History

Piedmont Park is Atlanta's central public park, 189 acres laid out in the 1900s on the grounds of two former expositions. In the late 1960s its open meadows became the city's de facto free-concert ground: the emerging local scene — the Allman Brothers Band chief among them — played impromptu be-ins there through 1969. Its place in this chronicle is fixed by July 7, 1969, when the promoters of the first Atlanta International Pop Festival staged a free thank-you concert in the park and the Grateful Dead, in town after the festival, played Atlanta for the first time.

Its Place in the Scene

Atlanta's free-concert commons — the Southern counterpart to Golden Gate Park's Panhandle, and the site of the Grateful Dead's first Atlanta show.

The Facts

Shows at this Venue