Solid smooth jamming on China Cat for a solid, beautiful 8 mins, including the FGJ. Rider has Phil high in the vocal mix, to a very nice effect.

Builds and builds and builds, faster hotter faster and hotter. The crowd goes wild (stage antics?) Something special was in the wind.

Who's playing the Theremin? There's definitely something odd going on here. Was Ned Lagin sitting in?

Slower tempo gives this one a special feel. Jerry sings it with great gusto and a deeper bluesier feel then others. The whole ride is great fun.

The band is having fun with it on live TV, even though squeezed into under 4 minutes: http://vimeo.com/35129207. Bobby slides over the disco beat.

Intricate and subtle. Listening in sequence to the Charlie Miller transfers of this whole run, it was clear that the Dark Star, when it finally came, was going to be friggin' epic. The precision and tightness of the band during the previous nights just called out for a deep deep Dark Star jam. It doesn't disappoint and I predict that this one could shoot way up to the front page if it were more well-known. There are a few places where it sounds like they're about to spontaneously erupt into those one-of-a-kind no-name jams (10:50, 13:50, 15:30, and especially the above mentioned 16:30, which is almost a FGJ, is it not?). Finally this one is just a deep shot out of the cannon into and out to space and back and I'm coming back for more again and again to this one.

Listen to the crowd roar after, and you know it meant something then too. I don't mean to get defensive about it, but damn if this didn't bring Janis to mind for them just as much as Birdsong did. They play the fuck out of this one and mean every note in that just-exactly-perfect way you wait for every show....

I agree that this is the first full-on launch that reaches outer-space. EraE's chronology is spot on. It's fun to see how critical this period is for the song's development. Even here, though, at around 7:30 they flirt with the The Main Ten vibe for a few seconds before finally abandoning it to go back into the melody. Brilliant stuff here. Even Pigpen gets in on it playing the guiro as they go back into the melody.

Plus there's a wacky Alligators in the Sewers rap after, and Bobby sez: Donald Duck is a fascist.

One of the best and it deserves to be much higher. Has that feeling of the best Cumberlands of barreling recklessly down the tracks in a rail-bucket through a coal mine while your head is exploding full of acid sparks.