That Althea is out of this world!!!!!

The amplitude of the waveform on Althea says it all. Jerry is "playing it sweet," but the ending takes all that mellow energy, focuses it, and builds it into something incredible. One for the ages, for sure.

Great energy in the show, start to finish.

ALthea is all time for this song-LIG is exceptional if not an all timer- and The Chinacat nips at the toes of the maiden, rolling out of LIG- all of it Garcia nails with an otherworldy ease- Smokes through and through- download one of the AUDS yesterday

this althea will MELT YOUR FACE. jerry keeps pushing & pushing the end jam until it explodes with transcendence. otherwise, this is one of the best '81 shows that i've heard, and the sound on this recording is a phenomenon. i can hear every note phil's playing, without the sound being muffled.

cant believe there's only a few reviews of this. THIS SHOW IS PHENOMENAL. March 81 is one of those months...

Had my brother send the good stuff from Vancouver Island. He warned me not to take too much but I didn't listen to him. Good move. I was well away before we even got to Finsbury Park Tube Station. My friend Andy couldn't stop laughing on the train. What was funny? Existence, I think. So high that when they snapped into Rider I thought to myself "Hey, they didn't play China Cat." It was like that for much of the first set. I actually went down during Promised and was carried out by friends and a security guy who encouraged me in his best Cockney not to leave, but perhaps to hang back where there was more air. Got back in time for Tennessee Jed. Heaven.

My only Alabama. Did I know then that the boys played a different set every night? No. So I missed the rest of the run. It took many years but I finally got a tape of this one through a great trader in the UK who gave me a few jewels (hey Mr. Willis, you out there?) My Audience recording is great but so is this. Crisp. Is this the one David Gans used? I have what he played of it too. In a true moment of synchro the first time I ever heard Dead Hour he played this show. I love the first set of this show in particular. It's got it all. Brent's solo on Rooster is non pareil.

I remember thinking that Bobby was obviously the only one in the band interested in being a rock star but at the time, at the peak of punk and the beginning of New Wave (read Romantic), I was kinda glad there was someone moving around up there. Then the Rythym Devils got going. Oh My. Thought Billy trashed his drumkit. Hallucination. I know that now. But I was just a baby. I'm younger than that now.

I love this show. I haven't checked out the others from the run, save one, so I have no basis of comparison. They rocked my socks off this night and I played the first set recently and it still holds up mighty fine.

My only personal taste of '81---one of my (many) favourite years. By the time they came back to London I was in Vancouver raiding my brother's "fridge". Went back to there to live for seven months again in '85 (ironically living a five minute walk from the Rainbow which was closed and boarded up---shades of the Fillmore) but didn't see the Boys again until 1987 at Kingswood, Toronto. Then I was hooked. Whoops. There goes my career.

I know there are some of you out there who just want the sound and show rated.

Screw that.

The last 3 minutes of 'Eyes' is like colored confetti, sparkles, candy sprayed over a dark silver cloud. Really playful China Rider. Great Drumz.

first off the alabama getaway was pretty good and thats coming from a man thats not a fan of the song but where it really gets going is on peggy-o and the rust just amounts up to something that many shows have done before becomes a beautiful gem and thats what it is a true gem but what it lacks in sound it makes up for in intense jaming and musical magic a grateful year for the boys

Check out the China Cat at least. Very tight and well executed. Was broadcast on GD hour.