A Very Good Recording Of A Very Transitional Show In The Rider's History. The Band Puts In A Good Effort Playing A Long Set As The Dead Were Late.
I Will Relate A Tale I Was Told In Thereabouts 1973-1974. While Staying With A Dinner Theater Troupe In Marietta,Georgia. I Met The Seamstress Who Sewed Western Clothes For The Likes Of The New Riders, Commander Cody's Lost Planet Airmen To Name A Few. She Got The Gig Because Her Boyfriend A Pedal Steel Player Named Jimmy Porter. Who At The Time Was Helping With The Lights And Act Changes Was Acquainted With The Riders. As He Had Sat In On A Gig Just After Garcia Had Called It Quits. They Regaled Me With The Story That He Had Met Garcia When He Had Previously Visited With His Father. A Musician Himself, An A Customizer Of Pedal Steels. Thus Jerry Passed Along His Name To The Band When Buddy Cage Couldn't Make The Initial Scheduled Shows Due To Prior Commitments. He Told Us That He Indeed Sat In With N.R.P.S. In Atlanta When They Played With The Dead. Even Playing Cage's Steel. The Story Was Complete With The Near Riot At The Beginning Of The Dead's Set Due To Police Harassment Of The Crowd. The Band Seeing His Girlfriends Talents Put In An Order For Custom Made Western Wear.
I Notice They Don't Introduce The New Member At Any Point. Yet Listening To The Show It Sure Sounds Like Buddy's Style, Though Very Subdued. In Fact David's Doing More Bending Than The Steel Player. Who Ever It Was.

As accolades and eyebrows raise over the newest Brooklyn oddity Vietnam, many a reviewer forgets that for all their majesty and malice they are only a mere reflection of the New Riders of late '71-minus the pedal steel and drunk on "Garden of Eden". This was Buddy Cage's first Sage show, and filling the shoes of one Jerry Garcia one can understand his understated manner.Nonetheless, this is a monumental coming together and ("Boondocks" notwithstanding) stands next to first set '71 Dead