Screengrab via Grateful Dead "Bertha (Oakland, CA 12/31/87)"
The latest installment in the Grateful Dead‘s All The Years Live archive video series is available now on the band’s YouTube page. This entry highlights the Dead’s performance of “Bertha” from Oakland Alameda County Coliseum in California on 12/31/87.
Released on VHS in 1996 as Ticket to New Year’s—and on DVD two years later—”Bertha” opens the show like a cannonball shot out of a cannon. The Grateful Dead also broadcast the show live as a pay-per-view event, foretelling the future of concert livestreams from services like LivePhish and nugs. On their home turf to ring in 1988, the Dead are in fine form as the passionate harmonies of Jerry Garcia, Bob Weir, and Brent Mydland come together to bid farewell to 1987.
One of the Grateful Dead’s most consistently played songs from 1971 to 1995, this was one of the handful of songs for which the Dead never recorded a studio version, with the live version that opens Skull & Roses being the definitive version.
Watch the Grateful Dead perform “Bertha” on New Year’s Eve 1987 in Oakland.
