Compendium Essays: Dancin' in the Streets

Hey, I just noticed that the Tapers Compendium team have posted the essays that I believe were cut from the first three editions. (Or did they appear? Someone check!) I forgot that I had written an essay on the evolution of "Dancin' in the Streets" with Dan Dasaro:

Aside from other R&B hits of this period, the only other time the Dead covered a current hit song is when they played "Werewolves of London" in 1978.

Improvising a jam inside the song that transcends its basic structure provided a way to carry new minds along on the psychedelic journey, both leaving from and returning eventually to a familiar station. In their own way, the Dead achieved something akin to John Coltrane’s radical reworkings of "My Favorite Things."

As with the Dead’s 1970 FM hit, "Truckin’," "Dancin’" features the road-song virtue of naming a long list of major cities. It was also an appropriate song for a band that often played on flatbed trucks to a crowd that was literally dancing in the streets!