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Just from the simple fact that the band themselves were hooting gleefully in the middle of some of the first set tunes, expresses how wow this was even though the song list was generic!Please bear with me! I have a lot of technical explantions that are important to understand which are not immediately obvious simply from listening to this, but if your patient you'll learn something and have a deeper apreciation of not only this but other shows as well!Before we get to that let me say some notable things about the openers; I know I am heavily digressing here but hold on briefly: Despite Warren Zevon who was the last of three opening acts (Wa Koo and then Elvin Bishop) being drunk and and getting booed off! In all fairness Grateful Dead gave him a second chance to open in Tempe, Ariz. was it in '82 or 83? Where he redeemed himself, with just good music i.e . no accusing us in the crowd of "being possibly high on Qualudes" and "all 60's rejects" etc. God rest him, it sure shocked him when I saw him in the restroom backstage at an L.A. Sports Arena Pink Floyd show in '87 and told him I was at both this U.C.S.B. Grateful Dead show when I was a freshman in college, (actually I transferred to U.C.S.B. later as a junior), as well the Tempe show (Needless to say Bonnie Raitt was standing on the side of the stage and I hadn't yet back then seen her play live so I was eagerly hope she would come out but not with this fiasco with Zevon)!Elvin Bishop on the other hand was in top form as reinforced very coolly by Jerry Garcia jioning him aalong the guitarist from this very interesting opening band "Wa-Koo"! What ever happened to them? Of course Elvin Bishop, was "Struttin' his stuff ya'll". But then he "Fooled around and fell in Love"!Now back to the main event: If any of you attended the Greek in 87' where they were doin' the motorcycle thing! Well, this is were it was derived from! On that board tape one can clearly hear Mickey tell the biker not to rev. it up but to just let it idle unlike here; where this guy with the motorcycle obviously had a different approach!For example, not only with the bike but with his monkey vocalizations too which he apparently couldn't hear himself with no monitor not realizing (and asking eventually though the mic, "Is this fuckin' thing workin'?") that it is going out over the P.A. before hand during the improvisational jam with Garcia doodlin' through his envelope filter (on by the way, the "wolf" Doug Irwin guitar i.e . the one in the movie since the Travis Bean had gotten stolen some time late the year before); (Wier unusually had a Ibanez double neck, and Lesh on the 10 button bass (Europe '72) but neither of them were in this jam until the motorcyle); while most interesting and rare Mickey Hart set some spooky Carribean rythmns using genuine steal drums! Not to mention some weird moaning and hollowing from Donna(? not visible or who knows maybe that was Bonnie Raitt or some other chick with the biker, in any case it made for a unique jam into the motorcycle charged Not Fade Away)!Later I asked Mickey on his birthday in '83 Sun. 9-11 in Sante Fe, N.M. at the hotel about this. (How I came to be at the hotel : as a result of Southwest Airlines mistakenly sending my bags on to Dallas instead of Albuquerque when I was coming from L.A. and they also misplaced them on the way back too!) Anyway, they told me to go get them at the hotel where the band was staying at! So I asked him what ever became of the steel drums to which he replied that (being a bit tipsy, given that Weir had to help him walk on his birthday), "Oh, they are too delicate to take on tour". Yet Lo, and behold he brought them back out shortly thereafter at a few shows I saw, albeit only very briefly. (Like he said very delicate!I once had two percussionists for roommates in graduate school who played steel drums; you see if they get ever so slightly bent they go out of tune! And one can't easily retune them as one can with a stringed instrument. Instead it takes a lot of careful beating of the metal into just the correct size of the bowl shapes which form each note)! After this he opted instead from then on, to derive that and other sounds he fancied at any given show from the electronicly synthesized drums which obviously by that time had finally achieved a more reasonable state technological funtionality (at reasonable prize of course)!Unlike when this U.C.S.B. concert occurred, when obviously the state of the art for synthesized musical sounds beyond that of single note keyboards i.e . one couldn't in those days play a chord though with a synthesizer (with the exception that is, of Keith Emerson). Such that at the previous year's opening show Sat. 2-26 where they debuted "Estimated Prophet" in San Bernardino they had to plug Garcia into (on, by the way, the white Travis Bean, which had an aluminum neck, which also by the way, the only other famous guitarist to use one of these was in that same year '77, namely Greg Lake, since I saw E.L.P. play that year as well), so that Jerry could get the proper envelope filter sound, a Moog that Godchaux was, needless to say, very reluctant to play since he only like piano! (Listen to for example, the tape of Dallas in '77 where Keith very breifly plays a synthesizer on the beginning of "Playin' in the Band" and then suddenly he just stops playing keyboard all together at least, if I recall correctly, until they do another tune); (unlike Brent Mydland of course)!Until later of course as you well know, when they finally figured out how to achieve this for Garcia, not only for "Estimated Prophet"'s envelope filter sound independently, (and others tunes again as you well know such as "Fire On The Mountain" and so on), without having to plug him into a keyboard! But additionally also, for his guitar synthsizer sounds in the '90s etc. and Weir, and Lesh, and as I already said the drummers too!This is as opposed to, a comment in an interview in '79 in B.A.M.(Bay Area Music) magazine with Billy K. where he made reference to this, saying something to the effect of that he felt (at that time which is the key point here) that synthesized percussion was not satisfactory (as of yet)! And as I implied above, even Jerry's envelope filter in '78 was still a relatively new gadget being used first both the day before, as well as for "Samson& Delilah" and "Dancin' in the Streets" (disco arrangement) the next day at my first show when they opened up '76 for the Who at Oakland Stadium on Sat.- Sun. Oct. 9-10!Despite Bob apologizing for being "Horribly out of tune" after the openers "Bertha"->"Good Lovin'"; this show really cooks!AugySan Diego