ok, im 100% honest in ths review, with that being said. my first lot visits had no tickets, it was me and high school friends . guess what we were looking for??? but imagne what i found in 1990 at the "new world" music thature???????...... A TICKIT!!! never missed a show within a couple 100 miles since then. and this cd turns me on sooooo much i wish i got it the day it came out darnit! any1 young or old should be able to feel this cd deep within. i got it cuz i heard there was a sweet whorf rat on here and there is" actually brought me to tears this eve" but, i didnt even expect a bertha like song 1 !!!! phil is so on. and sir weir does a great Bobby MaGee. just freakin BUY IT!

This is a live album with almost no annoying background noise from the audience. That alone would make it worth 5 stars. I don't know why there is a need to add in cheering on live albums. It doesn't have to be there. When a group is recorded live, there are specially arranged microphones to pick up the audience cheers. I don't need to hear an audience cheer to know what is good. It is like adding a laugh track to a TV show. I know what is funny.

Listening to this album, it is hard to believe it was recorded live, especially by the Grateful Dead. The sound quality is very good (but not perfect).

What is really amazing is the live performance of the Dead. It is crisp, tight and controlled. It is like they are playing in the studio, with retakes and overdubs. Even the 18 minute Other One sounds like it is under control. I love the long winded, rambling jams of the Dead, but this change of pace is also great.

The song selection and interpretation of the songs is great. There are a number of country songs from contemporary song writers of the time, like Merle Haggard. They are played in new and interesting ways (for that time). Then there are the longer songs, like Buddy Holly's Not Fade Away and the Other One. You can tell that the Other One was pulled out of a longer jam. It would be interesting to hear the entire piece.

Rhino records has done a wonderful job of remastering all of the original Warner Brothers Dead LP's. The original CD release was not bad, but here the sound is enchanced even more with HDCD. Each remastered CD contains extensive liner notes and bonus tracks, filling all 80 minutes of the CD length. Since the original album was 74 minutes long, there is not too much room for extras here. You get two short songs, one that sounds like it should have been included in the first place and one that doesn't. After a 55 minute blank spot, there is the original radio commercial for this album.

If you like American Beauty, and especially Workingman's Dead, you will like this one also. I think it is even better than those 2.

In 1971, the hippie generation was dying down and with it, bands like Jefferson Airplane and rock palaces like Bill Graham's legendary Fillmore and Fillmore East. Some of the recordings on this album which I should say right now is phenominal music was recorded during the Grateful Dead's legendary 5 night final run at the Fillmore East on April 25-29, 1971. If you like this album, you would, like me, love the Grateful Dead's 4 disc set called "Ladies and Gentlemen...the Grateful Dead Live at the Fillmore East New York City April 1971." The only hippie band from San Fransisco that wasn't dying down was the Grateful Dead and the jams and songs on this album prove it. This is where songs like "Playing in the Band," "Me & My Uncle," and jams like the shortened form of the That's it for the Other One, simply called, "The Other One." This is one of the Dead's best albums and if you liked any of their best of albums, this classic is for you.

When thinking back on the music of a generation and how it should be best remembered, one might do as Rolling Stone Magazine did and compile a list (maybe not 500) of the music that most affected an entire generation, and today can be viewed upon as typifying that same generation. If I were to compile such a list, having lived through that era, I most certainly would include The Dead's "Skull & Roses" live set. It was garnered from several Stateside concerts including NYC. Now keep in mind that I am not a "Deadhead" nor have I ever been one. But I did see them live at least three times in the early to mid-1970's...and to me that was their zenith. Now how does this zenith coincide with the highwater mark of a generation? Well, as I recall it, The Dead seemed to typify what the counter culture was all about. I am not talking about the drugs...get over it already okay!!! And of course they would not be the only band or musical persona that typified the era, but they certainly are a main thread through that wonderfully eclectic and spiritual crazy quilt. They touted getting back to the grass roots of human existence. There wasn't a yuppie in the bunch...nor do they now proselytize rampant consumerism. The music on this collection captures that free-wheeling 60's ideal to good effect as anything from the Beatles or Hendrix or Dylan. The music of an era reflects that era's milieu to full effect. Even if for some reason the old ideals are somewhat forgotten the music still polarizes that moment in "time". This LP or CD...or whatever did and does just that. It is a time capsule from a day when youth manifested itself in an affirmative stance. When ideals were greater than the people themselves. When I pop this CD into the player in my car....and make it on down the road....I am somewhat suspended between then and now....and I love it....
for those of you who lived it......it is a required listening...to those who did not live it...but have come to respect it....well, it is as lively a history lesson as you will ever get...
peace

At a mere 40, I was just a pup when I first saw the Grateful Dead in 1979 -- merely 8 years after this seminal recording. And it astounds me how little down-to-earth information about the band and its vibe has trickled down through the years. So let's shoot for some accurate accounting here in context with the time itself and, hopefully, a bit of the feeling of the band in its place. First of all, the Dead was at the high point of its American Music phase in which its members were reaching deep into the country, folk and bluegrass sources that influenced them.

They were touring in support of their breakthrough albums Workingman's Dead and American Beauty, which brought the band its first taste of Big Time success. Song selection is the clue here. Merle Haggard's "Mama Tried," John "Mama's & the Papa's" Phillips's "Me and My Uncle," and Kris Kristofferson's "Me and Bobby McGee" (Janis Joplin's radio hit was also a cover; Hee Haw's Roy Clark recorded it in 1969 by the way) were all country chart toppers within the past five years or so from the original 2-LP release of this album (which Deadheads used to call Skullf**k back in the day). Unlike cover songs like Chuck Berry's "Johnny B. Goode" and Buddy Holly's "Not Fade Away" and the extra-special bonus track "Oh Boy" plus the old-time standards "Goin Down The Road", which was a Woody Guthrie favorite and a staple of the Harry Smith Anthology of American Folk Music (a collection that served as the Rosetta Stone of American Roots music for Bob Dylan and many others), and the blues standard "Big Boss Man", the band members chose *contemporary* tunes from Nashville's hitmakers in homage to the musicians they admired most. This album is, in its own way, the Dead's "Will the Circle Be Unbroken."

Ironically, as a bunch of motley hippies making anti-establishment, anti-war, counter-cultural revolutionary mind-warping rock and roll, the GD were REVILED by the very country artists they were covering so lovingly at the time.