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 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.

Intro is weirdly truncated, but the outro is a musical explosion that just blazes hot and burns down before disintegrating into a hot New Potato.

For the era I wouldn't say this TOO is that short. Haven't checked alternate sources, but the C. Miller on the archive has what sounds like tape damage or even a cut Cryptical intro before 8 minutes or so of blazing hot scary-ride TOO that actually goes into further thematic jamming than others of the era before re-entering the atmosphere for a ballistic Cryptical reprise that just melts rock it's so hot.

This version starts rough but you can hear them searching for the pocket and coming together. By the end its a stomping colossus. I think this is the show where they struggled with the venue and were unhappy enough to consider giving money back to the audience. I can't hear that here, but it might be part of the city's bad reputation with Heads. When I was touring it hadn't hosted a show in forever, and was a still somewhat hostile to hippies and bikers and all kinds of freaks. I imagine back in '69 it was a pretty square town.