Mysterious beauty under the B- sound quality (Phil sounds kinda like a tuba, which is cool). Beautiful vocal harmonies and break in the middle.

Massive driving groove leading straight into one of the top DS of all time. My ears hear a flirt with NFBM jam that never quite hatches.

Sweetness and light insight a wickedly melting Playin' sandwich. Pretty, gentle harmonies found somewhere out there the deep dark chaos. Tight sound.

Long exploratory solos, smouldering jams, cool interplay. Won't blow you off your chair but very inventive and interesting.

Seastones: Completely wild and rises to a freaky climax. May cause brain blisters. Not for children.

First ever, and it's in full swagger and just sweet rockin'. Ignore the ridiculous audiophobes on the archive: This show is burning up from the first note, and much clearer than all the 10th gen tapes we used to have, so skip it and miss out. Dig?

Thanks for the kind words, Sleuth, I do love me some '71 Dead.... Don't get me wrong, I love a lot of different years, but something about the earlier ones just keep me coming back for more. For me, the best of '71 has the intimacy and - dare I say it - innocence of the previous year while transforming into the jam colossus of the Keith and Donna era. I haven't really gotten around to a systematic go-over of the years I followed some tours (mid-80s mostly), but I'm going through '71 one show at a time and man, it's worth it. Thanks archive!

Very hot, yet somehow laid-back jam. Bobby and Jer tear it up for ever. What a treat this is. The locals somehow got turned on in Chateau d'Herouville - who'd have figured?

Just absolutely beautiful, this one.

I'm ambivalent about this one being so high up in the ranks, but not because it isn't awesome. It is. The jam after the drum work is just spectacular and beautiful, going through so many different phases (Stephen tease at 07:20). It's one of the early foreshadowings of where they were going into heightened technical musicality (the Bird Song from this show shows the same...). I'm ambivalent because its just so totally removed from the fissile psychedelic explosiveness of Alligator as it was at its peak years of '67-'69. Gotta note that this was the last show in the Fillmore East, and maybe a bit of a "farewell run" for some of the old tunes. Anyway, it's beautiful. Peace.