Road Trips, Vol. 2 No. 2: 2/14/68 (Carousel Ballroom, San Francisco, CA)

Though The Grateful Dead had put out their first album nearly a year before the Feb. 14, 1968, hometown show featured here, they were still a relatively underground phenomenon and an integral part of the Bay Area scene. The Dead still maintained traces of their bluesy garage-rock beginnings, especially when the band's resident bluesman, organ/harmonica player Pigpen, stepped up to the microphone for the slow-burning "Good Morning Little Schoolgirl" and the roiling R&B of "Turn On Your Lovelight." But the psychedelic phase of their evolution was already in full flower. Though "Dark Star" hadn't yet grown into the grand, experimental journey it would soon become, the version here finds the band embracing the tune's abstraction. The show's second set, dedicated to Beat Generation icon/band pal Neil Cassady (who had died 10 days earlier), unleashes the psychedelic juggernaut in full force with the songs that would make up the Dead's next album, Anthem of the Sun. In fact, sections of this performance (among others) were incorporated into the album itself.