May 24, 1969, found the Dead at the second day of the Big Rock Pow-Wow on Seminole land in Florida. They had played the day before, finishing of their excellent set with Lovelight. And here on the second day of the festival, the Dead pick up the tune again to start the show. Fronting the song, Pig gets the crowd riled up with his uninhibited rapping, and the rest of the boys lay down a raucous experimental sound, as licentious in its own way as Pig’s efforts. After a lysergic Doin’ That Rag, a beautiful, soulful He Was A Friend Of Mine comes out. The youthful harmonies heighten the emotional impact, and the sentimental playing punctuated by the lucid, mournful Jerry solos completes the effect. The tune blends seamlessly into China Cat Sunflower, its pure joyfulness quickly erasing all the melancholy of He Was A Friend Of Mine. And the China Cat builds from verse to verse, eventually exploding into a bristling technicolor jam. From there, the Dead transition into The Eleven, losing none of the spirit and enthusiasm of the earlier tune as they cascade and frolic through the carnivalesque splendor of the song. At the end of The Eleven, the boys change gears again, turning to a dark and twisted homily on the subject of mortality in Death Don’t Have No Mercy, their haunting funereal jam reinforcing the forlorn futility the lyrics convey. Following that, the band needs a lengthy break to fix some strings, which gives Bobby the opportunity to tell his Yellow Dog Story. And his special Florida version is as terribly told and inane as any of them. But the tale does, in its own way, segue into Alligator. And down near the Everglades, this Alligator is as primal and pristine as they get, descending into an elementally swampy drum solo from which the entire band blasts into Saint Stephen. Raging and romping through Stephen, the boys are waylaid before the William Tell section and descend into a truly epic feedback jam. An unadorned, affecting and lovely We Bid You Goodnight offers a sort of benediction on their tremendous effort, closing out their appearance at the Big Rock Pow-Wow.