Not the most exciting Denver run, but there are highlights throughout. The day before's 1st set + this 2nd set makes a good show. The 1st set has no trainwrecks or struggles, but it's lackluster. The show is known for the 2nd set and the first-ever Easy to Love You. 1st set is AUD-only. 7 songs are repeated from the nights before.

First Set. Starts average GOGD and warms up, beginning at Tennessee Jed. The first Easy to Love You, which still has the "warming woman" lyrics, ain't bad, but it's still forming. Passenger is the only one of the seven repeats played better on this night. Stagger Lee is so lifelessly slowed that even with pitch correction it's almost a ballad. Music Never Stopped leaves 'em happy.

Second Set.Promised Land is tight but rote; Dead-by-the-numbers. It all goes wide though, for Ship of Fools, carrying into an uptempo and tight Samson. There's no handle on Terrapin but, as others have pointed out, the jam on Playin' is the best ensemble playing of the show. Mickey stays out for a sidereal Space. Not Fade Away is more traditional than the one from the start of the run; it's tempo slowly sinks down. Stella Blue is pretty standard until the last couple minutes, with Jer's best work of the night. The rest is above average.

1st Set:  C+
2nd Set: B-
Overall = 3¼ stars

Highlights:
Ship of Fools - Jer takes the horns
Samson & Delilah - uptempo & tight
Playing in the Band - night's best jam

SOURCES: There is no complete SBD. The best AUD is the eaton_miller_93047 (a better-loved version of munder_9563). It's best for the 1st set and for the complete Drums but is pitched a tad slow, needing +1% (except the first track). The walker-scotton-miller_32500 SBD has the 2nd set but it's pitched too slow and needs +1.5% (except Terrapin). The miller_119949 is a partial 2nd set SBD (sans Drums and the improv break) with the tracks mislabeled (and also needs re-pitched). Wish list: A complete SBD and a matrix.

kbmill - There's more to an analog signal chain than the mics and the heads. The physics of how a mic captures frequencies remains the same, but everything else improved after 1979, including wider freq ranges, lower wow/flutter and higher signal/noise ratios (check the Sony line for one example).

Terrapin Station and Playing in the Band were played in the same show 117 times. Once they were first joined in early 1978, for the vast majority of those, when both were played, they were played one following the other. What's interesting about that is that from 1978 to mid-1981 the sequence was Terrapin > Playing. From that point onward, the sequence was reversed - Playing > Terrapin. There are occasional reversals but the patterns are overwhelmingly consistent.

Makes you wonder what happened in May of 1981...

This is a superior audience recording. The Terrapin > Playing > Drums is remarkable. The previous commenters remark that it's pretty good for the available technology cracks me up. Microphones have gotten smaller, but not better, and three head tape decks put down a complete dynamic range signal. It starts our as an analog signal...

Nuff sed

Somebody reviewed the U.C.L.A. show from this year, which I also recorded; and said he thought that was the best Stella Blue. So I said over there, indeed it was a good one, but suggested three others, one of which is this one! Besides Stella Blue and the brand new Brent tune "Easy to Love You", this was a terrific performance!
The "Not Fade Away" was considerably different than at Red Rocks, and the "Improvisation", (I refuse to say "Space", since there is no air in space, therefore no sound), was very mellow. I can still picture it well in my mind in color, being up front at this general admission concert; since that's what our tickets said which were originally intended for Red Rocks, but since they had to move because of the rain here to McNichols, they had left the seats on the floor, so it was a mad dash to get a a chair. All the tunes were well played!

Augy
San Diego

I had been to Dead shows before but couldn't get in, so I had to hang out as a tailgater. This turned out to be a great show. The band was intense, working to overcome the negative feelings many in the crowd had toward the Denver Police, who had a large uniformed contigent patrolling though out the arena.

They succeeded. No cops were hurt, and there were no arrests, as far as I could tell.

Sampson and Delilah is incredible, as is the jam segment of Playing in the Band.

This is an excellent recording considering the technology available at that time. Great work.

Listening to it in retrospect, I consider it one of the best shows I personally attended. Thank you for uploading this incredible show.