Blazin' hot smokeshow of syncopated bends, slides, and hammer ons that turns the intensity up to 11

Clarence Clemons sits in for the whole show and really is a great addition. They rock this Let It Rock better than anywhere else I have heard anywhere

Very strong throughout. Excellent Weir vocals. Garcia delivers.

Wow. This was the very first live Dead song I ever heard. The very first. It blew my fucking mind as did the rest of the show.

This one truly does rock. Hampton was just a great place for the Dead and their fans.

This is tighter than 6-30-85. I was at 6-30-85 and thus have reason to want that to be the best but I think this one is better. Listen to Jer at around the 10:00 mark. That's what I'm talking about.

This was the greatest show I ever attended and one monster of a show it was. Words cannot...

I am an old Deadhead who has logged many hundreds of hours at shows and many, many thousands of hours listening to recordings of the Grateful Dead, and I am here to tell you what the best version of Jack Straw is. First, it is definitely not any of the top 4 currently thus rated here on Heady Version. In fact, the best version of Jack Straw of all time is a tie between the current #5 and the current #8. The current #5 is 10-20-84, Carrier Dome Syracuse. This is by far the best example of the shred version of Jack Straw. Jerry tears it up from start to finish and and Weir is singing his ass off. The current #8 is 5-3-72 Olympic Theater, Paris. This is the version they used on Europe ’72 with the addition of various overdubs, but even straight without the overdubs this is a very special version of Jack Straw. To vastly oversimplify, 10-20-84 is the best guitar version of Jack Straw and 5-3-72 is by far the best vocal version of Jack Straw. But 5-3-72 is much more than just a good vocal version. It doesn’t shred as much as 10-20-84, and 10-20-84 deserves a lot of credit for how well Jerry does that. But 5-3-72 has other virtues. First of all is the tone. This version has a different overall sound to it. I have no idea why or how – maybe someone more expert than I can weigh in on that but it has a very different and very, very nice sound. Secondly, even though Garcia definitely shreds better on 10-20-84, there are some important aspects of the guitar performance which are better on 5-3-72. Specifically, what I consider one of the key marks of a great Jack Straw is how well Garcia nails the fills in the background of the Weir parts of the vocal bridges starting with “Hurts my ears to listen” and then later in the song “Ain’t no place a man can hide, Shannon”. There is a certain guitar lick Garcia plays in those 2 spots which he often drops but when he is killing it he is filling it in those sections. He never did it better than on 5-3-72. I could go on and on but those are the best 2 Jack Straws without a doubt: 5-3-72 and 10-20-84. Mark my words, bro.