Can't believe what short shrift this show gets. They pull off the combo like gangbusters here.

Glorious Jerry vocals, not one, but TWO "sweet Susie's", excellent gritty solo. Best early version ever!

Submitting this on Fat Tuesday 2017. Great Mardi Gras version with really nice piano (!) fills by Brent that oughta be heard!

Get on this one, folks. It's a ripper.

Absolute best of 1974. Not kidding. Jerry's leads are ripping & confident. The band plays flawlessly.Can stand w/some of the best of '77. Must hear.

Too late to the party thread I seem to have started here but glad Catalonia ran with it. Never get tired of talking Half Step and all these '77s are just spectacular. Will have to try out that '79 you mentioned as well. I always find that a hit or miss year...whatever is good tends actually to be GREAT (1/10/79 is one of my top 20 Dead shows of all time & there are other great ones after Keith left), but sometimes Brent's tinker toy key sounds bother me. Will give a listen to that '79 and let you know.,,thanks!

Let us now praise famous Half Steps. We've all been quibbling forever on which is THE best version, with the usual suspects of 11/6/77 (my favorite), 5/7/77 and 5/17/77 often jockeying for position. Does this one best any of those? Well, it certainly can hang with any of them, and it's a great GREAT version even among the greats. One thing I think is obvious and indisputable at this point, though: 1977 was by far THE best year for Half Step, hands down.

Must agree this is the best of 1968, and a great version for any era. Played at a far faster pace than any years that follow, but not too fast. Ideas abound, and let's give it up for Weir adding some fine strumming in this particular version.

Just a picture perfect rendition...at once fierce and yet played with achingly good precision...liquid Garcia, monster drumming, all cylinders firing...a tour de force.

Having revisited this one recently and seeing where it is on the list I gotta say, this is way under where it needs to be. The bulk of this DS is just a mellow but always flowing and interesting improvisational jazz jam that shows off everyone's chops. It moves into an equally quiet/contemplative spacy section that never devolves into unlistenable distortion sound-for-the-sake-of-sound mucking about. Phil drops some deep heavy bass boulders but does so in tandem with an eerily atmospheric sustained Garcia guitar note in the backdrop and it really does give the feeling like you're floating somewhere out in the universe of stars. All this happens before the first verse is even sung, and that emerges from this quiet space with no forewarning but somehow naturally, as if it was waiting behind the veil the whole time. All this eventually tumbles out into a rollicking Cumberland, which is an odd choice I suppose (same when they've decided before on El Paso) but the transition is flawless and takes nothing away from the Star itself, This is a top 5 for me now easily (10/25/69, 4/8/72, 12/31/78, and 2/13/70 taking the other 4 slots) and this really should be higher on the list than some others...if I had my way ;-)