Welcome back, and we hope you're having a happy Spring. This week we have two big jams from 1971, and a cool jam from 1978.

Our first stop this week is on 4/13/71 at the Scranton Catholic Youth Center in beautiful Scranton, PA, home of everyone's favourite American paper company. From this show we have a unique pairing of Truckin'>Drums>Good Lovin'. This was a good little tour, with the band starting and finishing the tour in New York City, opening with three nights at the Manhattan Center and ending with five nights at the Fillmore East. Things were still a little tentative at times with only one drummer, but this opened up the music to allow it to change direction a little faster, and with so many great new songs added to the repertoire in February, 1971, it was a good time for the Grateful Dead.

Next up, from the very next night on 4/14/71 at Bucknell University in Lewisburg, PA, we have the second set jam of Cryptical Envelopment>Drums>The Other One>Wharf Rat, Hard To Handle. Although Wharf Rat was still rather new, it was a magnificent addition to the playlist from the beginning.

Our final stop this week is at the Pittsburgh Civic Arena on 4/18/78, where the band played this cool post-Drums sequence of Samson and Delilah, Terrapin Station>Around and Around. The first half of this tour is not in the vault (4/6/78 to 4/16/78), but the remainder (4/18/78 to 5/17/78) is, so we have plenty of great music to select from on this at-times very inspired tour (see: 5/10 and 5/11/78). We'll have a little more from this tour next week.

Thanks for stopping in, and we'll look forward to seeing you next week. As always, we encourage you to write with questions or comments to the address below. Please include "Grateful Dead" in your email subject line to make sure it makes it through the spam filters.

David Lemieux
vault@dead.net