Dead of the Day: 01-26-1969
Avalon Ballroom
San Francisco, California
The show starts off with a moody Other One suite that is so tasty from the first licks of Cryptical onwards. But it is The Other One itself that is truly special, rocketing off and throwing sparks the entire way before hitting a blazing, beautiful jam in the latter portions of the tune that takes it back into Cryptical. And that final Cryptical has a fine jam of its own, less inferno and more soaring divination. After the suite, we get the last of a short line of Clementines, tracing back just over a year (check out Grateful Dead Guide’s excellent breakdown of the tune). This one is a ragged masterpiece. The tune’s dark ways also set up Death Don’t Have No Mercy perfectly. That latter tune takes its sparse and noirish ways to the limit with TC’s organ providing a brilliant frame for Jerry’s otherworldly runs.
The latter set is classic ’69 with a DS> Stephen> Eleven> Lovelight. And while the Dark Star is under ten minutes, the version is spectacular right up until until the end when the boys send out those opening notes of Stephen. And the Stephen itself mesmerizes, sounding so fluid and joyous. There is such an earnestness and honesty to their playing on this tune, which comes out nowhere so vividly as in the simple beauty of the William Tell portion. And right after that magic, they head into an incredible Eleven, as kaleidoscopic and acid-drenched as any. If The Eleven sounds familiar, it, along with the set-closing Lovelight, is from Live/Dead. But these tunes are even better here; stripped and raw you can feel the emotion that much more.
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