Perfection firing on all cylinders: Tight band, muscular beats, beautiful vocals (Donna's on!) and that applied greatness that is the '77 Dead.

Blissful '69 chaos: Jer says, "Help! Help! Hey, we need some organized minds up here" and then they launch. Great fun and a wild ride.

Pure. One of the first performances with beautiful, meaning-soaked delivery.

Suffers a cutout in the middle, but reaches transcendant beauty and interplay. They end on a harmonics/tuning just delightfully right out of the song.

Sweet and subtle, part of a mega-massive 2nd set jam. A beauty.

Madison 310, this is indeed a thing of tremendous power and beauty, but if you want some early powerful stuff, back when the Dead were f'n dangerous and frightening to the world, like rip-up-the-sky-and-blow-you-apart DANGER DEAD, then check out two cool early gems: Feb. 03, 1968 with it's whipsaw mania, and the proto-TIFTOO from Oct. 22, 1967 with its loopy unfinished lyrics and Phil blasting through it like a Mad Bomber nuking the world. (Listen to the whole Cryptical-TOO-Cryptical suite for full shreddiness!) Enjoy, brother!

Stunning energy and creativity, with the special shout-outs to Keith and Jerry for driving the Scarlet out of this world. Funnily enough the transition is not, in spite of some comments here, all that smooth: Around 11:45 all of the energy drops off the cliff. It's as though they suddenly and collectively thought, "Holy shit, how do we get down from here", and all just stopped, took a breath, and decided to go into FTM. They get there, of course, but it's a big gear shift. And once they do, it's a thing of beauty. Plenty of other smoother transitions out there, but it doesn't matter: This is an enormous and beautiful version from a magical second set for the lucky buggers who got to see them on this winter night in Iowa.

Smokin' hot, mic drop or not. This has so much electricity behind it, there's no wonder it's in first place here. This is the S&D I was always looking for: Jerry rides atop the cozmic camel in full gallop.

Still in its early development, this is one of my favorite '72 MHUTs. It's perfect ensemble performance, the smooth transition to the outro, and gentle rolling river form-is-content-is-form understates the song's special tripiness (you either know it or you don't).

Roger that, Ragnaroar. That's what makes this one a stand out.