Help On The Way > Slipknot > Franklin's Tower
June 9, 1977
Winterland Arena
OVER-RATED!!!!!! The only thing brilliant about Help is Donna's vocals. Jerry's voice isn't in top form and you get some flubbed lyrics. Slipknot! was OK, but Bob having to give the 1-2-3-4 countdown shows that the band wasn't in top form and couldn't figure out how to stick the landing on their own. Franklin's reminds me of Dark Star from Rotterdam 1972, where it's really long, but not much of anything brilliant happens. For the most part, any half-way decent jam band at the peak of their career could have played this. Calm down, people - just because it's 1977, that doesn't mean that everything the Dead did that year is brilliant.
