grateful dead at nashville municipal auditorium on 1978-12-16

Much is made of '77 and '72 as the Dead at their "best", but I prefer the Dead when they're most themselves - sloppy, loose, and alternating between rakish goofiness and maudlin sentimentality. '71 is good for that. So is '80. But the Dead in 1978 were an entirely unique beast. Correcting, perhaps overcorrecting, from the previous years' reliability, the lows were lower and the highs were higher. What they gave up in certainty they made up for intensity. I believe the Dead played two shows in Nashville that year, and both of them were barn burners. According to Merriam-Webster, "The 'Barnburners' were one of two competing factions in the New York State Democratic Party in the middle of the 19th century. The name was an allusion to the story of an old Dutchman who relieved himself of rats by burning his barns which they infested." An apt metaphor for what the way the Dead occasionally razed their own sound:

Here.