What a great show! Cal Expo was such a fun little venue, especially in May, before the summer heat set in. A beautiful, friendly setting for a night of open and exploratory music.

I think this show is rightly regarded as one of their last great shows. The extended, aggressive Playin' jam manages to find several gears -- spacey and loud yet never dissolving into noise. It's an awesome, bold jam and they really tear it up! It's 15 minutes long and still over too quickly. This was what we came for, why we followed them from venue to venue like so much stoned cattle, lol, just for the chance to get off to something like this live, to hear it and live it and dance to it as it was being invented. It felt so good -- honestly, it was like getting laid for the first time in several years. Tension and release, and this jam had a lot of both. The China Doll that bookends the Playin' Reprise is very earnest, and Jerry plays sweetly in all the right spots, fluidly dancing through the exposed melody lines and singing with a poise and tone that was all too rare those last few years. His voice rises to the music, and it's wonderful and affirming, just like it should be. Given how infrequently that song was played, they really nailed it this night! A fitting cap to a wonderful hour of *REAL* Grateful Dead music. Thanks, boys!

::sigh::...The next night notwithstanding, it was almost all downhill from here...