In Grateful Dead lore, 1974 was the year when it all got too big—for the first time. Over the several preceding years, the band had gone from best-kept secret in rock to hottest ticket in town. Now they were carting around their infamous “Wall of Sound,” a humongous concert audio system unlike any that had ever been built—it required its own fleet of trucks. They had their own record company and all of the attendant worries that come with running a business. By the end of the year, the Dead, exhausted, had decided to pack it in, at least temporarily, filmed a run of shows at Winterland and took a hiatus (which, of course, didn’t last very long) as the musicians went off to explore solo endeavors.

Far from a band that had run out of ideas or invention, though, GD ‘74 produced some keeper shows. Granted, the Dead had ritualized several aspects of their presentation by this point, but their playing (trimmed down to the basics following Pigpen’s death the previous year and with drummer Mickey Hart still MIA) was, for the most part, tight and inspired.

Fresno is a little slow-going on the uptake—first-set tunes like “Bertha” and “Beat It on Down the Line” are fairly ragged, but by “Scarlet Begonias” and “Playing in the Band,” they’d found their groove and transcended the mundane. The intermission entertainment, 15 minutes of Phil Lesh and Ned Lagin’s experimental electronic “Seastones” music, intrigued some and likely sent many others scurrying to the beer counter, but as the show progressed through flawless workups of “He’s Gone”> “U.S. Blues” and a thrilling “Weather Report Suite”> “Jam”> “Eyes of the World”> “China Doll” climax—the pre-“Space” jam segment getting mighty freaky—there was no doubt that the Grateful Dead still had plenty to say. It would just have to wait a while.