This set comprises the Grateful Dead's complete Honolulu Civic Auditorium concert (discs 1 and 2) and a third disc from the next night's gig. Their first Hawaiian concert engagement also marked two of the final appearances of the septet that included former Steve Reich keyboardist Tom Constanten who took his amicable leave of the group in New Orleans that same month. The material captures a magnificent transitional repertoire set. This falls between what might be called the Anthems of the Sun repertoire of ‘China Cat Sunflower’ into ‘I Know You Rider’ and a ‘That's It For The Other One’ suite (expanded with an early Hart/Kreutzmann ‘Drums’ interlude), the Live/Dead era (with the multifaceted improvisation elements that embraced) and road testing songs about to be recorded in San Francisco's Pacific High studio that February. (The sixth of these is the ultimately rejected track ‘Mason's Children’, previously issued as a bonus track on the Workingman's Dead CD reissue.) The centrepiece is the second disc's improvised segue through ‘Dark Star’ and ‘St. Stephen’ before it concludes with a storming Pigpen vocal R&B tour-de-force blast on ‘Turn On Your Love Light’ (which exits with seldom heard cymbal shimmers). Disc 3 includes a ho-hum snatch of atonal extemporisation (‘Feedback’) that leads into their version of the Pinder Family take on the Sankey hymn they retitled ‘And We Bid You Goodnight’. Though Constanten himself was frequently frustrated during the 16 months that he gigged with them, during his tenure they hit a purple patch as far as concert performance was concerned. Coevally the songwriting team of Garcia and Robert Hunter was blossoming with Hunter's ghost presence of T.S. Eliot making way for a new psychedelised New Lost City Ramblers sensibility lyrically. This is a priceless, sometimes spacey snapshot of that time.