Before they were the Grateful Dead, they were “San Francisco’s Grateful Dead.” At least that’s how they were to be billed on the title of their debut album: a scuzzy, organ-drenched oddity, more representative of the era it came from than the band it introduced. Leading up to the record’s release in 1967, the Grateful Dead had fortified their reputation as an uncontainable force, a live act who had to be seen to be believed. They were a band inextricably linked to their locale (Haight and Ashbury, San Francisco) and the scene it had hatched (namely Ken Kesey’s Acid Tests, for which the Dead served as the house band). In a spirited but nascent Vancouver show attached to this 50th anniversary reissue, mostly comprised of embryonic attempts at original songs (“Cream Puff War,” “Cardboard Cowboy”) and jumpy renditions of soon-to-be standards (“I Know You Rider,” “New Minglewood Blues”), the audience greets the band with silence. Bob Weir responds dryly, “I see our fame has preceded us.” He’s not entirely kidding. At the time, no one was quite sure what to do with the Grateful Dead. It was a question the band would face multiple times throughout their career and one that was immediately apparent when they recorded their debut album: How do the Grateful Dead present themselves, stripped of the context that defines them?