4/24/71: wallace wade stadium, duke university.

the dead play a relatively short gig-by their standards-sandwiched in between mountain, nrps (w/jerry on steel) and the beach boys. just three days later, on 4/27, the beach boys joined the dead onstage at the fillmore east during the dead's 5-day run there, and they played 6 songs together (including good vibrations, and i get around), making this joe college weekend at duke a rather historic event in that it’s the first (and only time) that brian wilson & co shared the same bill with the dead.

as for this performance, it’s a classic grateful dead show. the truckin' opener is a trainwreck ... bobby changes keys midway through, and jerry and phil are really straining to hit the harmony notes. cumberland blues false starts, with weir explaining that "all this fuckin' around has put our instruments out of tune." this doesn’t seem to phase the band or the crowd and, when they do settle into a groove, boy do they ever. check out the hard to handle, the downright nasty good lovin’, and the lovely garcia sung merl haggard tune, sing me back home. the mike lai source sounds absolutely fantastic, even better than my beloved, crusty old maxell urII high-bias cassette tape from back in the day.

https://archive.org/details/gd71-04-24.sbd.lai.2579.sbefail.shnf