Fifty-one years ago today, the Grateful Dead set up their gear at the Family Dog in San Francisco for a televised performance on PBS branded as A Night at the Family Dog.
The Dead’s 12-song performance as part of the television broadcast, which also featured another notable Haight-Ashbury rock outfit Jefferson Airplane, saw the band’s “Primal Dead” era lineup treat viewers to psychedelic renditions of a Ron “Pigpen” McKernan-led “Hard to Handle”, “China Cat Sunflower” > “I Know You Rider”, “St. Stephen”, “Not Fade Away”, “Dancing in the Street”, “Good Lovin'”, “Me and My Uncle”, and notably “Black Peter”, which was being recorded right around that time and would go on to appear on the band’s seminal Workingman’s Dead studio album released six months later in June 1970.
The audio recordings from the Dead’s performance were released as Grateful Dead Download Series: Family Dog at the Great Highway in December 2005. Thankfully, a pro-shot video highlighting part of the band’s performance also still exists online.
Related: The Grateful Dead Once Dosed The Crew Of ‘Playboy After Dark’ With LSD [Watch]
Relive the Grateful Dead’s performances of “Hard to Handle”, “China Cat Sunflower”, and “I Know You Rider” in the video below, and scroll down to listen to the performance’s full-show audio.
Grateful Dead – “Hard to Handle”, “China Cat Sunflower” > “I Know You Rider” – 2/4/70
[Video: candyman]
Grateful Dead Download Series: Family Dog at the Great Highway – 2/4/70