12-29-68: miami pop festival, gulfstream park, hallandale, FL.

the last grateful dead performance of 1968 is a goddamn barnburner. they torch the place. the festival scene prevented the band from working through their usual trip, so everything is revved up to maximum speed, as you’ll hear immediately on the lovelight opener. pig is as riled up as a rabid hound and the septet storms through the first number like a band possessed. lesh introduces the next item on the bill “we once put this thing out as a single,” before the lads bore down into a shrieking 10-minute dark star that, unlike the lengthy jazzy peregrinations to come, is presented as a piece of slashing rock ‘n roll. from here, the mad unit skids into a rousing saint stephen, complete with the william tell bridge and a full-throttled bacchanalesque outro jam. the boys are warming up now and the eleven that follows hits you like a mattock in the skull. a drum solo airs things out for a moment, before an absolutely fervent other one > cryptical envelopment wells up and decimates everything in its path.

and then, a we bid you goodnight benediction because, unquestionably, it’s what’s needed. https://archive.org/details/gd1968-12-29.sbd.miller.80197.sbeok.flac16