Saturday, December 7, 1968

I was a 5th year out-of-state Bellarmine student in 1968, trying to delay my graduation to avoid the draft. While I officially resided in Kennedy Hall, I mostly lived with my J-town girlfriend (future wife) in her apartment on Bardstown Rd. I had the Dead's 1st LP and jumped at the chance to see them live. Tickets were cheap ($3-4), like most major rock acts in the 60s. When my wife and I finally left, going on 4am, the Dead were still playing.

1968 Dead just kept kept evolving thru the year and it kept getting better. This was a time of explosive creativity at their experimental peak. Jerry is just blazing through everything and taking risk after risk to make it fresh and to potentially seek the unknown to find something new. He's playing with his volume knob, fading in and out in almost every jam, breaking down some of the norms of how they've developed songs to this point. This is what I love about this period.