From my 11/9/84 with Phil Lesh:
We worked for about six months at Columbus Recorders, putting all these two-track tapes of gigs together. We used stuff from the Great Northwest tour with Quicksilver, where we played out asses off with this material – really hot. Some of the tapes were terrible…
One of the gigs that’s like the core tape of Anthem of the Sun was that gig Garcia talked about in the movie, where he “threw me down the stairs” because I stopped playing for a while. I was lost – I couldn’t figure out what the fuck was going on. He said, “Motherfucker, you play” – mumble mumble. He just kinda pushed me out of the way. There were three steps up to a narrow door. I had my bass, and I just wanted to get past his ass and get out there, put my bass in the case and go home.
That was one night we weren’t high on acid. I don’t remember being high on acid that night. We were just playin’. If you’re not on drugs and you play shit like that, I dunno – maybe it… it makes you wireder, more edgy. It’s the kind of thing where people could take cocaine just to come down. Don’t laugh.
That was the first act of violence that any one of us had ever directed toward another one. It blew my mind, for about six or eight hours…. “You ever touch me again… “ You know how it is. And of course, the first thing he said to me the next day was, “Hey, I’m sorry,” and I said, “Hey, forget it.” That’s all you can really say.
The tape was so hot that we didn’t connect that incident with those tapes for a while. I think Jerry was the first one that connected that. He told me about it, and I said, “Are you shittin’ me?” Even after all that misunderstanding, we used those tapes of that night: St. Valentine’s Day, 1968, Carousel Ballroom. We used that for the core of “The Other One,” and “Alligator,” too.
This is the episode Jerry referred to in The Grateful Dead Movie. Remember? Those tapes turned out to be “crackling with energy.”