For this outburst I blame M. Simon, who wrote his post because Ann Althouse wrote a post about Augustus Owsley Stanley, III (aka "Bear"), sound and chemical engineer extraordinaire.

It's the Grateful Dead playing another Pigpen classic, "Easy wind." It's tough to call Pigpen the "leader" of the Grateful Dead, as the band was so anarchic, but in his autobiography "Searching for the Sound," bassist Phil Lesh called Pigpen their "anchor." With good reason; while the rest of the band (and nearly everyone in the audience) were on LSD, Pigpen somehow was able to be cosmic on alcohol. (It took its toll, as he died of cirrhotic liver disease at age 27, in 1973.) There was something about his down-to-earth "cosmic but sensible" grounding that kept the band from getting too far out and spaced out (especially during their experimental days) and it was the Pigpen space that gave the band their ability to always return to earth. I believe that he influenced the sound of their music greatly, and without Pigpen they would not have developed quite the same distinctively adventurous, very American, syncopated style which has been called "chunky psychedelic wit."

I don't know how many people enjoy it, but I do. Psychedelic nostalgia at its finest.

Link here.

Considering that this is 37 years old, the psychedelic light show in black and white seems appropriate.

MORE: Amazingly, Pigpen video keeps turning up at YouTube.

Here's a classic version of "Hard To Handle."

(Have to say, that last one's the best I've seen so far.)