Rollicking and hard-charging good time set closer after a brain-melting Playin'.

In spite of muffled sound in need of a cleanup, this one has all the swagger and triumph of the best of '72. BTW fans take heed!

Surprised not to see this here. The trans has extra oomph to it and the band sails along in perfect sync. Great fun.

Pristine and fun. There's a cogent, almost album-tight quality to it.

The mix is off at first, vocals lost, but hang in there and you'll hear one of Jerry's most heavy metal solos on Loser ever. Absolute shredder.

The guiro + vibraslap driven drums interlude that never leaves the Alligator theme makes this. There's even the cool rarity vocal break "ta ta ta ta takita takita takita takita ta" at the end of the drums section before the brilliant jam section with the '69 China Cat theme. I'm going to go out on a limb here and say at one point in the "primal Alligator jam" segment they are definitely jamming over the "Mountain Jam" chords. Any reason it couldn't be? I hear it.

My god, the outro....

Welcome Shug! So you like ye some hard rock Dead? Me too. Check out two of my favorites: The Other One from October 22, 1967 (sound's like the whole goddamned Viet Nam war in one go) and Easy Wind from September, 20 1970, which just kills me every time. I like 'em mellow, too, but we tend to forget just how freaking dangerous the Dead were from the beginning. Enjoy! Edit: Or just go to setlists.net and look for anything with a "feedback" in it - I guarantee that there was some hard driving that went before it. Or for that matter, damn, the whole of 1968 is like one giant supernova. Rock on.

Great catch Grendel. Billy and Phil are definitely laying the voodoo down. I've always thought that the influence of electric Miles Davis has an been under-appreciated factor on (especially) the '74 long jams that don't acid melt. In any case Billy could have subbed any night of the week for Jack DeJohnette - and the Sly influence on Miles was totally acknowledged by Miles himself. The sly Sly drop comes back in around 13:00 pretty clearly. There's another Miles who's influence goes under-appreciated too: Buddy Miles (Jimi's drummer from the Band of Gypsies period), who's great funk from '68 forward is clearly informing our boys during this period. Man, they're vast. I just keep coming back to the well, and it just keeps giving up that sweet sweet water. Thanks for the shout-out.

Almost a Dark Star: I just listened again and it's clear at just after 10:00 how they shift gears and leave the MLB path into the Star. Didn't quite coalesce, but instead went into a beautiful up-tempo modal exposition. It's so beautiful they could do anything they wanted with it.