The Grateful Dead - The Matrix, San Francisco, California, December 1, 1966

The Grateful Dead - The Matrix, San Francisco, California, December 1, 1966“Welcome to another evening of confusion and high-frequency stimulation, and Sucrets, cold beer on tap, lurid nightclub atmosphere, and more beatniks than you can count on the fingers of two hands.”Over on Aquarium Drunkard this week, I scribbled some thoughts about a Grateful Dead Fillmore Auditorium 1966 tape, which just got standalone 3LP and double CD editions this summer. Primal Dead! Always fun to dip into this era, with its garage-y rambunctiousness, youthful energy and Pigpen-led R&B. And as is the case with so many things Dead-related, you’re always left wanting more. So here’s the band a few months later at the legendary Matrix, this time playing for a seated audience — thanks to some arcane SF law at the time, I think dancing was in fact illegal at venues like this. Of course, being the strict rule-followers they were, the Dead play a ripping rendition of “Dancing in the Streets” towards the end of…