Grateful Dead

For my money this is the best late seventees Dead show. Too bad it's missing from the vault. The audience recordings sound like the audience wants to eat the band alive. The Dead give it back to them and then some Minglewood explodes as a opener Tennessee Jed and Jack Straw run along similer lines and Music keeps the party going strong. As good as the first set is the second tops it. This Terrapin is brilliant. Listen to the end of drummz someone starts dragging their pick down their strings making this creepy intro for The Other One. Of coarse the original Close encounters space>St Stephen is the highlight. The final jam out of St Stephen makes me want to jump out of my body. Must be something in the water up there in Eugene(Kesey)????

From first note to last, there's not one single GD show that tops this one. My favorite shows are those in which the boyz (and girl) sound as if they're attacking their instruments, and this show is a non-stop exhibition of that. 'Minglewood..." starts things off in raucous fashion and things never let up. The entire first set is a highlight in and of itself but highlights of the highlight are the "Tenn Jed" and "TMNS". The interplay between Jerry & Bob in "Jed" is simply AMAZING. Especially during the final jam. I've never heard another "Jed" that comes remotely close to this one. And the energy and final jam in "TMNS" is unparalelled, imo. It sounds as if the band is a train that is JUST ABOUT to run off the tracks at any second but somehow, some way, it never derails; CONTROLLED CHAOS at it's musical best. As for set II, there are no words to do it justice. All you can do is listen with mouth agape and drooling. Like Dick said, this show's so hot even the "U.S. Blues" encore is in a league of it's own. There are good shows, there are great shows, there are unbelievable shows......and then there's 1-22-78!!!!!!!!!!!!

This show really should be released officially. There are some shows in '78 that are unfortunately so overlooked. No, it isn't '69 or '74 or whatever (both some amazing years!) but it is one of their finest moments as a living, breathing organism of gigantic musical creative power!

I'm trying to start a movement here. I would like to know if Deadheads everywhere will respond. It would be good for all of us to give 1% of our personal funds to feed starving children in Africa and all over the Planet. It would be good to get some feedback on this, so I'll know my efforts aren't in vain. If anyone would like to reply to this, I'd appreciate it. I hope we can bring back the '60's 'n show a little love for our fellow man. Thanks. Any reply would be appreciated. Remember how easy this is. It's only $9 a month to feed a starving Kenyan baby with Feed the Children, and it's only $24 a month to feed a starving child with Christian Children's Fund.

The best Dead show I ever saw. The crowd was electric long before the lights came down. The band was Fully Engaged, Donna in tune, set list unimpeachable. And yes, Wrombola, there was a Kesey factor at this show - after we got in the door, we were running around the oval outer hallway of the ancient and venerable Mac Court to go get a seat. I looked back to see if my girlfriend was hanging with me, and when I turned around again I ran smack into a solid mass of human and recoiled. I looked up to see who had set me reeling and saw that it was Kesey his ownself. I muttered an apology and off we went. So yes, please to release this show! I have a crowd tape which sort of captures some of the people power, but would love to hear the board version.

Not all of this show is available as a board - but much of it is. I'm not sure but the torrent may still be going over at bt.etree.org. It's definitely worth your time. I enjoyed this show immensely. My wife and I barely made it back in time from a cross country ski trip with the Eugene Parks & Rec. We had to park out in the neighborhood and I recall signs in windows of homes in the area welcoming the Grateful Dead. Ahhh - old Eugene :-) A few weeks before the show, we went to see "Close Encounters of the Third Kind" and were blown away to hear Jerry play the notes from the movie. The other thing that sticks in my mind was that the stage set was a scaled down version of the Autzen Stadium set from the summer before. There was the huge rainbow stretching across the top of the stage with the sun in the middle. The difference was that at Autzen, there were hangings in front of the speaker columns at each end of the rainbow that completed the diarama. Our Eugene Area Traders Group did a tape tree of this show many years ago when cassettes were the only medium in use. Robert Taylor provided us with a bunch of photos and a ticket stub from the show. We had scans of all up at our website for the tree. BTW, although I haven't updated the site in many years, if you are at all interested in Oregon/Northwest Dead memorabilia, that stuff is still available at: http://home.earthlink.net/~deadtraders Click on the link for archives

Saw 'em for the first time in Portland a couple months prior and then ventured down to Eugene for this show. Standing in the rain waiting to get in, we saw Kesey and the Dead and assorted friends drive into the back gate in old pickup trucks. Garcia got out and walked across the parking lot with a BRIEFCASE - blew my whole image out of the water right there. But, God, the show. Jerry was a bit hoarse at the start, but his voice loosened up as it went. The first wet had some great stuff - I thought 10SC was the best I've ever heard. But the second set was just sick. I've been to a lot of great Dead shows and great shows by other bands, but this set was as good as it EVER got. Also had some amazing magical Deadhead coincidences that night that would take another LONG post to try to tell. And nobody would believe 'em anyway, so I'll just let 'em linger in my memory.