An amalgamation of first set songs from the Grateful Dead circa May 1977. These are the best first set nuggets culled from the new box set from Rhino Records, "Five Days in May." Remastered, rebalanced and rejujued, this is the Dead at one of their 4 or 5 musical peaks.

We open with two songs that find the band energetic yet ragged, like a runner bursting out of the gates before the starting bell….Bertha and Music Never Stopped give them ample opportunity to warm up and start to locate the communal groove.

We then take a tromp through a slew of classic songs that showcase the restraint and complexity of their playing, Rose, Cassidy, Brown-Eyed, Jack A Roe, all right in that warm pocket of the groovy, earthy 70s. Listen to Jerry's guitar somehow weave together elements of country, jazz, funk, bluegrass, rock and disco, as if to demonstrate that all American popular music shares a common rootstock.

Lazy > Supplication finds the Dead opening up the gates for the first time in to an unrestrained instrumental jam.

By the time we get to High Time, Jack Straw and Half-Step, we are in the presence of a warmed-up band playing honest, heartfelt music that takes in all strands of  American roots music while simultaneously leans in to the future, creating something brand new from shards of the past. The band has found their groove in this twilight of the first set and saunter through the countryfied psychedelic landscapes with an ease bordering on swagger.

Dancin' in the Street brings the parade of set one songs to a rousing, all-on conclusion -- hear the Grateful Dead tease disco, and find both funk and flat-pickin' somewhere deep in that groove.