Grateful Dead - 1969-08-02 - San Francisco, CA (SBD)

Grateful Dead
1969-08-02
Family Dog at the Great Highway
San Francisco, CA
Soundboard Recording
320 kbps
Artwork Included

01. Casey Jones
02. Hard To Handle
03. Mama Tried
04. High Time
05. Seasons
06. Slewfoot
07. Big Boss Man
08. Cryptical Envelopment >
09  Drums >
10. The Other One >
11. Cryptical Envelopment >
12. Turn On Your Lovelight

Grateful Dead - 1969-08-02 - San Francisco, CA (SBD)

The Grateful Dead's set at Woodstock won't go down as the band's finest hour (or two). The band got off to a late start due to the heavy rains that engulfed the area. Their sound man and electrical engineer, Owsley "Bear:" Stanley spent extra time trying to fix the electrical hook ups as he feared the band was in danger of being electrocuted due to the flooding on stage, which further delayed the start of their set. On top of that, the band did themselves no favors by taking a dose of LSD right before they hit the stage. Jerry Garcia told interviewers that "we played such a bad set at Woodstock. The weekend was great, but our set was terrible. We were all pretty smashed, and it was at night. Like we knew there were a half million people out there, but we couldn't see one of them. There were about a hundred people on stage with us, and everyone was scared that it was gonna collapse. On top of that, it was raining or wet, so that every time we touched our guitars, we'd get these electrical shocks. Blue sparks were flying out of our guitars." The Woodstock debacle created a bit of an undeserved reputation for the band that they tended to bomb the big performances. 

This soundboard recording captures the Dead just 2 weeks before their performance at Woodstock, on their home turf in San Francisco on August 2, 1969, 5 decades ago this very day.