First performance. Very low on solos and with some echo in the early parts, but Jerry really sings his heart out for it.

Just want to point out a criminally underrated part of this performance... Bill and Mickey as they move to the NFA reprise!!! They were on fucking fire the whole show and this part, coupled with the Dew is a big sign of how. If you regard 77 as a 'sneakers in a dryer' era, I implore you to listen here with an open mind. Sheer magic occurred in this era. Not to take away from any other year or show, but this whole show is downright cinematic in its perfection.

Does it deserve 600+ votes, quite probably the highest voted performance on the whole site? ...Yes. Yes, it does. You can absolutely argue with full validity that other performances have surpassed it in some certain ways, but there is a REASON people return to this one time after time. The legacy of the Betty Board recording is part of it and the ease of accessibility now with the likes of Spotify is another huge part of it. But I'd argue it still deserves it. In its own Spring '77 way, it is perfect. Not a single note from anyone in the band is misplaced. Every Donna vocal is where it needs to be. The transition between songs is perfectly seamless. It is quintessential and while that may not qualify as 'best' in the eyes of many, it certainly qualifies as perfect in its own way. If you want to find versions that stray away from a gold standard that can never fill the full Scarlet-Fire hole in all of our hearts, you need only scroll down the list. But this is at the top for a reason.

While I absolutely agree this has to be some of Jerry's finest work on this song, I can see the case for Veneta too. Most notably, Keith sounds way too quiet in all the recordings I've heard and I think Bobby's vocals in the Veneta version have an incredible punch that this one just doesn't have. But hey, the performance is pretty much defined by how Garcia goes off at the end and he sure fucking does here.

Overrated this may be, but I've teared up watching the video too many times to say it's not heady. It may not be the best version (at the moment it's handily beat in votes anyway), but I'd say it's an essential one.