Cornell 5/8/77 Celebrates the 40th Anniversary of This Much-Revered Dead Show
By Scott Hopkins on February 18, 2017
Cornell 5/8/77 Celebrates the 40th Anniversary of This Much-Revered Dead Show
The Holy Grail of the Grateful Dead world is finally here!
If you took a Deadhead survey of THE best Dead show ever, you would certainly get many responses, but one thing is for certain: the show most often selected would be the Barton Hall performance at Cornell University 5/8/77. Most Deadheads already HAVE this recording, originally on cassette tapes, now on CDs or digitally.
Cornell 5/8/77 on CD
But now, for the first time, the Betty Board of the show is being released by dead.net in three configurations: three CDs, five on vinyl, or in box set that contains three other shows and Cornell. The box set contains 11 CDs and includes these shows:
5/5/77 Veterans Memorial Coliseum: New Haven, CT 5/7/77 Boston Garden: Boston, MA 5/8/77 Barton Hall, Cornell University: Ithaca, NY 5/9/77 Buffalo Memorial Auditorium: Buffalo, NY
Cornell 5/8/77 on vinyl
These come from a 26-date tour that started in the Northeast at the Spectrum in Philadelphia (4/22/77), out to the Midwest for four shows, five in the Southeast, before finishing up 5/28/77 at the Hartford Civic Center. The run included three nights at the Capitol in Passaic and five at the Palladium in NYC.
The four shows from Get Shown the Light, the title of the box set, were the next four after those Palladium dates. May ’77 spawned several other recordings released by the band, including Dick’s Picks 3: Hollywood (FL) Sportatorium 5/22/77 and Dick’s Picks 29, which featured the second night at the Fox in Atlanta 5/19/77 and the show at the Lakeland (FL) Civic Center (5/21/77). [Ed. note: The Lakeland date was my very first Dead show.]
SAN FRANCISCO – MARCH 20: The Grateful Dead (L to R front: Donna Godchaux, Phil Lesh, Bob Weir, Jerry Garcia / l to r rear: Mickey Hart, Bill Kreutzmann, Keith Godchaux) perform at Winterland on March 20, 1977 in San Francisco, California. (Photo by Ed Perlstein/Redferns/Getty Images)
Here is the tracking for the CD edition of Cornell 5/8/77:
DISC 1
1. New Minglewood Blues 2. Loser 3. El Paso 4. They Love Each Other 5. Jack Straw 6. Deal 7. Lazy Lightning> 8. Supplication 9. Brown-Eyed Women 10. Mama Tried 11. Row Jimmy
DISC 2
1. Dancing In The Street 2. Scarlet Begonias> 3. Fire On The Mountain 4. Estimated Prophet
Great ‘bootleg’ version of the show
DISC 3
1. St. Stephen> 2. Not Fade Away> 3. St. Stephen> 4. Morning Dew 5. One More Saturday Night
The release date of 5/8/17 celebrates the 40th anniversary of this run of shows. Best show ever? You decide!
