It’s not quite performable… Those were the first songs me and Hunter did together, and we didn’t have the craft of songwriting down. But we still had a hell of a time getting through those bridges, and the fact that it didn’t stick as a piece of material tells something about what was flawed about the construction. Being able to pull off the changes and do the vocals – last time we worked it out was with Donna, and it was pretty effective, sort of. Cosmic Charlie has some really complex chord voicings in the bridges. The weaknesses were part of what’s musically clever about the songs, but part of what’s cumbersome about performing them. “Cosmic Charlie was really a recording song, and even when we did perform it, it always had its weaknesses. Constanten is especially audible in this version. Garcia has now added a new instrumental section, a great storming ‘Revolution’-style guitar raveup and a couple verses of the fuzzy guitars playing the vocal melody before the song’s finale and the song has its extra repeated “calling you” ending.

Unfortunately there's a big tapecut three minutes in, wiping out part of the song, but it ends with Weir repeating 'calling you' before the music gently winds down.ġ/25/69 – A much smoother performance, this comes out of a hard-stopped Doin’ That Rag in a little Aoxomoxoa song medley. The intro is delightful as it lasts more than a minute, and this is the best place to hear the lovely way Garcia & Weir originally played the intro. Cosmic Charlie is among the new songs, and they're still pretty shaky with it. On 1/23/69, the day before starting the multitrack recordings for Live/Dead at the Avalon, the Dead taped a rehearsal at the theater working out some of the material.

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