Interesting review of the Cow Palace set

This review of Live at the Cow Palace, by Daniel Spicer in Popmatters, started out with a rather unpromising premise, but then it got to the heart of the matter:

Three minutes into “Playing in the Band” they simply take off. Time seems to stand still as the band rockets into a collective improvisation that challenges all the notions of song form they’ve spent the preceding 40 minutes laying straight. It’s jazzy, sure, and exploratory but most importantly it’s utterly transcendent: a meandering yet constantly evolving investigation of melody and timbre that goes everywhere at once while still moving forward with an irresistible linear narrative. Oh, and it’s psychedelic as hell. Twenty minutes in, we realise we’re headed straight back to the infamous regions of the “Dark Star”, on a journey both inwards and outwards: the term mind-blowing could have been invented for this. Deep in the famous “Phil Zone”, bassist Phil Lesh is pouring out impossibly rugged yet sensitive variations; the twin drums of Mickey Hart and Bill Kreutzmann push things along with a free-flowing, liquid propulsion; Keith Godchaux’s piano is like delicately inter-laced fingers holding everyone up: and, centre-stage, Bob Weir and Jerry Garcia weave cramped curlicues of guitar notes around each other, chasing the moment into spiraling wormholes of expression. This, you realize, is precisely what the army of Deadheads gave their lives to. This is unfettered, spontaneous, selfless beauty and it’s no surprise at all that a multitude of young souls decided this was all the perfection they ever needed. This is the Grateful Dead, exactly where they belong, in their native element, live on stage, hammering out truth in the crucible where all their vital alchemy took place.

The whole review is well worth a read.

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