Stormy Mondays | Grateful Dead 1974 Retrospective Part 7

We continue on with the seventh installment of Stormy Mondays’ Grateful Dead 1974 Retrospective. Here’s links to Part One, Part Two, Part Three, Part Four, Part Five and Part Six.

At the very end of the Grateful Dead’s stunningly brilliant year in 1974, they celebrated their hard work, wild explorations and well-earned coming hiatus with five shows at Winterland in San Francisco. The shows are poorly documented on the Steal Your Face release, and of course wonderfully documented on The Grateful Dead Movie. It is a truly epic run of shows overflowing with amazing performance after amazing performance, a fantastic and accurate encapsulation of the year as a whole. And the whole event famously climaxes with the surprise return of Mickey Hart for a killer third set on the very last night.

But we’re not there quite yet. This week we have a phenomenal suite buried deep in the second set of the 17th of October: “He’s Gone” > “Other One” > “Spanish Jam” > “Mind Left Body Jam” > “Other One” > “Stella Blue.” To my ears, the “Spanish Jam” is actually a lot closer to a “Two Soldiers Jam” than a fully developed “Spanish,” but what is most noteworthy about this segment is the sprawling 24-minute “Other One” that precedes it. It’s a real out-there take on a tune that two years earlier was the band’s prime psychedelic vehicle but that usually pales in comparison to “Playing” in 1974. We’re nearing the end of the 1974 retrospective, but there is still some fertile ground to be covered, this suite included. As always, enjoy!

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Written By: Dan Alford