Noisy
This is another one of those somewhat strange 1968 shows that we don’t know a ton about.
Based on the research reported on Jerry Base, it seems that this is Jerry Garcia along with Jack Casady, Spencer Dryden on one track, and David Getz on another. I don’t think Mickey Hart actually plays on this at all.
We’ve got two extended blues jams, one that is 42 minutes long and a second that lasts almost 40 minutes. It’s just under an hour and a half in total.
And, well, this is more a jam session than anything else. These aren’t songs. You can hear the start of Dark Star in the second track, and Jerry starts to play China Cat Sunflower about 25 minutes in or so. Everything else, though, is pretty generic blues.
There really isn’t much of a reason to listen to this, unless you’re a diehard geek for Grateful Dead music like I am. It’s honestly not even all that interesting from a historical perspective, since we don’t know many details behind this performance, and since this small group never really amounted to anything.
Honestly, I’m kind of shocked to realize that this was indeed played before a live audience. It’s obvious at the end of the tracks because of the applause. The music sounds like a studio jam session, or like something you and your friends would work out together in the garage while trying to write music.
If you do want to listen to it, check out SHNID 97296. I didn’t detect any recording flaws at all.