By the summer of 1973, the Grateful Dead were operating at a genuinely extraordinary level. Keith Godchaux had fully settled into the piano chair, his rolling, jazz-inflected touch giving the band a harmonic richness it had never quite had before, and the ensemble was playing with a loose, exploratory confidence that marked this whole year as one of their finest. Jerry Garcia's guitar work was fluid and searching, Phil Lesh was pushing the low end into unexpected territories, and the dual-drummer setup of Bill Kreutzmann and Mickey Hart — back in the fold after his absence through much of 1971 and 1972 — gave the band a rhythmic depth that made the long improvisational passages feel genuinely inexhaustible. Donna Jean Godchaux was adding her vocals to the mix as well. Workingman's Dead and American Beauty were a few years in the rearview, and the band was in the thick of a hard-touring period that would eventually be captured in part on the Europe '72 live album, though by June of '73 they were stateside and rolling through a busy summer schedule. RFK Stadium in Washington, D.C. was a massive concrete bowl — the kind of venue that swallowed sound and could make a show feel cavernous and impersonal in the wrong hands. But the Dead had a way of taming big rooms when the night was right, and a 1973 RFK date carries the implicit promise of something sprawling.
Outdoor stadium shows of this era have their own character: the sky above, the crowd spread wide, the band stretching out as if to fill all that space with something worthy. The one song we have confirmed from this date is Around and Around, the Chuck Berry classic that the Dead had been playing since their earliest days. It's a deceptively simple rocker, but in the right moment it functions as a pressure release valve — a moment when the whole thing just loosens up and swings. By 1973, the Dead's version had the confident ease of a band that knew exactly how to make a room move, and hearing Keith's piano lock in with Garcia on a number like this is one of the small pleasures this era offers in abundance. Recording quality on large 1973 outdoor shows can vary considerably, but even a rough audience tape of a good Dead night in this period carries real energy. Whatever source you find yourself with, the musical conversation happening onstage is worth every second of the hunt.