if you don't know the story, it might surprise you where all these concert goers headed for this massive concert . The date was September 3,1977 and the place was Raceway Park in Englishtown.
The band that drew this massive crowd was the Grateful Dead, and the show wouldn't have even happened if Manalapan officials at the time got their way, due to security concerns, according to an app.com article.
The show is considered one of the most highly attended non-festival shows in history. Can you imagine what 100,000 - 150,000 people looked like at Raceway Park. That must have been amazing!
Can you imagine if those fans were social distancing? The crowd would have spilled over into Freehold!
I was thinking about all the concerts that have to be cancelled and how much we love our live shows here in the Garden State, and it got me curious about which was New Jersey's biggest concert ever, and it looks like this single show in '77 might be it.
If you know of a bigger show, please let us know. In the meantime we'll just all do our part to put this pandemic behind us and get out to some of those big New Jersey shows as soon as we can safely do it.
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