Photo by: Illustration by Matt Panuska
As avatars of San Francisco's ’60s-born counterculture, the Grateful Dead have served as an alternative to American reality for more than a half-century. Performing from 1965 to 1995 with guitarist and songwriter Jerry Garcia, the Dead survive through a vast body of live recordings, originally traded by obsessive fans and now preserved on a long string of official releases. Though the band has an epic narrative (told in Amir Bar-Lev’s rapturous four-hour Long, Strange Trip* documentary), *much of the Dead’s story and significance remains purely musical. Part of the group’s staying power is due to the mysterious vastness that exists outside the bounds of their official studio recordings, a live canon shaped by generations of the still-active Deadhead music trading network.
Flourishing in an extralegal sharing economy built around the exchange of concert tapes and psychedelics (the tapes were *never *to be sold), most of the Dead’s live recordings could only be accessed through profoundly anti-corporate means. Rather than killing music, as an infamous British music industry campaign claimed in ’80s, home taping actually propelled the Grateful Dead to stadiums, as the Dead themselves acknowledged.
Profoundly unslick, the Grateful Dead's anti-authoritarian creative tendencies remain palpable in the current era. Self-consciously apolitical and populist to a fault, the Dead built a diverse audience across the political spectrum while continuing to act as a catalyst for young and old seekers, music heads, counterculturalists, and psychonauts. Simultaneously, the Dead produced dancing music, folklore, and lyrics to nourish an extended community that continues to thrive at shows by the band’s surviving members and a national scene of cover bands.
Navigating the Grateful Dead’s shadow discography can be daunting, a tangle of different periods and idiosyncrasies. This list of recommended song versions—chronological, not ranked—serves as an introductory survey of the band’s different periods. Loosely, the 37 entries here chart a path from garage-prog (1966) to lysergic jam suites (1967-1969), alt-Americana (1970), barroom country & western (1971), space-jazz (1972-1975), and epic hippie disco (1976-1978), eventually arriving at the more slowly evolving band of the ’80s and ’90s, whose driving creative force sometimes seemed to be their own inertia.
It’s the latter era that is most prone to cleave even Dead enthusiasts. It represents a divide between the tighter, more critically accepted earlier band and the beloved-by-Deadheads ’80s and ’90s incarnations, when they were beset by addiction, the technologies of the era, questionable aesthetic choices, and an evolving secret musical language that sometimes made more sense in sold-out stadiums of dancing fans. While the Dead got more popular every year in their later decades—and continued to generate jam surprises and bold performances aplenty—new listeners will likely want to start with the band’s earlier epochs. One can see long-running debates even among our contributors encapsulated in entries for beloved songs like “Jack Straw” and the “Scarlet Begonias”/”Fire on the Mountain” combo, with a contingent of heads here deeply digging the chaotic stadium psychedelia of the later band.
The majority of the primary song choices presented below come from the classic years of the ’60s and ’70s; for many songs, Key Later Versions from the ’80s or ’90s highlight further developments for the discerning Dead freak. There, one can hear the band finding new places hidden in the old, mining the mountain range of material they'd generated earlier in their career.
Though the band’s proper albums have earned an undeserved bad reputation, *American Beauty and Workingman's Dead (both released in 1970) especially contain a small handful of songs for which the studio versions remain almost undisputedly definitive. While songs like “Ripple,” “Attics of My Life,” “Box of Rain,” and several others belong on any list of the band’s campfire standards, they’re left off here in the interest of songs that varied more greatly in live performance. Likewise, Europe ’72, which features elements re-touched in the studio, *generated a number of great live tunes served perfectly well the version found on that album, including “Ramble on Rose” and “Brown-Eyed Women.” Though the Dead continued introducing new originals up through their last tours, this list focuses on something like a core curriculum of live Dead.
Nearly every selection on this list can and should be argued by anyone with an opinion about live Dead recordings. But these picks are intended to be gateways into different scenic and well-manicured corners of Grateful Dead land for those who haven’t spent much time there, places that might feel welcoming before drumz/space kicks in. From there, the paths are nearly infinite: an enormous live catalog splattered unceremoniously across streaming services (but helpfully listed chronologically at DeadDiscs), the complete fan-curated collection at archive.org (navigable via DeadLists or Relisten.net), a riot of Grateful Dead historical and ahistorical blogs, academic conferences, a nightly slate of #couchtour webcasts, or a live music venue near you. — Jesse Jarnow
Listen to The Grateful Dead: A Guide to Their Essential Live Songs on Spotify and Apple Music.
“You Don’t Have To Ask”
July 16, 1966
Fillmore Auditorium, San Francisco, Calif.
Written by__:__ Grateful Dead
Overly complicated original is highlight of album’s worth of songs scrapped before debut LP. Played in 1966 only.
“You Don’t Have to Ask” has all the elements of a great garage band song. It’s got a groovy bass line, excellent reverby guitar solos, great group harmony vocals, and Ron “Pigpen” McKernan’s combo organ cuts right through everything. It’s a zippy little number, guaranteed to fulfill the Dead’s dance-band obligations. But while it’s catchy, it’s also totally fucking bananas. There are several verses, choruses, parts, sections, a bridge or maybe three, chords you don't expect (maybe they were surprised too), modulation up, (spoiler alert) modulation back down, then something else entirely, all at a breakneck speed for them and wrapped up in under four minutes. It kinda sounds like they (Bob) were still learning the song, but they're all really going for it, even if it was destined to be one of approximately an album's worth of originals dropped from the repertoire before the band signed to Warner Bros. in 1967. If there was a version of the Nuggets compilations that consisted entirely of songs written and played by lunatics totally zonked on acid, this would definitely make the cut. –James McNew
Lore: Deadhead forensics has determined that “You Don’t Have to Ask” was also known as “Otis on a Shakedown Cruise,” an early song title remembered by band members that seemingly didn’t survive on tape; at least until an attentive listener noticed that—seconds before this version starts—a band member can be heard off-mic asking, “Otis?”
Listen: Spotify | Apple Music
“Cream Puff War”
December 1, 1966
The Matrix, San Francisco, Calif.
Written by: Jerry Garcia
Included on the group’s debut LP, a rare original with both words and music by Jerry Garcia and early vehicle for exploratory modal jams.
It’s okay if you don’t like the Grateful Dead—even the Greatest American Band Ever isn’t for everybody. But if you’re an ardent Dead hater, I’d urge you to try just this one track. In a dimension where the Dead flamed out in obscurity, “Cream Puff War” would’ve justified their inevitable rediscovery by proto-punk collectors. Attacked with an urgency they’d never again employ, the song is on the garage-ier end of the psych spectrum, with a delinquent Farfisa and uncharacteristically fierce Garcia vocals. Of course, it’s still the Dead, so it’s a little too fussy for true garage-fuzz, with a pile of chords and sudden swerves into waltz time. Played only during the little-documented fall of 1966 and spring 1967, only a single extended version survives, the band consciously searching for new territory and exploring the modal improv mode they would soon make their own. Shelved soon thereafter, “Cream Puff War” remains an interesting thought experiment in Grateful Dead alternate history. –Rob Mitchum
Venue: The Matrix was a tiny San Francisco club co-owned by Jefferson Airplane’s Marty Balin, where the Dead played early shows and later experimented with side projects like Mickey and the Hartbeats. In some circles, it’s more famous for live recordings of the Dead’s fellow former Warlocks, the Velvet Underground.
Listen: Archive.org
“Viola Lee Blues”
February 2, 1968
Crystal Ballroom, Portland, Ore.
Written by: Noah Lewis (arr. the Grateful Dead)
*The Dead’s first massive jam, a hopped-up jug band rearrangement built on three volcanic improv sections. **A dependable mindbender and set centerpiece, whether as an opener or closer, “Viola Lee Blues” outlasted nearly everything else from the band’s 1966 playbook, but disappeared from live shows after 1970. *
Legendary Dead tape collector and vault-master Dick Latvala coined the term “primal Dead” to describe the blustery psychedelia at the core of the band’s legend. And few early performances reveal the group’s unhinged nature as openly as this prison-blues chugger, written by Memphis singer/harmonica player Noah Lewis and originally recorded in 1928 by his trio, Gus Cannon’s Jug Stompers. Most Dead versions of “Viola Lee Blues” are a variant on its noisy appeal, including the rare excellent studio jam on the band’s 1967 Warner Bros. debut, yet what makes this show-opener special is power, precision, and compactness. The stand-alone opening chord is a universe. The sound of multiple vocalists screaming out the words betrays an on-stage good time rolling. Garcia’s mountainous arpeggios—using a deeply metallic guitar tone—are a study in *Sturm und Drang *naturalism; while the hanging pause on which the players reunite is big-band tightness exemplified. A perfect vehicle when secondary drummer Mickey Hart joined in 1967, here the closing jam’s leap into Kreutzmann/Hart-driven hyperspace is a premonition of future Rhys Chatham/Glenn Branca/Sonic Youth punk-jazz explosions. Strap the fuck in! –Piotr Orlov
Listen: Archive.org
Key Earlier Version: September 3, 1967, Rio Nido Dance Hall, Rio Nido, Calif. Recorded just before Mickey Hart joined the band, the Rio Nido “Viola Lee” is perhaps the best document of the early single-drummer Dead in full flight, with Garcia spinning out endless hypnotic turns.
The Grateful Dead performing circa 1967. Photo via Leni Sinclair/Getty Images.
“Alligator”
February 14, 1968
Carousel Ballroom, San Francisco, Calif.
Written by: Ron “Pigpen” McKernan, Phil Lesh, Robert Hunter
*Non-performing lyricist Robert Hunter’s first contribution to a Dead song became a playful springboard. “Alligator” most often segued into “Caution (Do Not Stop on the Tracks),” a locomotive blues-fuzz groove almost wholly borrowed from Them’s “Mystic Eyes,” and in this infamous sequence into a blistering six minutes of guitar feedback. *
Just before what sounds like a drum circle busts out, Bob Weir leans into the mic and says, “C’mon everybody! Get up and dance, it won’t ruin ya!” That bit of tape lifted later that year for the band’s pioneering studio/live hybrid, Anthem of the Sun. Weir’s got the earnestness of a prom chaperon gently chiding a wallflower. And why shouldn’t he? This was an era of raw fun for the Dead, prime Pigpen time, who hoots and hollers through his lead vocal, while Weir implores listeners to “burn down the Fillmore, gas the Avalon,” the two venues competing with the band-run Carousel Ballroom. Heavy competition. After the song relaxes from an early Kreutzmann/Hart drum sesh and the guitar finally returns, it’s sour but funky. Too good for even the shyest of the shy to not move their butts. –Matthew Schnipper
Listen: Spotify | Apple Music
Key Later Version: April 29, 1971, Fillmore East, New York City, N.Y. The final version of the song is a leaner reptile but with perhaps even more bite, the now-solo Kreutzmann drum segment chomping into a thrilling Lesh/Garcia jam.
“St. Stephen”
August 21, 1968
Fillmore West, San Francisco, Calif.
Written by: Jerry Garcia, Phil Lesh, and Robert Hunter
Cryptic lyrics, an elliptical psychedelic bounce, scorching guitar, occasionally a live cannon onstage, and always a Deadhead favorite.
For a few years in the late ’60s, “St. Stephen” anchored a suite that also included “Dark Star” and “The Eleven,” together taking up the first two sides of the pivotal *Live/Dead *double LP. Building sets around the rolling peaks of the suite, individually and together the songs showcased the band’s latest compositional ideas and quickly developing musical interplay. At the center was “St. Stephen.” Featuring some of Robert Hunter’s most lava-lamp-ready turns of phrase (“lady finger dipped in moonlight,” anyone?), ”St. Stephen” is alluringly simple: a bouncy psychedelic standby that may or may not have anything to do with the Christian martyr in its title.
At early performances, like this August take at the Fillmore West, it carries the energy of a band falling in love with their own sound, navigating the song’s left turns with aplomb. Bob and Jerry sing the verses together with childlike joy, before things slow down and get foggier, buoyed by spacey glockenspiel. Just a minute later, the whole band bounce back into action with a devilish energy, propelled by one of Jerry’s gnarliest riffs. The darkness shrugs, and the Dead ride on. –Sam Sodomsky
What To Listen For: The Live/Dead-era versions of the song end with several verses of a lysergic Irish-sounding jig, both a musical bridge and dramatic energy build before springing into “The Eleven” (with which it’s often erroneously tracked, as here).
Listen: Archive.org
Key Later Version: May 5, 1977 New Haven Coliseum, New Haven, Conn. Revived in slower, elegant form after the band’s 1976 return, “St. Stephen” attained a different kind of grace, sometimes still finding ecstasy (if not quite psychedelic fury) in the middle jam, as on standalone versions like this one, though more often segueing into Buddy Holly’s “Not Fade Away”.
“New Potato Caboose”
February 13, 1968
Carousel Ballroom, San Francisco, Calif.
Written by: Phil Lesh and Bobby Petersen
One of the band’s most structurally experimental songs sets a poem by band friend Bobby Petersen to music.
“It's a very long thing and it doesn't have a form,” Jerry Garcia told an interviewer about the Dead’s “New Potato Caboose” around the time the band started performing it in the late ’60s. The band had been writing original material since shortly after their 1965 formation, but “New Potato” was an indication of their rapidly expanding ambitions. Written by bassist Phil Lesh from a poem by Bobby Petersen, it highlights the former composition prodigy’s studied chops. What Garcia heard as formlessness, Lesh almost certainly designed—in his own hallucinogenic way—as specific movements, interconnected with an elusive dream logic.
Sung by Bob Weir with Lesh and Garcia joining for the cascading chorus, Weir sells its mystical (and maybe even proto-Sonic Youth) atmosphere with a stoney, detached edge during this Carousel Ballroom performance. Though they would never write another song remotely like it, “New Potato Caboose” foreshadows the territory they were about to conquer. –Sam Sodomsky
What To Listen For: On this classic early bootleg, a Deadhead staple sourced from an experimental radio broadcast on then-freeform KMPX, Garcia’s wild outro solo dissolves into Weir’s “Born Cross-Eyed” and a powerful articulated take of the piece of music Deadheads would label “Spanish Jam.”
Venue: Operated by a consortium of bands including the Dead, Jefferson Airplane, and Quicksilver Messenger Service, the Carousel Ballroom failed as a business, and was reopened as the Fillmore West by promoter Bill Graham.
Listen: Spotify | Apple Music
“The Eleven”
February 28, 1969
Fillmore West, San Francisco, Calf.
Written by: Phil Lesh and Robert Hunter
The band’s endlessly rehearsed double-drummer mindbender central to Live/Dead.
“The Eleven” is the Grateful Dead at their most joyous, all ascending scales, bursts of melody, shouted lyrics, and tricky meters designed to sound as if everything is on the verge of falling apart. Its essence is right there in the title: the song is in 11/8 time, meaning that three bars of 3/4 are punctuated with a quick 2/4 bash before the cycle starts again. The 11/8 frame turns out to be ideal for Garcia and Lesh, who solo in tandem on the best versions of the song. “The Eleven” was shorter, faster, and gnarlier in 1968, and the soloing—the best of which always happens before the brief verses begin—was more clipped. By the week in late February where they recorded the material that wound up on the epochal Live/Dead, Garcia and Lesh were working like two halves of the same musical mind. A Wednesday show at the Avalon Ballroom produced the *Live/Dead *version, but the Friday night show of that same week, one of four in a row at the Fillmore West, turned out to be the finest single moment for “The Eleven.” Garcia and Lesh are like two dogs barking and nipping at each other while running full-speed across a field, never breaking stride, taking turns being in front. Eventually, the tight three-chord structure would bore Garcia, who felt he’d wrung every idea he could out of the song. The Dead dropped it from setlists forever in 1970. But during this precise moment in February 1969 there are more ideas than they know what to do with. –Mark Richardson
What to Listen For: The overlapping three-part vocal is hard-to-sing overload, featuring some of Robert Hunter’s finest lysergic playfulness in Garcia’s trippy countdown part: “Eight-sided whispering hallelujah hatrack, seven-faced marble eye transitory dream doll…”
What Else to Listen For: The drums, man! Ideally on headphones.
Listen: Spotify | Apple Music
The Grateful Dead circa 1968. Photo via Malcolm Lubliner/Michael Ochs Archives/Getty Images.
“Mountains of the Moon”
March 1, 1969
Fillmore West, San Francisco, Calif.
Written by: Jerry Garcia and Robert Hunter
The Dead’s first and most psychedelic folk song has more in common with the Incredible String Band than Phish, used as a prelude to the jam centerpiece, “Dark Star.”
The peak old-folkie days of the Dead wouldn’t come until the early ’70s, but “Mountains of the Moon” was foreshadowed that era. Debuted in late ’68, the minimal ballad spent the first half of ’69 as the gentle prelude to its deeper astronomical partner, “Dark Star”; the last few notes of the February 27, 1969 version can be heard during the introductory fade-in to Live/Dead. On Aoxomoxoa, some heavy-handed harpsichord emphasizes the faux-Elizabethan melody and faerie-land lyrics, but live, a stripped-down lineup of Bobby on a 12-string, Garcia finger-picking, Lesh burbling, and Tom “T.C.” Constanten on organ made for a haunting lull in their primal phase. –Rob Mitchum
What to Listen For: Serving as a spell to put the band and audience in the ruminative frame of mind for the journey to come, Garcia essentially continues his closing “Mountains of the Moon” solo into the “Dark Star” intro, even while switching from acoustic to electric guitar.
Listen:Spotify | Apple Music
Watch: January 18, 1969 Playboy After Dark, Los Angeles, Calif. To see a possibly-dosed Hugh Hefner swaying along to “Mountains of the Moon” with his arm around a Bunny, check out the Dead’s surreal appearance on Playboy After Dark.
“Friend of the Devil”
May 2, 1970
Harpur College, Binghamton, N.Y.
Written by: Jerry Garcia, John Dawson, and Robert Hunter
Hail Satan!
1970 was a championship season for the devil. The Beatles broke up. Jimi Hendrix and Janis Joplin raised the curtains in the 27 Club. The Kent State massacres compounded the 6,173 body bags airlifted back from Vietnam. And the Grateful Dead unshackled “Friend of the Devil,” the best song ever written about a cuckolded bigamist fleeing from a sheriff’s posse and 20 hellhounds, only to get stuck up by Satan for his final $20.
Apologies to ’Pac and Snoop, but this is the most immortal outlaw anthem about attempting to return to your house out in the hills right next to Chino. Written by Robert Hunter with John Dawson of stoner C&W Dead spin-off New Riders of the Purple Sage with Garcia adding the bridge, the acoustic riffs ramble like an undiscovered escape route. Robert Hunter’s lyrics shine a searchlight on a Western anti-hero—Butch Cassidy bargaining with Lucifer—sleepless, ragged, and fatal. But Garcia sings with a weary sweetness on this staple acoustic set. A bouquet in hand, six-shooter behind his back; the poetic conman with insidious alliances, he seduces with his wounded decency, at least until he disappears into a cloud of sulfur. –Jeff Weiss
Listen: Spotify | Apple Music
Key Later Version: June 27, 1976 Auditorium Theater, Chicago, Ill. Following the band’s touring hiatus, Garcia was inspired to revive the song in a slower arrangement after hearing a recording of a live Loggins & Messina cover.
“Brokedown Palace”
August 30, 1970
KQED Studios, San Francisco, Calif.
Written by: Jerry Garcia and Robert Hunter
Garcia and Hunter’s immortal farewell ballad and cosmic love song with Crosby, Stills & Nash-inspired harmonies.
The massive amount of high quality archival audio makes the Grateful Dead’s video output seem minuscule by comparison. Add crummy camerawork and dated psychedelic FX, and you often don’t have too much to look at. Not so for this simple and beautiful take of “Brokedown Palace” on local California TV, which keeps the fancy tech to a minimum. But on the chorus, marked by some of the Dead’s most beautiful earthy three-part harmonizing, Weir and Garcia’s profiles overlap on screen. It’s their own Mamas and Papas or Fleetwood Mac moment: two crooners, a heartthrob and a scruff, in total rhapsody. Sometimes, there seemed to be a disconnect between the band’s solemn sound and the way they made the audience feel. In 1970, the year Garcia and Hunter churned out two albums of instant hippie standards, it paid off, with the Dead in perfect harmony, both creatively and vocally. Everyone onstage and off is blissed out. How nice it is to share. –Matthew Schnipper
What to Listen For: Not shown on camera, the high part of the band’s three-part harmony is bassist Phil Lesh.
Listen: Archive.org
Key Later Version: May 11, 1977 St. Paul Civic Center, St. Paul, Minn. Like almost everything else in May 1977, “Brokedown Palace” sounded perfect, Donna Jean Godchaux’s harmony replacing Lesh’s, who mostly stopped singing in the late ‘70s after straining his vocal cords.
“Turn On Your Love Light”
September 19, 1970
Fillmore East, New York City, N.Y.
Written by: Joseph Scott and Deadric Malone
*A frequent show closer from 1969-1972 and a showcase for Pigpen’s greasy raps and unfurling blues-psych boogies. From 1969-1971, especially, the Dead spent more time jamming “Love Light” than even “Dark Star,” playing it more often and usually for a longer duration as a populist get-the-heads-dancing rave-up to conclude their most far-out sets. *
Defying the peak of primal Dead, the gutbucket blues of “Turn on Your Love Light” dominated set lists during the Dead’s most psychedelic era. Usually upwards of 20 minutes (and sometimes over 40), the band vamped between innuendo-filled raps by frontman Pigpen aimed at pairing off members of the audience. While conducting the band’s deft on-the-fly arrangements, Pig would spike the Bobby “Blue” Bland original’s sweetness into something more libidinal and fetishistic. “Well she’s got box back nitties/Great big noble thighs/Working undercover with her boar hog eye,” Pig sang, a bit of mojo jive that one scholar has spent ample time decoding.
By September 1970, the Summer of Love had given way to the Autumn of Fuck. Doing some crowd work, Pig whips the audience into a frenzy, perhaps creating the sort of “weird atmosphere” that led one feminist reviewer to feel alienated by the “hippie stag party” later that fall. After the band strikes the final beat, Pigpen screams “Fuck!”—issued as both punctuation and command. This “Love Light” scores 5 fucks—one for each time the word is uttered by the band. –Ariella Stok
Listen: Archive.org
Watch: August 16, 1969 Max Yasgur’s Farm, Bethel, N.Y. At Woodstock, as the Dead begin a 36 minute “Love Light”, a still-unidentified rando takes over the mic, soon led away when Merry Prankster Ken Babbs distracts him with a joint.
“Dark Star”
April 8, 1972
Wembley Pool, London, UK
Written by: Grateful Dead and Robert Hunter
The band’s definitive psychedelic jam epic, with wondrous versions in nearly every era it appeared.
In April of 1972, the Dead commenced a major European tour, almost two months long and a definitive musical turning point. Elongated fast ’n’ furious blues jams and Wild West saloon swagger were dosed with jazzier, subtler improvisations, the Dead’s musical shorthand cribbed from the simultaneous soloing of Dixieland music. Introduced to listeners via a short and far-out 7" in early 1968 and the standard side-long take of *Live/Dead *in 1969, the April 8th, 1972 version is not a “Dark Star” of gaping existential canyons jagged with feedback. The exuberance of the band listening to itself in this half-hour house of mirrors can be heard as Garcia’s Alligator Stratocaster quickly descends from the song’s head, Lesh offering bubbly harmonic counterpoint; accents of cymbals and short drum rolls make Weir’s offbeat rhythmic attacks more potent and clear space for Keith Godchaux to pound out leads on his piano. A collective breath is taken after the first and only verse, until Kreutzmann’s kick drum cajoles the rest of the Dead, including Pigpen behind the organ, to percolate a melody, pause for a brief freak-out, and wrap up the song with sunburst triumph. –Buzz Poole
What to Listen For: The charging major key jam that erupts near the end of this version also features a fiery debate about what will follow, eventually sliding perfectly into Weir’s “Sugar Magnolia” and a version of Pigpen’s “Caution (Do Not Stop on the Tracks)” filled with crackling heat lightning.
Listen: Spotify | Apple Music
Key Later Version: October 31, 1991 Oakland Coliseum, Oakland, Calif. At the unexpected and emotionally charged five-show wake for promoter Bill Graham, the Dead’s staunchest supporter, “Dark Star” became a time machine when novelist Ken Kesey delivered a Halloween eulogy and the band flashed back to the Acid Tests, eight musicians so locked in that you can imagine walking between all the notes.
Dark Star Canon (Excerpt):
2/28/69 Fillmore West, San Francisco, CA [Live/Dead, dude.]
2/13/70 Fillmore East, New York City, NY [Taper favorite.]
8/27/72 Old Renaissance Fairgrounds, Veneta, OR [Transdimensional meltdown.]
10/28/72 Cleveland Public Hall, Cleveland, OH [Hyperreal, with so-called bass-led Philo Stomp.]
10/26/89 Miami Arena, Miami, FL [MIDI tour-de-force with bummer Garcia vocals.]
“The Other One”
April 26, 1972
Jahrhunderthalle, Frankfurt, West Germany
Written by: Bob Weir and Bill Kreutzmann
*A high-wire version of one of the band’s premier jam vehicles in nearly every era. After dropping “Cryptical Envelopment” in 1971 (minus a brief ’80s revival), “The Other One” became the jam center of many second sets, its triplet-based gallop providing a tension-laden motif for high energy improvisation, perfect for segues, creating a jam canon second only to “Dark Star”. *
Released in 1995 as Hundred Year Hall, the Grateful Dead’s April 26, 1972, show in Frankfurt is a tour de force display of pretty much everything the Dead were capable of at this juncture, from earthy Pigpen-led R&B to country-fried workouts to daring improvisation. The latter is best exemplified by the sprawling, 36-minute wonder that is this night's reading of “The Other One.” Originally bookended by Jerry Garcia’s “Cryptical Envelopment,” by 1972 the song had been both pared down and expanded, providing the Dead with a vehicle for their most untethered—and sometimes most aggressive—jams. Coming out of a rollicking “Truckin,’” the Frankfurt “Other One” bursts into action with Bill Kreutzmann's relentless “tiger paws” rhythm and Phil Lesh's rumbling bass, leading directly into a kaleidoscopic roller coaster ride. Jerry Garcia darts madly around with fleet-fingered, often feedback- and wah-drenched guitar work as pianist Keith Godchaux pounds out Cecil Taylor-isms. Even the usually jam-averse Pigpen gets into the act with a stabbing organ part. Before the Dead finally slip into a gorgeous “Comes a Time,” Bob Weir bellows the now-famed lyrics about their deceased mentor, Beat icon Neal Cassady—and there's no question that his gonzo spirit was at the wheel during this performance. –Tyler Wilcox
Listen: Spotify | Apple Music
Key Earlier Version: February 27, 1969 Fillmore West, San Francisco, Calif. Sounding fairly goofed up as they introduce the last portion of the evening’s early set, the band dazzles with a complete version of the “That’s It For the Other One” suite, with Garcia’s spiraling “Cryptical Envelopment” intro and outro.
Key Later Version: February 5, 1978 UniDome, Cedar Falls, Iowa. A reliable source of headiness for much of the Dead's career, “The Other One” was especially good in the late ’70s, as on this explosive 1978 rendition.
“China Cat Sunflower” > “I Know You Rider”
August 27, 1972
Old Renaissance Fairgrounds, Veneta, Ore.
Written by: Jerry Garcia and Robert Hunter/traditional, arranged by Grateful Dead
*Grateful Dead-brand sunshine in a can links baroque psychedelia to a folk song the Dead arguably made an American classic. During the ’70s, “China > Rider” was a first-set standard, usually the place where the band would initialize their improvisational chops on any given night. In the ’80s and ’90s, it moved to the second set opener slot, a guaranteed crowd favorite to settle fans back in. *
To get the absolute purest dose of what the Dead sounded like, lick your finger and stick it in the middle of any rendition of this classic pairing. For one, the duo nicely charts the main axis of Dead songwriting, with effervescent psychedelia blending into an electrified rearrangement of a traditional American folk song. But more important is the zone between the two songs, so humbly notated with a “>”, where the magic truly blooms. For several glorious minutes, the band exists in a quantum state between the two compositions, navigating that space with an uncanny group-mind. In August of 1972, the Dead played a benefit in sweltering heat for the Kesey family creamery outside Eugene, Oregon. Like most things with the Grateful Dead, what should be a calamity is instead transcendent, with “China > Rider” (the “>” is silent) one of several sublime performances. *–*Rob Mitchum
Listen: Spotify | Apple Music
Key Slightly Later Version: June 26, 1974 Providence Civic Center, Providence, R.I. In 1973 and 1974, the “China > Rider” transition included a theme based on Simon & Garfunkel’s “Feelin’ Groovy”, and this version includes both a rare intro jam and a turn through the descending melody that Deadheads call “Mind Left Body,” after its resemblance to a Paul Kantner song.
“Bird Song”
August 27, 1972
Old Renaissance Fairgrounds, Veneta, Ore.
Written by: Jerry Garcia and Robert Hunter
A fragile goodbye doubles as a perfectly titled lift-off for some of the band’s most lilting and delicate jams.
Janis Joplin, the Grateful Dead's friend and occasional tour mate (not to mention Ron “Pigpen” McKernan’s on-again-off-again lover), died of an accidental heroin overdose in October 1970 at the age of 27. A few months later, the Dead unveiled “Bird Song,” Robert Hunter and Jerry Garcia’s touching farewell tribute to the singer. Not so much an elegy as a reminder to—as one of Joplin’s signature tunes puts it—get it while you can, “Bird Song”’s studio incarnation appeared on Garcia’s first self-titled solo LP. But the song really took flight onstage with the Dead in 1972, especially during a show at Veneta, Oregon’s Renaissance Fairgrounds, legendary among tape traders for decades before being officially released in 2013. Following a bittersweet, gently psychedelic verse and chorus, the band slides into a long, meditative modal jam, Garcia’s guitar sounding simultaneously mournful and ecstatic as it soars into the upper register, his cohorts circling patiently below. Bill Kreutzmann, handling drumming duties alone, gives the song a restless, jazzy lope. A sublime ensemble performance, made only slightly less sublime in the Sunshine Daydream concert doc, which features an undulating, naked fan perched directly behind Garcia, getting the sunburn of his life. –Tyler Wilcox
What to Listen For: The way Kreutzmann launches the band back into the jam with a fluttering drum fill.
Listen: Spotify | Apple Music
Key Later Version: October 1980 Radio City Music Hall, New York City, N.Y. The Dead introduced an unplugged—but no less exploratory—“Bird Song” in 1980, a high-flying highlight of the band’s Reckoning live LP.
The Grateful Dead performing circa 1970. Photo via Robert Altman/Getty Images.
“Playing in the Band”
November 18, 1972
Hofheinz Pavilion, Houston, Tex.
Written by: Bob Weir and Robert Hunter
*The Dead’s archetypal meta-anthem, with every version from 1972 through 1974 diving into deep, heady, and swinging space-jazz. Part of Bob Weir’s first major batch of original songwriting and included with an abnormally good studio jam on 1972’s Ace, “Playing in the Band” was played as a standalone first set closer in the early ’70s, migrating to the second half of the show in later years where it was often split apart by one or several songs inserted between the song’s beginning and final chorus. *
1972 was the year of “Playing in the Band,” played more often than any other song and site of some of the band’s deepest explorations. Bob Weir swaggers his way through the meta lyrics of the three-minute pop form, which then melts on a downbeat directly into the outer reaches of a jam that comes as close as the Dead ever achieved to what jazzheads refer to as fire music. Swelling insistently through several movements, the rhythm section pilots—Billy Kreutzmann approaching Elvin Jones-like intensity and Phil Lesh constructing architectural leads only to explode them with double-stopped, low-frequency bass bombs. Interlaced throughout, Garcia’s strobing guitar creates a zoetrope-like effect of white-hot intensity. When it’s time for re-entry, Donna Jean Godchaux wails as though birthing the chorus’s reprise from her very loins, and one is overtaken in ecstasy by the feeling of having emerged triumphant following a journey into the unknown. –Ariella Stok
Listen: Archive.org
Key Later Version: November 6, 1979, The Spectrum, Philadelphia, Pa. Keyboardist Brent Mydland had joined the band earlier that year and already his deep rapport with Garcia is on display, while the arrival of new synths provides a whole new sonic space-time-continuum for this “Playing” to tear asunder.
Jam
July 27, 1973
Watkins Glen Motor Speedway, Watkins Glen, N.Y.
Written by: Grateful Dead
Well, duh. But not as duh as you maybe think.
Oh, of course the Dead almost always jammed, but it was less often that they produced a piece of improvisation from a standing start. It certainly happened occasionally, but never in front of a larger audience than at the Watkins Glen Motor Speedway in July 1973, which itself held the title of largest concert in rock history until Rock in Rio unseated it in 2001. Sharing a bill with the Band and the Allman Brothers in front of an estimated 500,000 people, the three groups played unannounced public warm-ups in front of the assembling crowd the day before the ticketed event, with the Dead deciding (naturally) to play two warm-up sets. One second they’re tuning, and then a cymbal swell drops them into a fluid musical conversation that hints at songs they haven’t even written yet. Mostly it’s just an easy-going dialog between the quintet where one can hear the the chillest iteration of the band’s single-drummer 1971-1973 peak, Bill Kreutzmann’s free dance holding together star-splatter by Garcia, Lesh, and the gang. –Jesse Jarnow
Listen: Spotify | Apple Music
Key Avant-Dead Jam: September 11, 1974 Alexandra Palace, London, UK. A number of 1974 performances featured duet performances by Phil Lesh and proto-noise piece *Seastones *composer Ned Lagin, some of which segued from Lagin’s “moment forms” into the Dead’s set as the band joined in, including this magical improvisation from London’s Alexandra Palace that flows from modular synth eruptions towards the friendly skies of “Eyes of the World.”
Key Later Version: October 26, 1989 Miami Arena, Miami, Fla. By the ’80s, the Dead’s free jamming mostly isolated itself in the guise of their second set “Drumz/Space” segments, the primary forum for the band’s remaining avant-garde leanings and musique concrete-like MIDI explorations, as on this post-“Dark Star” exploration from 1989.
“Weather Report Suite: Prelude/Part 1/Part 2: Let It Grow”
November 21, 1973
Denver Coliseum, Denver, Colo.
Written by: Bob Weir/Bob Weir and Eric Anderson/Bob Weir and John Perry Barlow
*Perhaps Bob Weir’s most ambitious composition, sad autumnal folk bursts open into elemental Garcia leads. Played 46 times in 1973 and 1974, Weir dropped the gentler first two segments of the piece when they returned in 1976 with second drummer Mickey Hart, though “Let It Grow” remained consistently in rotation through the remainder of the band’s career, a late first set home for improv. *
First played as a complete piece in September of 1973, Bob Weir’s “Weather Report Suite” was a coming of age for the band’s rhythm guitarist and youngest member. First fiddling with the baroque chords of the “Prelude” during earlier jams, the full composition was perhaps Weir’s earthy answer to Jerry Garcia’s “Eyes of the World” for the *Wake of the Flood *era. In Denver on November 21, 1973, the “Suite” is both fragile and reassuring to start, each instrument falling into place. With subtle interplay between Lesh’s unique lead bass, Garcia’s shimmering slide, and Keith Godchaux’s Fender Rhodes setting up a call and three-part-harmony response, it all moves towards the breaking storm of “Let It Grow.” There, Kreutzmann’s light and lean drums lead tempo shifts in a dynamic and subtle jazz jam, opening up to the wild beyond. –Cori Taratoot
Listen: Spotify | Apple Music
Key Later Version: June 24, 1985 River Bend Music Theater, Cincinnati, Ohio. The entire band launches full-throttle into a furious, tight and edgy version, with Garcia finding raging solos in every open space.
“Here Comes Sunshine”
December 19, 1973
Curtis Hixon Convention Hall, Tampa, Fla.
Written by: Jerry Garcia and Robert Hunter
*Gang harmonies and bright syncopation made for a song whose original incarnation lasted barely a year. Inspired by Abbey Road-era Beatles, “Here Comes Sunshine” was one of over a half-dozen Garcia/Hunter songs debuted February 8, 1973 at Stanford University, some (but not all) destined for that year’s self-released Wake of the Flood. *
Dick Latvala began collecting Dead tapes while working as a zookeeper in Hawaii in the late 1970s, swapping bundles of weed—which he packed into reel-to-reel boxes and cavalierly dispatched through the U.S. Mail—for more and better music. Latvala, who went on to become the Dead’s official tape archivist, picked this show for the inaugural installment of Dick’s Picks, the series of official releases of live shows he curated for the band. He’s said that this particular iteration of “Here Comes Sunshine”—a cheerful song about the 1948 flooding of the Columbia River basin, in Vanport, Oregon—inspired that release, which in turn appropriately finally opened the band’s archival floodgates. As a blind introduction to the Dead’s strange musical alchemy—the ways in which, on certain nights, all five players seemed to operate as a single, glinting organism—it remains unimpeachable. –Amanda Petrusich
Listen: Spotify | Apple Music
The Grateful Dead circa 1970. Photo via Chris Walter/Getty Images.
“Stella Blue”
December 19, 1973
Curtis Hixon Convention Hall, Tampa, Fla.
Written by: Jerry Garcia and Robert Hunter
*An aching, luminous Garcia ballad, home to some of his most soulful singing and guitar playing. Most often, “Stella Blue” was performed as an epilogue to the band's furthest out jam segment of a given night, a tender affirmation of spirit following the symbolic (and actual) psychedelic journey the second set represented to many in their audience. *
Even to the most frenzied and infatuated fan, Jerry Garcia can remain an inscrutable frontman. But “Stella Blue”—which, in this version, drifts out of an arch and dissonant feedback jam, ethereal and spooky, like a genie emerging from the neck of a bottle—betrays a specific fragility. This is arguably Garcia at his most human. Stella Blue is a minor character in Vladimir Nabokov’s novel Pale Fire, but the song’s lyrics, written by Robert Hunter, feel more personal; they recount a grim existential spiral, in which feelings of hopelessness become increasingly difficult to beat back. Some heads prefer the later, two-drummer versions, but there’s something about the starkness of this one that feels especially moving. “In the end, there’s still that song,” Garcia promises. For a moment, he sounds nearly buoyant. –Amanda Petrusich
Listen: Spotify | Apple Music
Key Later Version: July 13, 1984 Greek Theater, Berkeley, Calif. Though the band doesn’t sound as if they’re on the same page until Garcia starts singing, the song’s quiet moments (especially its first three minutes) are mid-’80s Garcia vocals at their soulful and imperfect best.
“Eyes of the World”
June 18, 1974
Freedom Hall, Louisville, Ky.
Written by: Jerry Garcia and Robert Hunter
A just-exactly-perfect almost-breezy jam for a summer’s day.
“Eyes of the World” first appeared live in 1973, as the Dead began to introduce some more jazz-inflected architecture to their open-ended jams—a fruition, in part, of some ear-opening exposure on earlier shared bills with Bitches Brew-era Miles Davis. “Eyes” had a catchy main guitar riff (weirdly similar, I’ve noticed, to the one in Daft Punk’s “Get Lucky”), a beguiling “lazy gait,” crypto-cosmic lyrics, and—in its first couple years, anyway—a long, raging coda that went through a series of key changes and funky signatures. There are many splendid examples of this coda from 1973 and 1974. But I always go back to 6/18/74. Despite some shrill vocals and Schroeder-y piano, this version has an uncharacteristically crisp beginning (they were more precise when they had only one drummer), and great interstitial Garcia solos. The song’s long, flowering run-out seems almost composed, as their best improvisations tended to do—an impression strengthened a few years ago when a pianist named Holly Bowling performed the Louisville “Eyes” note for note. –Nick Paumgarten
Listen: Spotify | Apple Music
Key Later Version: September 3, 1977 Raceway Park, Englishtown, N.J. After 1975, the Dead scrapped the coda, and over the course of the next decade, the renditions got faster and cokier, almost to the point of parody—an acquired taste. Along the way, though, there’s 9/3/77. The tempo is just right, and Garcia’s leads catch fire.
Key Much Later Version: March 29, 1990 Nassau Coliseum, Uniondale, N.Y. Fans of later Dead are fond of the of this version featuring Branford Marsalis on saxophone, capturing the sextet and guest in full arena-Dixieland toot.
“Truckin’”
September 18, 1974
Parc des Expositions, Dijon, France
Written by: Jerry Garcia, Bob Weir, Phil Lesh, and Robert Hunter
*Perhaps the Dead’s most identifiable song, a boogie with an occasional backdoor into the cosmos. A rare autobiographical group composition, “Truckin’” was designed to be a modular Road Song, with Robert Hunter supplying new verses as the band had further adventures—he even wrote some on request in the late ‘70s but the band never sang them. *
The Grateful Dead are all about The Road, and “Truckin’” is one of the all-time great Road songs. It got some burn on FM radio in the ’70s and positioned the Dead in a cultural moment connected to R. Crumb and CB Radio. It also gave the group its defining lyric: Without “Truckin’,” headline writers wouldn’t have words to describe all of our long and strange trips. Live, it was a supremely flexible song and one of their most-played, fitting neatly into acoustic sets but also stretching into long inspired jams. Bill Kreutzmann’s shuffling groove is key, chugging and choogling forward with a steady-state insistence not unlike the motorik beat of krautrock. Sometimes Garcia solos in Chuck Berry mode, but in 1974 he was taking it to slightly weirder places. In front of a few hundred people in Dijon, France, their smallest crowd in years, this version finds the song at its jazziest, with mind-bending guitar interplay. –Mark Richardson
Listen: Archive.org
Key Later Version: October 18, 1978 Winterland, San Francisco, Calif. A rare late-‘70s Phil Lesh vocal spot, “Truckin’”’s ambling country-fried vibe hardened into an edgier post-gas crisis model, led by Bob Weir’s police whistle and a jam peak that turns the “Other One” riff inside out.
“Morning Dew”
October 18, 1974
Winterland, San Francisco, Calif.
Written by: Bonnie Dobson and Tim Rose
Ballad about nuclear holocaust transmogrified into showstopping existential soul-folk by Garcia.
This folk song about two lone survivors of a nuclear apocalypse entered the rotation in 1967 but really became a Garcia set-piece and gut-puncher once the band slowed it down in the early ‘70s. As the Dead’s premier revelatory ballad, coming after the chaos of a jam or space, it almost always laid ‘em flat, despite its oblique lyrics and simple chord progression. As time went on, Garcia often seemed to pour more into it than pretty much anything else. The song has two crescendos, each building from delicate quiet to cathartic guitar-god keening and fanning. At Winterland, on October 18, 1974, during the band’s last stand before an 18-month touring hiatus, they performed a titanic version that made it sound like they were quitting for real, at the peak of their powers. –Nick Paumgarten
Listen: Archive.org
Key Later Version: October 12, 1984 Augusta Civic Center, Augusta, Maine. A powerhouse song even when Garcia was in dire health, it somehow suited his husky voice and haunted aspects, as it does on this ragged but glorious heart-tugger from a special evening.
“Uncle John’s Band”
October 19, 1974
Winterland, San Francisco, Calif.
Written by: Jerry Garcia and Robert Hunter
A campfire standard with a few tricky chord changes and an ineffable melody lifted from a Greek folk song.
The studio recording of “Uncle John's Band,” from 1970’s classic Workingman’s Dead, is a pleasant slice of Americana, centered around acoustic rhythm guitars and vocal harmonies inspired by Crosby, Stills & Nash. While it ultimately became a peaceful call to worship for legions of Deadheads, its lyrical origins are more of a countercultural call to decamp. In this breezy performance from Winterland ‘74—during the “retirement” run filmed for the Grateful Dead Movie*—*the Latin swing sets itself cleverly against easy hippie fare like “are you kind?” and “ain't no time to hate.” But this is a folk song with teeth. As the song’s jam shifts into a minor key and a fierce 7/4 time signature, Garcia explores both dark and light, running arpeggios up and down the scale, using the jam as a springboard for some of his most explosive playing. “Uncle John's Band” is a time-honored “greatest hit” for a reason: its invitation to drop out and turn on is evergreen. And hard-learned warnings like “when life looks like easy street, there is danger at your door,” are as true today as ever. –Gabe Tesoriero
Listen: Archive.org
Key Proto Version: November 8, 1969 Fillmore Auditorium, San Francisco, Calif. Before “Uncle John's Band”’s late 1969 debut as a singalong, Garcia played the over-fuzzed melody at the heart of a few jams, and it's hard not to hear it as a pivot point between the band's wilder psychedelic leanings and the oncoming folk boom.
Key Later Version: October 9, 1989 Hampton Coliseum, Hampton, Va. From one of two shows billed as “Formerly the Warlocks,” this smoking “Uncle John’s Band” is way up, Jerry bringing the MIDI-fired pyrotechnics, and two separate B-section jams.
“Crazy Fingers”
June 22, 1976
Tower Theater, Upper Darby, Pa.
Written by: Jerry Garcia and Robert Hunter
Haiku-like verses and a delicate vibe on the line of hippie-reggae and something more elusive.
A product of the band’s extended woodshed period at Bob Weir’s home studio in 1975, “Crazy Fingers”’s quiet reflects the band’s scaled-back approach for their touring hiatus. Debuting as a set-opener during the second of their four appearances that year, I prefer the June 22, 1976 version from just after they returned to the road. The crowd audibly responds as Jerry gently starts to sing, which is, honestly, part of the thrill of listening to live Dead; it’s almost always at least somewhat interactive. Since post-Garcia Dead fans must rely on recordings, every whistle, scream, and even side conversation from an audience-made tape can help bring a set to life. Unlike anything else Garcia and Hunter wrote in its lyrical minimalism, the haiku-like verses are set to a tune that’s a touch dub-like. With a more pronounced island vibe on the *Blues For Allah *studio version, the delicate jam offered a variety of possibilities, here spiraling inventively upward and eventually back down to “Comes a Time”. Like many great Dead songs, it’s a little dark, a lot introspective, and yet still delicate and somehow optimistic. –Mariel Cruz
What to Listen For: A fragile vibe to begin with, “Crazy Fingers” could vary widely, at its best blooming into intricate and quiet improvisations as singular in the band’s catalog as the lyrics.
Listen: Archive.org
Key Proto Version: “Distorto”, February 28, 1975, Ace’s, Mill Valley, Calif. Developed in the studio during the sessions that eventually yielded Blues For Allah, where the band allowed themselves the freedom to let jams develop, “Crazy Fingers” began life as a piece of music called “Distorto”.
“The Wheel”
June 29, 1976
Auditorium Theater, Chicago, IL
Written by: Jerry Garcia, Bill Kreutzmann, and Robert Hunter
Written without beginning or ending as part of a side-long suite improvised in the studio, “The Wheel” was often heard rolling out of the drumz/space segments.
“The Wheel,” a Hunter/Garcia composition written spontaneously during the sessions for Garcia’s seminal 1972 LP Garcia, didn’t see its live debut with the Dead until June of 1976. Driven by the rolling thunder of the drummers, Phil Lesh’s loping bass line, and Jerry’s delicate, haunting guitar work, “The Wheel”—often in its slot coming out of Space—has served as a vehicle for some high-wire experimentation over the years. In this performance from Chicago’s Auditorium Theatre on June 29, Garcia's voice and guitar work positively sparkle. Recalling the bright pedal steel jangle of the excellent studio version, the guitar line builds and spirals upward. Between the plaintive, meditative chants of the verses, Garcia again takes off. In the song’s traditional exploratory outro, Jerry teases a phrase from “The Other One”, galloping into a syncopated double-time jam with hair on fire. Lyrically, “The Wheel” is a call to follow the muse, the shared sense of experience that is the Dead “trip” itself. Musically, it’s breathtaking, as the best Grateful Dead can be. –Gabe Tesoriero
Listen: Archive.org
Key Later Version: March 24, 1990 Knickerbocker Arena, Albany, N.Y. Brightly colored by Brent Mydland’s phrasing this version of “The Wheel” drives and pulsates, gathering steam and packing a real wallop in just four minutes and change.
“Comes a Time”
September 28, 1976
Onondaga County War Memorial, Syracuse, N.Y.
Written by: Jerry Garcia and Robert Hunter
Jerry Garcia and Robert Hunter at their most vulnerable and Garcia’s soloing at its most lyrical.
The placement of this beautiful, vulnerable, introspective Garcia song (coming out of a wooly-ass jam at the end of a kinda-too-long “Samson and Delilah” and segueing into “Drums”) is a little weird, I guess. The whole band's playing is sparse and gentle, like everyone's choosing each lonely note they play with deep thought and restraint. Even Phil is barely playing, relatively speaking. Jerry and Donna Jean’s voices sound a little wounded, huddled together on a wobbly perch just above the group. There’s a modest yet lovely guitar break that flutters upward into last verse and a staggering--and surprisingly brief—solo at the end over simple repeated F#m & G chorus tag. It’s filled with anger and yearning, despair and resentment, and a lifetime of pain helping to squeeze out each wiry note. It threatens to unfurl into a litany of emotion, but... then hi-hats, and before you know it Mickey is doing paradiddles on what sounds like a Tasmanian log. Feels like Garcia is changing the subject. Revealing, if you overthink it (like I'm doing); beautiful and blue if you just float along. –James McNew
Listen: Spotify | Apple Music
What to Listen For: That last guitar solo!
Key Slightly Later Version: May 9, 1977 War Memorial Auditorium, Buffalo, N.Y. Debuted in 1971, “Comes a Time” was included on Garcia’s 1976 solo album Reflections and soon resurfaced in the Dead’s live sets. Each with a towering final solo, each of the five versions from May 1977 might be celebrated as a national holiday, but especially Buffalo.
“Terrapin Station”
May 7, 1977
Boston Garden, Mass.
Written by: Jerry Garcia and Robert Hunter
Garcia and Hunter’s mysterious folk epic, parable-driven balladry building to a series of near-orchestral peaks. With a few exceptions, “Terrapin Station”’s far-out destination was usually “Drumz” > “Space,” a position of gravitas in the Dead’s setlists, except for a period in the mid-‘80s when Weir sometimes used it to set up his good-time calypso cover, “Man Smart, Woman Smarter”.
Halfway through the ‘70s, prog was all but dead: King Crimson had disbanded, Yes had gone off the deep end, and Genesis lost their most forward-thinking member. But then, in 1977, the Grateful Dead debuted “Terrapin Station.” The title track to their glossy ‘77 album and the final epic from Garcia and Hunter, “Terrapin” was a completely different beast from even the lengthiest of compositions that preceded it.
Melodic and precise where “Dark Star” was jazzy and open-ended, “Terrapin Station” was a powerful addition to the band’s set during arguably their finest year. Written and recorded as a larger suite, the live versions only included its first few sections, growing luminous on the band’s spring tour. At their Boston show during their legendary run in May ‘77, they performed a careful, confident rendition, propelled by Jerry’s emotive vocals and solos. The band was at their most well-rehearsed here, and “Terrapin” glides with an otherworldly energy, making it a momentous second set opener. Its masterful series of crescendos is maybe the decade’s best proof that the Dead’s gifts for tight songwriting and sprawling musicality were not mutually exclusive. –Sam Sodomsky
What to Listen For: The moment the song upshifts from what could be a traditional folk ballad into a grander composition.
Listen: Archive.org
Key Proto Version: March 18, 1977 Winterland, San Francisco, Calif. The earlier sections are still finding their form, but a one-night-only performance of “At a Siding,” minus the vocals on the album version, provides an appropriately mystical destination suggested by the lyrics.
Key Later Version: March 15, 1990 Capitol Centre, Landover, Md. On Phil Lesh’s 50th birthday, on a tour many latter day fans hold next to legendary outings like Europe ‘72, the band work the final refrain until it balloons into a world of its own.
“Mississippi Half-Step Uptown Toodleloo”
May 7, 1977
Boston Garden, Boston, Mass.
Written by: Jerry Garcia and Robert Hunter
*One of the final songs from Garcia and Hunter’s initial burst of Americana, debuted in late 1972, “Half-Step” took a few years to develop its rushing flow. The song’s spirited tempo and carefree farewells to Southern skies placed it squarely in both first and second set-opener positions as a crowd favorite. *
Told from the perspective of a cheating gambler embracing a life on the run, “Mississippi Half-Step Uptown Toodleloo” remained intact stylistically and structurally from its 1972 debut through the band’s last tour in 1995. The song found Robert Hunter continuing to portray American dreamers with lyrics both ambiguous and specific, including a line about losing one’s boots that seems to echo Garcia’s own life-altering brush with death in a 1960 car crash, in which he was literally blown from his shoes.
In a near-perfect Boston performance on May 7, 1977, Garcia’s voice is sweet and strong. Keith Godchaux brings the Dixieland piano as Bob Weir expertly places his rhythm arpeggios snugly alongside Garcia’s crisp and clear leads. The drummers press hard as Garcia fans power chords in the lead-up to the song’s refrain, the sound of a band riding the rapids together. Pulling back into a three-part harmony, a crescendo dissolves into a version of Johnny Cash’s “Big River” for the ages. –Cori Taratoot
Listen: Archive.org
Key Later Version: April 2, 1990 The Omni, Atlanta, Ga. On a transcendent spring night with the band in top form, Garcia soothes and brightens, finding the Band’s “The Weight” and a loving Southern audience in the closing chords.
The Grateful Dead performing with the Wall of Sound at the Iowa State Fair circa 1974. Photo via Kirk West/Getty Images.
“Scarlet Begonias” > ”Fire On the Mountain”
May 8, 1977
Barton Hall, Ithaca, N.Y.
Written by: Jerry Garcia and Robert Hunter/Mickey Hart and Robert Hunter
A canonical studio-perfect take with its own underground legend, and a whole family tree of beautiful relatives.
The “Scarlet Begonias”>“Fire on the Mountain” pairing was introduced in 1977 and soon became a popular mainstay as a second-set opener. “Scarlet,” a lysergic Hunter-Garcia ode to a girl, had been around for several years, and to many old hands was at its freshest in 1974, as a stand-alone first-set morsel of syncopated polyphony: peak Kreutzmann, every instrument ricocheting off the rest. “Fire,” introduced in 1977 by the drummer Mickey Hart, with an uncharacteristically foundational bass line and a taste of calypso, became a springboard for knee-bending Garcia solos. In the early '80s, the song gained muscle with the addition of keyboardist Brent Mydland's B3. The transition between the two was typically an excursive delight with whiffs of Coltrane and Ives.
Choosing the best is nigh impossible, in light of all the variables; the crispest “Scarlet” may have been followed by a less-than-transcendent transition or a draggy “Fire.” I and a team of fellow nerds have spent weeks re-listening, and are no closer to a consensus. The most widely canonized version is from Barton Hall, 5/8/77, a surprise actual top 10 hit when it was finally released this year for its 40th anniversary. Overrated, in my book, but it’s as good a starter kit as any: fewer flaws. They played “Scarlet” > “Fire” well and often that month. Each rendition seems to have its partisans. Its propulsive, joyful vigor was perhaps the most consistent manifestation of a band on a hot streak. –Nick Paumgarten
Listen: Spotify | Apple Music
Key Later Version: November 30, 1980 Fox Theater, Atlanta, Ga. Big sound, sly swagger, regal solos, a complex and careening transition, and a more than respectable “Fire.”
Key Earlier “Scarlet Begonias”: June 16, 1974 Iowa State Fairgrounds, Des Moines, Iowa. An ace example of the standalone cowbell-less “Scarlet” with a puzzlebox jam that contains infinite futures.
“Sugaree”
May 22, 1977
Hollywood Sportatorium, Hollywood, Fla.
Written by: Jerry Garcia and Robert Hunter
Easygoing standard for both the Dead and the ‘70s & ‘80s incarnations of the Jerry Garcia Band for Jerry to get loose in C.
“Sugaree,” a platform for soulful Garcia vocals and guitar, is an exercise in contrast, soaring above the emotionally trying narrative of intimate entanglements. When debating about the best versions of “Sugaree” there is always talk of Garcia’s solos, but that implies that the rest of the band lays back. It’s the telepathic double drumming of Bill Kreutzmann and Mickey Hart that makes this an essential “Sugaree” on an East Coast tour where all 10 versions of the song feature their own enormous charms. Here, Phil Lesh’s lopey bass climbs around the drummers’ pounding rhythms like a winding vine; Bob Weir, Keith Godchaux, and Garcia are effervescent buds blooming. The song eases into a lullaby rocking before one final emphatic reminder “Just don’t tell ‘em you know me,” sung by Garcia, his voice at its most empathetic. –Buzz Poole
What to Listen For: Uncharacteristically uncomplicated lyrics by Robert Hunter, invested with great meaning and intent by Garcia.
Listen: Spotify | Apple Music
Key Later Version: June 5, 1993 Giants Stadium, East Rutherford, N.J. At over 14 rollicking minutes this “Sugaree” proves that up until the very end the Dead could still produce surprises that wowed even the most jaded head. The whole band is in fine form, and the slight nasal frailty of Garcia’s voice only enhances the lyrical drama.
“Wharf Rat”
May 22, 1977
Hollywood Sportatorium, Hollywood, Fla.
Written by: Jerry Garcia and Robert Hunter
Epic redemption from Garcia and Hunter, capable of stunning quiet in enormous venues.
Despite the fluffy flower-power image of the Grateful Dead, much of the band’s actual catalog is made up of action-packed outlaw tunes of the type usually associated with Waylon Jennings or Johnny Cash. Drinking, gambling, gunfights, bastard children, and freight trains are favored subjects, often all in the same song. The slow, stormy Garcia/Hunter hobo tune, “Wharf Rat,” first played in ’71, is from that hard-edged tradition, but it stands out for being a character study rather than a chase scene. A hypnotically curling minor key groove gives way to an even quieter vocal bridge that edges as close as the Grateful Dead gets to gospel. Until, that is, Garcia and co. unleashing a holy squall of redemptive sound and the powerful refrain, “*I’ll get up and fly away!” * If that sounds like church to you, say your prayers to 5/22/77, when the band truly maximizes the extreme dynamics of the song. –Will Welch
What to Listen For: In just over nine minutes, the Dead go from the quietest quiet to the loudest loud and back again, always with plenty of open space for full Phil Lesh bass maneuvers.
Lore: Recognizing a fellow alcoholic in “Wharf Rat”’s August West, a group of Deadheads founded the Wharf Rats in 1984, a group that gathered under yellow balloons at Dead setbreaks, and who remain a fixture at post-Garcia incarnations and even shows by cover bands.
Listen: Spotify | Apple Music
“Help On The Way” > “Slipknot!” > “Franklin’s Tower”
June 9, 1977
Winterland, San Francisco, Calif.
Written by: Jerry Garcia and Robert Hunter/Grateful Dead/Jerry Garcia, Bill Kreutzmann, and Robert Hunter
Two parts of psychedelic prog followed by an extended three-chord bliss-out.
Written during the year the band spent off the road in 1975, “Help on the Way”/“Slipknot!”/“Franklin’s Tower” moves between the peak Dead prog of the suite’s first two parts to the unambiguous major key release one of the Dead’s all-time three-chord jam wonders. Though they nailed a memorably sparkling version at its debut in’75 (building up under Bill Graham's member-by-member introduction) and pushed the instrumental “Slipknot!” to the far reaches during various excursions in’76, the final version from the band's legendary spring ’77 touring season was perhaps the truest map of the suite's tricky paths, space valleys, and infinitely ascending boogie. The penultimate take before shelving the trio (though not “Franklin's Tower”) until the early '80s, Garcia occupies Robert Hunter's existential plea for love on "Help on the Way", extending the elliptical mood right up to the edge of confusion during the ensuing “Slipknot!”. During “Franklin's Tower”, especially on a fan-made mix blending an audience recording with a soundboard, as the band jam through chorus after chorus for the hometown dancers, one can almost feel the balcony shake at Winterland, the former ice skating rink that was the Dead's local venue in San Francisco for most of the '70s. –Jesse Jarnow
What to Listen For: Usually played to open sets, “Help on the Way” and “Slipknot” were as tricky and composed as the Dead got, their execution a virtuosic feat by itself.
Listen: Archive.org
Key Later Version: October 8, 1989 Hampton Coliseum, Hampton, Va. During one of two bust-out filled shows billed as “Formerly the Warlocks”, the band picked up “Help on the Way”/“Slipknot!”/“Franklin’s Tower” for the first time in a half-decade and reasserted their older, weirder selves.
Jerry Garcia and Bob Weir performing with the Grateful Dead circa 1976. Photo via Larry Hulst/Getty Images.
“Jack Straw”
December 29, 1977
Winterland, San Francisco, Calif.
Written by: Bob Weir and Robert Hunter
Bob Weir’s first great song, cinematic Americana debuted in 1971 that took on a variety of moods over the years.
Among Robert Hunter’s most unflinching takes on American frontier ethics, early readings of “Jack Straw” were psychedelic country—Garcia and Keith Godchaux in full Bakersfield mode, Weir’s tenor quavering—but jam-free. In later periods, subtlety could be at a premium, but the instrumental build and interplay could be fierce, with opportunities for Phil Lesh to drop resonating bass bombs. Perhaps the perfect, most balanced “Straw” took place somewhere in 1977, when narration, performance and jam all crackled. This opener to a magically under-rated New Year’s stand burns from the get-go, sacrificing nothing. The drummers’ gallop pushes the music, while Garcia’s lead lines play the part of a majestic dramaturg, even accenting his “one small point of pride” line with gusto. It is Cormac McCarthy-meets-Ansel Adams stuff, and when the twin-guitar power-chords drop into the tale’s denouement—another ballad of the Grateful dead, no less, the folktale from which the band drew their name—the energy is blazing. –Piotr Orlov
Listen: Spotify | Apple Music
Key Later Version: January 11, 1979 Nassau Coliseum, Uniondale, N.Y. “Used to play for acid, now we play for Clive,” Bob Weir sings, referencing their new record company boss, Clive Davis, just before a crackling jam where Garcia’s lysergic-bluegrass guitar burns hot and Phil provides the bombs. ____
Watch: August 27, 1972 Old Renaissance Fairgrounds, Veneta, Ore. A perfectly executed take of the song’s lean early incarnation, with airy one-drummer dynamics and wide-open three-part vocals from Weir, Garcia, and Lesh.
“The Music Never Stopped”
February 3, 1978
Dane County Coliseum, Madison, WI
Written by: Bob Weir and John Perry Barlow
Bob Weir and John Perry Barlow’s classic meta-boogie
Of all the Dead’s post-Europe ‘72 live war-horses, few were born as eminently ready for the limelight as Weir’s Blues For Allah gem. (Even its 8/13/75 debut is often praised as perfect.) Yet in late ‘77/early ’78, the band did futz with the song’s arrangement, making all future “Music” jams two-part affairs. Between the end of the lyrics, and the repetitive closing drive on the central melody, there appeared a waltzing build of an interlude, called, by some, “on the bubble”; and when the two parts clicked, end-of-first-set nirvana was sure to occur. Which is exactly what transpired in the familiar confines of the Dane County Coliseum. The reading of the song is fun and taut — Phil chugging, Garcia picking (and cooing a wonderful harmony), Donna Jean and Bob in great voice — but the fireworks alight around 3:12. The first great “on the bubble”! Garcia floats heavenwards, the drummers and Lesh close behind, Weir and Keith soon locking into the rising. The crescendo back into the “Music” theme is flawless, before the Captain leads a stomping boogie towards set-break. So well arranged, it’s hard to call it a “jam.” –Piotr Orlov
Listen: Spotify | Apple Music
“Estimated Prophet”
December 26, 1979
Oakland Auditorium, Oakland, Calif.
Written by: Bob Weir and John Perry Barlow
*Grateful Dead-style paranoid space-dub weirdness via Bob Weir, a building block for elongated second set jam suites. *
Debuted during the well-oiled year of 1977, Bob Weir and lyricist John Perry Barlow’s “Estimated Prophet” captured late ’70s hippie paranoia in the form a of a slinky 7/8 reggae groove. A lope spacious enough for the band’s drummers, it became a platform for the endless avuncular chattering of Jerry Garcia’s Mu-tron-drenched lead guitar, and a reliable entrance to the type of moody, heady psychedelia that was all too often missing from the Dead’s new material in later years. Though one of the few effective homes for Keith Godchaux’s Polymoog synth, it wasn't until Brent Mydland replaced him in 1979 that the song really opened up. On opening night of Mydland’s first New Year’s run, the band pushed almost the 20-minute mark. Garcia’s mid-song solo is dripping and dubby, though the jam itself doesn’t really take off until about 14 minutes in, when Garcia jumps out of 7-time and into the free territories, Weir steps in for co-noodle duty, Phil Lesh drops into a thrilling bassline reminiscent of the Dead’s long-shelved “Caution (Do Not Stop on the Tracks)” and Mydland’s keyboards bounce so precisely they sound like modular synth. –Jesse Jarnow
Listen: Spotify | Apple Music
Key Later Version: September 22, 1993 Madison Square Garden, New York, N.Y. Free jazz saxophone hero David Murray duets with Bob Weir's scat singing and Vince Welnick's plinking keyboards before the main event, howling in a buzzing jet-plane dogfight with Garcia's MIDI-ready guitar in front of a sold-out arena.
“Shakedown Street”
December 31, 1984
San Francisco Civic Center, San Francisco, Calif.
Written by: Jerry Garcia and Robert Hunter
*__The Dead delve into disco-funk darkness with plenty of room for (wait for it) Jerry’s guitar. __First song, first set (or second)—translation: it’s party time.
*
“Disco Dead,” sneered some of the faithful at the title cut from the Dead’s 1978 album. Somehow, fans found the idea of boogying to an endless groove untenable when it involved wearing something other than tie-dye. Meanwhile, the Dead’s loose double-drumming never quite fit even with the counterculture-weaned DJs at the birth of disco. But time has shown the lasting potency of both approaches, while the tapes let us hear the sparks when they connect. “Shakedown Street” was the Dead’s most overt funk move yet, aided and abetted on album by producer Lowell George of Little Feat (speaking of white-boy longhairs who liked to get down). Per usual, years of playing around with the groove, not to mention that sneaky descending three-note riff, both tightened and liquefied the music. Leading off with it on New Year’s Eve amounted to a mission statement. So did Garcia fanning out solos, with and without his pedals (check the lovely single-note flurries around 11:00), like he was born to boogie-oogie-oogie, too. –Michaelangelo Matos
What to Listen For: At 7:30, Jerry and his wah-wah pedal decide to have a little conversation.
Listen: Spotify | Apple Music
Key Later Version: September 22, 1991 Boston Garden, Mass. The Grateful Dead plus touring pianist Bruce Hornsby and the arena energy of the east coast, a more intense fanbase than their more laidback California home.
“Touch of Grey”
December 15, 1986
Oakland Coliseum Arena, Oakland, Calif.
Written by: Jerry Garcia and Robert Hunter
With perfectly wry lyrics, the Dead’s only top 10 single was still a source of musical conversation when played live.
Most Dead songs underwent their greatest gestational shifts in performance, but count on the biggest outlier of their career to have evolved differently. Robert Hunter had written “Touch of Grey” in 1980 as, in Garcia’s words, “a sort of dry, satirical piece with an intimate feel” and Garcia decided to rework the melody and a couple of the lines;. “‘We will get by’ said something to me, so I set it to play big,” he said after the song came out. “My version still has the ironic bite of the lyrics, but what comes across is a more celebratory quality.” Debuted by the Dead in 1982, the song’s lyrics changed slightly but parameters remained tight for most of the Dead’s history. But that rousing chorus and chiming melody made it that most improbable of Dead artifacts: a natural hit single. Opening the first Dead show after Jerry’s debilitating coma in 1986, its jolly defiance set the tone for what, improbably, would be the Dead’s biggest year to date. Nearly 20 years after the Summer of Love, the Dead’s first bona fide mainstream radio hit inspired a new generation to hit the road, even as it dodged the sneers of an older cohort that dismissed them as “Touchheads.” –Michaelangelo Matos
What to Listen For: The crowd going ape-shit the first time Garcia hits “I will survive” at this and any version after.
Listen: Archive.org
Key Proto Version__:__ Robert Hunter solo, October 26, 1982 The Landmark, Kingston, N.Y. Both caustic and optimistic solo, songwriter Robert Hunter’s early version finds its own (almost) equally charming setting for the lyrics.
“So Many Roads”
July 9, 1995
Soldier Field, Chicago, Ill.
Written by: Jerry Garcia and Robert Hunter
*One of Jerry Garcia’s last original songs, debuted in 1992, a powerful late career statement. *Part of a final songwriting burst with Robert Hunter, “So Many Roads” was one of several introspective songs that were powerful highlights during the Dead’s uneven last years, including “The Days Between” and “Lazy River Road”. ____
The Grateful Dead’s final show is, inevitably, a rough listen, mostly owing to Jerry Garcia’s audibly declining health – at this point he had just a month to live. Even with Teleprompter assistance, he fumbles over lyrics he had sung hundreds of times. He’s clearly struggling with some of the guitar work, including an utterly botched solo on “Unbroken Chain.” But even in this defiled state, Garcia could dig deep and rise to the occasion. World-weary and allusion-heavy, the band never completed a studio recording of “So Many Roads.” At Soldier Field, Garcia finds moments of quiet grace in the thicket of the latter-day Dead’s clatter, delivering sparkling solos, finally leaning into an extended emotional closing chorus over appropriately “Knockin’ On Heaven’s Door”-esque backing vocals. And then, as if to break the spell in the most inappropriate fashion possible, the Grateful Dead transition into keyboardist Vince Welnick’s godawful “Samba in the Rain.” Nevertheless, it sounded as if Garcia had, for a little while, eased his soul. –Tyler Wilcox
Listen: Spotify | Apple Music
Key Earlier Version: October 1, 1994 Boston Garden, Mass. Even the most hardened '90s skeptics will almost surely by gobsmacked by Garcia's final vocal eruptions, hitting a reserve he never quite possessed even in his youth.