the 29th installment of the dave’s picks series brings us a cleaned up version of a show i have had for many years, but hadn’t listened to in quite some time. i had forgotten what a magnificent evening it was. one of the things to keep in mind is that this is their first show in nearly two months, and was the first of their legendary spring tour of 1977, one of the strongest periods in the repertoire, in my opinion. since their last show on new year’s eve at the cow palace, they had been spending much of that time rehearsing and recording songs for what would eventually become ‘terrapin station’. indeed, two of those songs make their debut here in the first set, ‘estimated prophet’ and ‘terrapin station’. the fact that they ambitiously opened the first set with the latter gives us an idea as to the confidence they had in themselves and the material.

i am sure my first copy was from when the original ‘betty boards’ starting circulating in the late eighties as bootlegs. and so what we have here is the polished production of the original tape reels that were returned to the vault in the last couple of years. as such, the sound quality is fantastic. although there are a few spots when it feels like they are going through the motions, there are some exceptional highlights here. there is a great ‘help/slip/franklin’s’ in the middle of the second set, and a nearly perfect ‘eyes of the world’ shortly after that.

as bonus material, they added what they had of the following evening’s show at santa barbara, just the fifth reel. the other four reels have never been found. luckily, the fifth reel contains an excellent ‘morning dew’, one that rivals any i have heard from the 1977 period.

on an interesting side note, the venue was only in existence for another 4 years, as it was irreparably harmed when a twin engine cessna crashed into it (on september 11th, no less).

all in all a very worthy addition to the series. with any luck i will get to talk more about it with david directly. he is hosting the release of dogfish brewery’s ‘american beauty’ ipa this friday, and i will be there early to chat with him. i am sure i will be listening to this on my road trip there.