Some serious funk that leads into Not Fade Away. Also good are Ship of Fools and a Franklin's Tower.

This is really the beginning of the annual new year's week of shows that continued until the end. Attending an entire run was a bit like running a marathon. (ok, there was a run in 1977 and they only played two nights in 1985)

better than a sbd, great sound, perfect crowd to music ratio, its a 79 aud and sounds as good as any 80's and up

Just checking out an old show a bunch of years after the fact.....like so many of you, I saw them so many times. Hard for me to understand how someone could say the the first and second set were fairly uninspiring. Must have skipped over Franklin's Tower. It's about as good as any I have ever heard. The last set was the best, although I never quite got into that old Rascal's song. It was always (along with US Blues) a disappointing way to end a great night. Maybe it's a 5 star....whatever. It's a performance that has a lot of good stuff on it. The J-man's voice was so perfect back then!

Joani Walker & Charlie Miller are the shit! This is a near perfect audience recording, the best available for this concert. This blows the soundboard out of the water. Good performance from the boys, great New Year's run, check out the other nights in this run.

The is a terrific show with some incredible moments. Jack Straw is a great opener; intense, lyrical. Stella Blue, a personal favorite, is tremendous. 4 stars only because I've heard slightly better, but this is a great show to listen to. Star Wars is the best.

This is a really fine audience recording. Thank you, Joani Walker. Not a fabulous effort, but the band doesn't completely dazzle nor disappoint.

I had a ticket, but was smote with a horrendous bout of the flu and was too sick to get out of bed for such an auspicious occasion on New Year's Eve to go out of body with the Dead.

First and second sets are fairly well-played and fairly uninspired except for Phil's massive bass notes captured superbly by Joani's bank of microphones.

The third set holds the fire of this 3 hr, 40 min extravaganza. Althea is divine except for Jerry repeating verses. Minglewood is inexorably slow and titanic. Uncle John has fine guitar slices and the drums into space is short-lived preparing the way for a bigtime Not Fade. Jerry flubs a few more lyrics at the start of Stella but by the time he is done with unscrewing and screwing on our heads we have forgotten entirely about errors past.
SSDD is really BIG. The addition of John Cipollina on guitar for these last three is awesome. John adds some cruel and wicked chords and helps the boys bring home a Rock of Gibraltar sound. Good Lovin' is pretty tame in presentation and not at all that flashy with too infrequent splashes of Jerry, but it builds nicely at the end and leaves us with hope for one more. But, alas, one more is not to be. Bill Graham comes on and thanks every one and the going home music comes up on the house.

Overall, this is a topnotch recording. There are weirdnesses in it like cross-channel interference and the sound of various bits of music, some GD, some not. Also, there is the motorcycle rev-up for the countdown with a 30 second barb of Truckin.' Plus there is a familiar movie theme that either the band plays or it's pre-recorded from off the P.A. Are these sound effects? Very strange.