Dec. '72 turns out to be a nice little peak for BEW. Perfect shuffle, air-play tightness, great soloing, just enough country. Bobby nicely audible.

A super-fun frolicing romp. They just seem to have loved playing this tune.

Pristine, air-play quality in a deep pocket with note-for-note perfection all 'round. Surprised not to see it here already.

Smokin' desperado polka here with superbly tight playing at a faster-than normal pace. A galloping riot and heaps of fun.

Shredding goodness, coming late in the set after a killer Star>Stella. Great show all around.

The stoned moron arhythmically yelling 'whoo whoooo' at the beginning and "Grateful Dead!!! Grateful Dead!!!" towards the end bring me right back to my tour days. ;-)

Fans of the Live Dead-era should really know this one. Sonically it shares a lot with the more famous ones of the era, but its flow is just as perfect and the ideas and clear telepathy between Jerry and Bobby throughout is gorgeous. There may be a bit of a tuning or tape-speed wobble in places, but the C.Miller cleanup is pristine.

Jerry's solo can ignite paper at 1000 yards too. I mean Phil gets a lot of deserving love here, but I just gotta add that bit about the guitarist.

The blazing Cryptical re-entry cools down to a light sizzle before this Potato emerges, like new life on the astroid-blasted earth. It's a bit slow to start and loose through the lyrics but listen to Phil's solo blast a hole through it around 3:30 kicking everyone's energy up. Jerry's purple-inspiring solo starts around 7:30 and is truly hot. All in all not the tightest Caboose out there, but such fun and - I'm sure for the lucky ones there - a real mind-melter.

I usually agree with grendel and cgarces on things, but they're dead wrong about this being "just noise" or "crap" for the final half. Fine by me if you don't like or don't understand what they were going for in the deep meltdown weirdness jams from '73-'74 - there's enough Dead to go around for all tastes. But to dismiss it as crap or to edit it out just mutilates the musical/mental arc of the show. Nor is this anywhere near as freaky as they get. There are rhythmic and melodic 'insect themes' consistent throughout as someone called them, call and response between the players, and sensitive improvisational interplay between them all. It doesn't go so off the rails as to never come back, and finally it's poetically consistent with the content of what Dark Star tells you it's about: Shattering fragments of tattering reason turning back onto themselves from a nightfall of diamonds into formless reflections and back again. Musical fractals performed live and in person, but you've got to be turned on to it to get it: Shall we go, you and I while we can? Shall we go through darkness back into light? Can we approach the wild terror of chaos then find ourselves back in the 12-tone diatonic musical order known to us, familiar and soothing, with its recognizable harmonies, melodies, meters, and forms? For me the bliss of the Eyes afterwards is made stronger by the clouds of delusion before it. De gustibus non est disputatum, of course, but that's my take.