Most Appropriate

"The Grateful Dead played a lot of 'free', often spontaneous, concerts in the Haight-Ashbury years-though the term 'free' seems somehow inappropriate given the band's ethos and the general zeitgeist of the time and place.

This show is remembered most fondly of all, largely because it has become regarded as the band's goodbye to the Haight, and because, after the ravages of the summer of love, magic could still happen. The concert came about after a nasty dust-up between hippies and cops two weeks earlier. Hoping to ease the tensions, the city proclaimed a 'street festival' for March 3, with the streets of Haight closed to traffic. It was an opportunity the band wasn't about to pass up. Playing atop a flatbed truck with the power tapped from Strait Theatre, the boys kicked off with 'Viola Lee Blues' and as the first notes crackled, the people began to gather until the streets (and stoops, and roof tops) were packed."

~ A passage from the book Grateful Dead The Illustrated Trip

And now for the show: March 3, 1968.