By the summer of 1978, the Grateful Dead had fully settled into what many consider one of their most musically cohesive lineups. Keith and Donna Godchaux were still in the fold, and the band was riding the momentum of *Shakedown Street*, their forthcoming Garcia-and-Hunter collaboration with Lowell George that would arrive later that fall. Jerry's playing during this period carried a fluid, searching quality — less raw than the early '70s, more confident than the transitional years following the hiatus, and deeply locked in with Phil Lesh's increasingly exploratory bass work. Bobby Weir was sharp and rhythmically inventive, and the whole machine had a kind of warm, summery looseness that made 1978 shows consistently rewarding listening. Red Rocks Amphitheatre, perched in the sandstone formations west of Denver at roughly 6,450 feet above sea level, is one of the great concert settings on the planet — and the Dead knew it well. The natural acoustics of those angled rock walls, combined with the altitude and the open Colorado sky, gave performances there a distinct, slightly breathless energy. Crowds at Red Rocks tend to be genuinely transported by the setting, and that electricity tends to feed back into the band.
It's the kind of venue where even a mid-set groove can feel monumental simply because of where you're standing. Of the songs documented in the database from this show, both point toward the band's roots-rock and rock-and-roll bones. "Beat It On Down the Line," the Jesse Fuller cover the Dead had been playing since their earliest days, was a reliable engine-starter — a compact, shuffling burst of energy that let the band snap into a communal lock right out of the gate. "Not Fade Away," the Buddy Holly chestnut reborn as a Dead ritual, is a different animal entirely: in its best performances, it becomes a hypnotic percussive chant that the band can stretch or condense depending on the room's mood, and at Red Rocks in high summer, you can imagine the crowd hammering that Bo Diddley beat back at the stage with everything they had. The recording sources for Red Rocks shows from this period vary — some circulate as solid audience tapes with the natural reverb of the stone walls baked right in, which only adds to the atmosphere. Whatever the fidelity, this is a show rooted in a sweet spot of the band's arc, in a venue built by geology for exactly this kind of music. Press play and let the altitude do the rest.