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/Gettu 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.
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