Sea Stones: Space noise electronica with Phil & Ned. Not for everyone, but sends me into well into the interstellar place.

May-June '74 might be my top time for Sugaree. This just builds up to so much intensity. Great stuff.

Intimacy levels: Campfire. Acoustic mellow to the point where I feel like just went camping with my favorite band. A treasure.

Clutch yer nuts and hold on for dear life. Heavy headiness where the squiggly hippies and the madman bikers get massively Dead nailed.

Explosive jam like they had 11 months of unplayed Truckin's compressed into one.

This has always been my go to song when things get too dicey and I need a smooth landing, and this one doesn't disappoint: Beautifully orchestrated, lovingly sung, emotional without being over the top, it's a fragile but perfect china doll China Doll. Reminds me of why I loved it all these years.

Y'all have my permission to insist that they play this over my tombstone, alright? The whole second set, but especially the DS>MLB>Eyes patch. Home sweet home, indeed.

It's been almost three years since I last listened to this, and it still blows me away. Cerebral but elegant. Virtuoso but loose and free. It deserves all its praise. Somehow between 2012 and now the whole show became streamable again, as opposed to just the Star, which was for a while anyway not available on the Archive. Thank you, mister cool decision-maker, who gave us back the privilege to hear this one in the context of the whole show again. Thank you. Really. Plus it has to be repeated that the fact that they can give the first organic hints of MLB around about 24 minutes into it, then spiral off, get right well freaky, then after ten more wild minutes come back around and let the MLB emerge from its chrysalis to fly into one of the nicest Eyes of all time, is precisely why I listen to 1000s of hours of this music.

One might look at the setlist and think, "what was Big River doing here?", but then one listens and understands. They are perfectly in control of their music, and this one sizzles and pops and yes, at one point probably overwhelms a circuit for a few seconds. But it's a perfect workout before the long, smooth, mellow DS that follows.

Super tight set opener, moving through the different emotional phases of the song with the beautiful one-mind that just said, "buckle in heads, this set's going to go places...".