Carousel Ballroom, San Francisco, CA, 2/14/68 2CD

Three San Francisco bands, the Grateful Dead, Quicksilver Messenger Service, and Jefferson Airplane, leased the Carousel Ballroom together and threw this show open as its Grand Opening on February 14, 1968, with Country Joe and the Fish sharing the bill. Jerry Garcia, Bob Weir, Ron "Pigpen" McKernan, Phil Lesh, Bill Kreutzmann, and Mickey Hart drove the set that night, the same stretch of shows that fed straight into the studio-and-live hybrid Anthem of the Sun. You can hear a band testing how far a room could stretch before it broke.