In what has become a New Year's tradition, the Grateful Dead played the Bay Area for five sold-out nights, installing themselves like psychedelic artifacts in the 6100-seat Oakland Auditorium Arena, a hall Bill Graham has been using since he vacated Winterland.

The Dead have been trafficking in basically the same easygoing mix of country- and blues-derived rock, slow-rolling shuffles, extended instrumental meanderings and pseudocosmic lyrics since they first played here in the mid-Sixties. And as the Seventies were about to give say to the new decade, the Dead sounded as dated as rose-tinted granny glasses, Nehru jackets and the Summer of Love.

The group's instrumental chops are still intact and may even be at an all-time high. The ensemble work of guitarists Jerry Garcia and Bob Weir and bassist Phil Lesh over the rolling thunder of drummers Mickey Hart and Bill Kreutzman is what the Dead have always been about musically, and there were flashes of brilliance at this show, the third of their five-night stand. Particularly notable were sections of the "Terrapin Station" suite, which was played in truncated form.

The three-hour performance included eighteen songs, from Dead classics like "Playing in the Band," "Sugaree," "Uncle John's Band" and "Casey Jones" to more recent material like Weir's "I Need a Miracle" and a new Garcia-Robert Hunter composition, "Alabama Getaway," slated for the Dead's upcoming album, Go to Heaven.

For the capacity crowd, the Dead's performance seemed as relevant and revelatory as ever. But to me, the Dead's Sixties metaphysics and musical psychedelia all seemed tame, safe, a bit conservative and ultimately redundant.

[From Issue 311 — February 21, 1980]