Most people think of the 1960s Grateful Dead as having been a psychedelic group. Well, they were - eventually. They came rather late to the game though. They started out at the beginning of 1966 as a post-British Invasion rhythm and blues outfit, based mostly around Rod Pigpen McKernan's vocals and Jerry Garcia's guitar. They stayed with it too, right through almost until the end of 1967. While the Jefferson Airplane were making "Surrealistic Pillow" and "After Bathing At Baxters", while down in Los Angeles Love were making "Forever Changes", Garcia, McKernan and the others were still playing "Beat It On Down The Line" and "Smokestack Lightning". The first real indication of a qualitative change in their music didn't really appear until the early studio recordings of "Dark Star" and "Born Cross-Eyed" from November 1967. Concerts during 1968 and 1969 were often built around a number of set combinations of songs. The Dead never went onto the stage with a set list already drawn up - this practice led to many tedious intervals while they tried to decide which song to play next. On other occasions you can hear one or other member suggest a theme from a particular song, which may or may not be taken up by the rest of the group. There's one gorgeous instance from 1971 when, having been infuriated by Garcia's decision to play "St Stephen" at a point in the show which they believe clearly to have been inappropriate, the drummers slam into the set closer "Not Fade Away" in a way which gives nobody any opportunity but to follow them.

The Dead's set piece combinations became well known, of course. At various points in the group's career, "China Cat Sunflower" would segue into "I Know You Rider"; "Scarlet Begonias" into "Fire On The Mountain" and, most famous of all, the "Dark Star> St Stephen> The Eleven> Turn On Your Lovelight" sequence which covers most of Live/Dead. The Anthem Of The Sun LP is based on two more of these - one on each side of the original vinyl. The basis of that record is a concert from early 1968, taken into the studio and heavily modified. The result was one of the three finest psychedelic albums, along with The Rolling Stones' Their Satanic Majesties Request and Captain Beefheart's Strictly Personal. By the time the group played this concert in Chicago however, the psychedelic rush was beginning to run out of steam. None of the set pieces of the previous year or so appear, although parts of them are played. There's a short instrumental "Dark Star" for example, which appears in the middle of the set of songs from Aoxomoxoa - released later in the year - which opens the show. That's followed by Pigpen singing "It Hurts Me Too", to the evident satisfaction of Garcia who immediately invites him to continue by almost without a pause playing the introduction to "Hard To Handle". A long "The Other One" follows, complete with its "Cryptical Envelopment" opening. This is part of the combination that takes up the first part of Anthem Of The Sun, along with "New Potato Caboose" and "Born Cross-Eyed". Born Cross-Eyed" was dropped very soon, and "New Potato Caboose" followed eventually. Here, "The Other One" starts with "Cryptical Envelopment"; there's then a short drum break and the main part of the song continues, interpolated with a wholly instrumental version of "The Eleven". When "The Other One" resumes after "The Eleven" it doesn't return to "Cryptical Envelopment" but lurches disconcertingly into a slow blues - "It's A Sin". "Morning Dew" follows, and is itself followed but two more rhythm and blues numbers: "Sitting On Top Of The World" and - from Noah Lewis, who wrote "Viola Lee Blues" of which more later - we hear "Minglewood Blues". "Minglewood Blues" was a favourite through most of the group's career. It's one of that family of songs that also includes "Rollin' And Tumblin'", "Drinkin' Muddy Water" (which The Yardbirds used to perform to such good effect) and "Sure Nuff 'n Yes I Do" from Captain Beefheart's Safe As Milk album.

At this point we get a real indication that the Dead's music is going to change radically. Garcia sings and play "Silver Threads And Golden Needles". Not only that, but he plays it on a pedal steel. Now Jerry Garcia playing a pedal steel guitar was to become a familiar sound over the next few years, but this is the earliest recorded instance that I know about - it's certainly the earliest that I've heard. He's fairly new to the instrument and his playing isn't as fluid and nippy as it became later. The repertoire isn't unfamiliar to him though. He was, after all, a banjo player long before he was a guitarist. Even so, nobody in this Chicago audience would have predicted the way the group's music would change with Workingman's Dead. Next up is "It's All Over Now Baby Blue", introduced by Bobby Weir with the comment "This is the home stretch for us - on account of we're going home". The Dead's version of "Baby Blue" - which they'd been playing on and off since 1966 - is one of the lesser known stars of their repertoire. They transform it to fit themselves. The change isn't as radical as that which Jimi Hendrix accomplished with "All Along The Watchtower", but it was every bit as thorough. "St Stephen" follows - "ladies' choice" according to Weir - and segues directly into a long and rather scrappy "Turn On Your Lovelight".

I said when I started this piece that when I saw the setlist for this concert that I knew I had to get a copy of the recording. Now this is why. Thirty-two minutes of sonic meltdown. A brief introduction from the drummers and the group lurches into a muddy, murky, turgid rendition of "Viola Lee Blues". Markedly slower than they'd played it two years and more before on their debut LP, this "Viola Lee Blues" is no longer any sort of nod to an earlier generation of musicians: it's a wholly contemporary piece of what other musicians would soon take and reshape into the beginnings of heavy metal. There's an instrumental section based on "Caution (Do Not Stop On Tracks)" and then "Viola Lee Blues" returns. Both pieces were nearly at the end of their performance life with the group. "Viola Lee Blues" decays into a section of feedback - a long, long section of feedback, not unlike the music certain German musicians would record in the early 1970s. Bear - that's Augustus Owsley Stanley III - feeds a tape of "What's Become Of The Baby" into it. This isn't the same recording that appears on "Aoxomoxoa", and this is the only known public performance of the piece. The effect is little short of volcanic. After that there's nothing else to be said but a lengthy acapella "And We Bid You Goodnight" and the group is off the stage. What a night!

What a night indeed. But there were few enough of them left to come. Of course the Dead didn't abandon all their psychedelic material at once, and songs from other sources had always been part of the group's repertoire. With hindsight though, that performance of "Silver Threads" is an indicator of what the years to come would be like. Just as the Dead were late into psychedelia, so they were late out. The Rolling Stones had disavowed Satanic Majesties - or rather critics had disavowed it for them, and they hadn't defended it. The Beatles treated their audience to the fundamentalist and nauseating "Get Back". Even Captain Beefheart was denouncing Strictly Personal. There was a nativist wind blowing through American rock music. Musicians wanted to - as the phrase has it - "get back to their roots". Even to put the idea into words can make your toes curl. Anyway, so many of them turned towards country music or something that sounded like it. Nothing was ever the same again - and for most of these groups nothing was ever as good again. Roger McGuinn never outdid Notorious Byrd Brothers, and the Dead never bettered Anthem Of The Sun. It's noticeable that the nativist trend did not allow its practitioners the freedom of expression and delight in music that the earlier form had done. Instead it led them into an increasingly narrow artistic cul-de-sac of love songs and Americana - and by the end of their career the Dead had become a piece of Americana in themselves, their constant annual touring round like some bizarre twentieth century chattaqua. Think of "Jack Straw" -

"Leaving Texas; fourth day of July: the sun so hot, the cloud so low; the eagles filled the sky. Catch the Detroit Lightning out of Santa Fe: Great Northern out of Cheyenne from sea to shining sea."

And if that's not enough, here's "US Blues" -

"Red and white; blue suede shoes: I'm Uncle Sam - how do you do? Give me five; I'm still alive: Ain't no luck - I learned to duck."

That's from the years of Watergate and the retreat from Saigon. As if you couldn't guess, it was originally entitled "Wave That Flag". The point is that such nationalist, not to say chauvinist, sentiments would not have appeared on a Grateful Dead record five years earlier. The descent into country was also a descent into "the country". That concert in April 1969 showed the group at a turning point. They would forsake the wide for the narrow; the new for the old and the future for the past. In the end, a touch of grey.