Of all the Dead, bass-player Phil Lesh is the most musically experienced. He started out as a violinist, played trumpet in the San Mateo College Jazz Band, composed electronic music, and one day picked up the electric-bass under Garcia's instruction; two weeks later he played his first concert with the Dead. On stage, he moves to and fro from stage-front to his amplifier at the back, looking cheerful, at times excited by the music. On his left, Bob Weir-tall, serious-looking-looks down at his rhythm guitar, occasionally peering across the stage from under his eyebrows to the other guitarists.

Ron McKernon, Hell's-Angelic in his goatee and leather jacket, a very tough-looking honcho, pokes about the stage, beating a huge, glittering tambourine when the music calls for it. He looks neglected a lot of thetime; one Dead follower claims that McKernon seldom plays the keyboards anymore because of arthritis in his hands. But when the time comes for a Pigpen song, he's standing up to the microphone singing hard and well, and blowing strong blues-harp-solos.

At the left-hand side of the stage, Garcia, heavy and round-checked, smiling benignly, almost maternally, looks calmly happy, interested in what is going on around him; all the while his fingers run through the strings on his guitar, releasing fast notes with easy precision, controlling the pitch, volume, thickness, sharpness and shape of each note. When the Dead had just brought out their first album, Garcia talked to San Francisco Chronicle jazz critic Ralph Gleason about the way he was developing his music:

"It's a matter now that we have this new thing, these electric sounds, it's a question of how can you use them in such a way that they're music rather than racket? Because the point is fine. I've been using the feedback stuff instead of playing lines or for producing a layer of sound which is the thing that happens most naturally. I've been using it by like striking a string and bringing up my volume knob so that there is no attack on the beginning of the note. The note just starts to come out of the air. . . . I've already played the string, turned up the volume, the feedback starts. And I stop the string at a rhythmic interval. So that I have . . . if I were to draw a picture of the tone, it would be just about the reverse of what a guitar tone normally is, where you have a heavy attack and then a slow decay. Because it's the other way around, it decays in and attacks off . So I use it as a rhythmic device more than anything else. But you know, the more it happens, the more I know about it and the more ideas I get for it and so forth. It's just a matter of playing more."

Since the release of their first album, the Dead have developed innovatively and very steadily; they've recorded four more studio albums- Anthem of the Sun, Aoxomoxoa, Workingman's Dead , and their most recent, American Beauty , and have brought out two "live" albums, Vintage Dead and Live Dead.

As the hours passed, the B.U. concert gained momentum easily, the music apparently giving off energy in one way or another to the crowd, who let the music move them, unable to listen without letting motion spill out of their bodies, without clapping and flashing their hands in the air and dancing. "The great thing about the Dead." explained one disciple, "is . . . like, you can have these wicked cosmic thoughts and dance at the same time. Really spiritual and really sensual. "

By 12:30, the Dead were reaching the limits of their power-several hours of nearly non-stop music at the end of a long tour can do that. They paused briefly after one piece, and started in quickly on "Uncle John's Band," a calm, beautifully harmonized song from Workingman's Dead. It was the best saved for last. and it meant the end of the concert was close at hand. The crowd appreciated the song noisily; when it was over, the audience clapped wildly, shouting for more, stomping, clapping in unison, but the Dead were tired, and there was to be no more. The calls for more music continued, good-naturedly, hoping but not really demanding because, after all, if the Dead have done all they want then they are through: it is their music, they must have reasons for stopping now instead of at some other time; no one can tell them to do more. Tired, probably a little repelled by the loud appreciations from the crowd, the Dead unplugged and left.