Sometimes shorter is better. At around 10 mins. this beauty from E'72 packs the jazz, jam, passion. Like a more intense version of the one on ACE!

No clean SBD on archive but at official Dead site a pristine version was on 30 days of Dead for DL. 2d best stand-alone I've heard next to 3-20-77

DP Vol. 29...Each time I think I've heard the best (i.e. 12/27/77) I hear one better. This is it. Flowing, gorgeous Jerry bridge jam. Perfection.

Proves the boys could really swing when they wanted to. Hear Jerry on "The Girl I Love" line; like 'Gator Alley--1980 a good year for this tune

Insane. Ridiculous. Drummers locked in, Garcia in take-no-prisoners mode. 16+ minutes of full-bore Rock to the G-D Roll.

Nice pick...very good backing vocals on this one thanks to Brent and Garcia's way into it also. 5/22/77 is still my favorite and some of the other '77 jam sections are hard to beat but this one is maybe the best Brent-era I've heard.

DOES need to shoot up the list! This is a version where the post-lyrics jam has every bit as much inventiveness and crisp jazz improvising as the beginning portions do. Check out Jerry's lines around the 10 minute mark and his play-offs with Brent throughout. Bobby adds interesting counter-rhythms too and Phil is doing his rattle-your-bones bass thing. Really strong version that oughta be higher on the board.

A winner for sure. Can't find a clunker anywhere in this show.

Almost getting fried by a lightning strike is a pretty good excuse!

It's not that this isn't a good version...it is. Maybe you could make the argument it's even "great", and in a top 10-20 discussion. What mystifies me about this version (and I'm not alone judging by just a few of the comments here) is that it's so often taken for granted as the best of the best. And that's just mind-bogglingly not true. 97 votes at this counting. That's about 65 too many by my estimation unless people are just adding their votes for it being great and not necessarily #1, which is fine...but then you should seek out equally worthy or better versions and vote those as well. If you feel like an objective experiment, take just these versions from the SAME MONTH--i'm not even getting into the apples & oranges of Brent v. Keith eras here, and compare them back to back w/this version, and see if you would change your vote: 5/13/77, 5/17/77, 5/21/77, 5/25/77. If you really believe any or all of those are not superior to 5/8, and thus should be ranked higher on this list, then I give up trying to convince otherwise.