John A

Eaton wasn't making lists for the Dead in '78.

Correct. There were many other times they started and finished it later in the set/show, but just 5 times when they split it with just one song in the middle.

Today in Grateful Dead trivia: the Dead split Sugar Mags/SSDD only 5 times, 3 of which were summer '76.

That's almost true for 6+ years with the Dead. Didn't go to So Cal Jerry shows because there was so much to see at Orphuem, Warfield, etc. I did skip an LA Dead show summer '91. It was a single night at the LA Coliseum. That feels forgivable, even in hindsight. But the real ballers, they hit entire years and/or had streaks of 100+ consecutive shows. Now that's Deadication.

Well, the nasty underbelly of the Bay Area, after housing prices, is traffic. Otherwise Petaluma is 20 min. I did see many an Oakland Coliseum show with a 15 min commute. Best commute though was JGB Halloween at the Kaiser '88. I was briefly living in neighboring Piedmont, and I walked home! And I lived about 1 1/2 miles as the crow flies from Barton Hall for all 3 Dead shows there - that I didn't see. Good excuse in '77 because I was 11. But at 15 in '81 the excuses get pretty flimsy.

All this Oregon talk as "west coast" but where's the love for the Bay Area? That's where The Dead are from for goodness sake. DSO needs to recreate the Muir Beach Acid Test. On Muir Beach. Given it's a 15 minute drive, I'm in.

There are a couple vicious rumors going around.... (a) this is a really awesome spot for music and camping, and (b) the Dark Star dug particularly deep into the re-imagined consciousness realm.

And to make matters worse, your drive probably doesn't have the Schoeps recording as the audience source, which only came into circulation fairly recently. It's quite nice as well.

That is one special Mr. Fantasy at the original show.

Wow there are bust outs and then there is the likes of Rosemary. Maybe someone in the band was listening to the new Aoxomoxoa 50th Anniversary release?!?

While those late 70s 10/2s leave 10-2-88 Shoreline in the dust, it's a fun show nonetheless. Lay Me Down for instance.

I think it's safe to say that the delta between the "best" and "worst" versions of Samba is relatively small. Robert Hunter did write the lyrics to Samba, so there's that. But then you realize he also wrote the lyrics to Wave to the Wind, so there's that too. What needs to be done for Skip to promise to never tackle that one?

Let's turn this thing on its head. I'll pop a bottle of Ruchottes-Chambertin if you promise NOT to play Samba. 🍷

Scary thing is I want to say that actually happened. Maybe more than once?

That's funny I was looking at that list, having seen the show, and thinking, especially as relates to the 1st set, "wow, that's a cool setlist. I don't remember all that." I submit that as a touring Head in Feb '90 that setlist would not have bored you.

I love how that 1st set delightfully messes with the space and time continuum of a Dead show, all while throwing in Take A Melody. Was Hey Jude the full song or the coda?

I think this show gets a bit lost in the insane greatness that was May '77, but as folks have noted it's all that. Right up there with the best shows of the month.

Strangely truncated 2nd set, although I'm sure with a big Lovelight. And NRPS (with Garcia) played to open.

No Help On The Way->Slipknot! from '77 through '83 and again from '85 through '89 cements those numbers.

This was an incredibly well played show, so I guess it's not surprising that Mr. Eaton would make an exception for it.

Somewhat out of place for the latter Brent era but not the early or mid 80s. And technically, yes, Blow Away debuted about 2 years after Day Job was retired. But how many even fairly serious Deadheads are under the hood of such minutia? And if we're getting pedantic, Masterpiece didn't debut until a year after Day Job went away.

Until the encore, that's about as actual-Dead-show-like-late-style-elective that you'll find. The only clear giveaway is the mix of the Brent tune with a couple post Brent era tunes.

Pro tip: get a tarp that's not blue, so you'll be able to find your space again later.

Saw a band at Sweetwater in Mill Valley called Jerry's Middle Finger. Somewhat of a low rent cover band in the style of JGB, but the price was right at $15. They're from LA, and "the Jerry" is a guy named Garrett Deloian. What was cool is he had been loaned the Stephen Cripe guitar that was being build for Garcia in the summer of '95. Jerry died before the guitar was finished. Recall that Cripe had made 2 guitars for Jerry already; Bolt, which Garcia received as a gift and played the final 2 years of his life, and Top Hat, which he apparently liked but never played on stage. This final guitar was called Tribute. Looked totally cool up close. Here's some more info and a picture I snapped. https://www.cripeguitars.com/tribute.html

Good read - thanks for the link. There are 69 comments thus far, 68 of which are quite positive. Then there's this moron: "The only thing more mind-numbing than listening to the Grateful Dead is listening to someone trying to convince you that they were great. Today I’m embarrassed to be a Times reader." I did get a kick out of this comment, in reaction to the scathing Lou Reed quote in the article: "Lou Reed was a legend in his own mind. When you look at the history of rock-and-roll, is he really much more than maybe a 3-hit wonder?" Ha!