Thirty-six years ago the Grateful Dead played their most renowned concert in Barton Hall at Cornell University. Last May it was formally recognized by the Library of Congress:
On May 23, the Library of Congress’ National Recording Registry announced this year’s list of 25 songs, instrumental pieces and historic recordings to be added to the prestigious institution’s permanent collection. There’s lots of great stuff on the list: Prince’s “Purple Rain”; Dolly Parton’s “Coat of Many Colors”; Vince Guaraldi’s “A Charlie Brown Christmas”; Donna Summer’s euro-disco “I Feel Love”; the first-ever commercial recording—a version of “Twinkle Twinkle Little Star,” created for the first talking doll by one of Thomas Edison’s employees; the only surviving record of early 20th century Broadway sensation Lillian Russell; the 1943 NY Philharmonic debut by conductor Leonard Bernstein; the Grateful Dead’s May 8, 1977, concert at Cornell University’s Barton Hall… Whaaaaat? Where did that one come from?
The show had two sets and an encore, which was standard for Dead shows at the time and for the remainder of their career. The first set was good, but certainly not the best of the spring tour of 1977, or of all-time. It was the second set that was transcendent. Part of it was just the acoustics of the hall, which created one of the best recordings ever made. But you’d be hard-pressed to find a better Scarlet Begonias/Fire on the Mountain in the history of the band, and a search for a better Morning Dew would be fruitless. The Dead were a notoriously sloppy band known for their unprofessionalism, and when I saw them in the 1984-1990 period, shows tended to be spotty with a lot of crap being produced in return for (hopefully) one or two transcendent moments throughout the night. The best show I ever saw by about a million times was my first in Augusta, Maine on October 12, 1984. I honestly can’t say that any of the other 87 shows I saw are even worth listening to, although individual songs or portions of those concerts certainly are.
I’d argue, and I think most Deadheads would agree, that the Dead’s best year was 1977 and their best tour that year was the spring tour, and that the best show of the spring tour was at Cornell.
I also like the 1972-74 era, including the period in which Mickey Hart was not with the band and they had only one drummer. But I can’t point to any single show in that era in which the band came so close to perfection as they did at Cornell.
Stream the whole show.
One of the first bootlegs I ever had…Phil’s bass on Scarlet is epic.
Some of Bobby’s best playing is on that Scarlet/Fire, too.
From my most recent post, The Push For Power. How It’s Done.
And the Deadhead alternate reality as well.
Not hearing what’s right in front of you.
The truth of the matter?
They were terrible.
Terrible.
Incompetent on every level. Musically, poetically…just terrible. They make Sonny and Cher sound like Beethoven and Mozart in comparison.
But…just as you now swallow the leftiness alternate reality promoted by WNBC, the Comedy Channel and Daily Kos…you first swallowed the “alternate rock” alternate reality.
The truth of the matter?
You were trained at the cusp of adulthood to obey the hype…like being potty-trained earlier on or McDonald’s-trained in high school.
Wake the fuck up.
You been had.
AG
Bet on it.
Stick to politics. Music is personal taste.
Charles Mingus would disagree.
So would Pythagoras and Plato.
So would Bob Brookmeyer and Miles Davis. So would John Coltrane. So would Tito Puente. So would about 90% of the musicians w/whom I work in NYC on a daily basis.
So would the most gentlemanly great musician that America has ever produced, Duke Ellington. The closest he ever came to publicly criticizing other musicians was this deathless quote.
Yup.
And if you are not somehow educated into being able to discern the difference between good music and the other kind, then there you jolly well are, aren’t you. Tough shit and go eat another White Castle burger.
Control the tastes of the consumers and you control the consumer.
A dumb consumer is a good consumer?
Apparently that’s what the advertising people think, and on the evidence of the way that we are lied to on the media in terms of what we laughingly call “news,” ditto the rest of the governmental media complex. They have been assiduously…and very, very successfully as well, I might point out…dumbing us down since the JFK coup in 1963. I guess they figured that if we were lame enough to swallow that line of bullshit they could sell us anything. So they did.
You been had.
You have no “personal tastes” of your own, RedDan. How? Why? because you have not been given a real opportunity to develop them. Great musicians in all idioms have been struggling progressively harder since the early ’60s to get air time enough to become “popular.” Pre-’60s? The idioms that were “popularized” by such great composers as Duke Ellington and the many Basie writers were the musical language of the entire country. The arrangements that backed the popular singers of that time were masterpieces of their type; the singers and songwriters were highly gifted and knowledgeable musicians and the people who played those arrangements were also incredibly gifted and highly skilled. People got real information from the music. It tuned them up; it put them in good rhythm w/the universe. It made them smarter. Bet on it.
Now?
Fuggedaboudit.
Like I said…a dumb consumer is a good consumer. bet on that as well.
You been sold.
Sold down the river of your own mind.
The Grateful Dead?
Wake the fuck up.
They couldn’t even tune their own instruments.
Salmonella-tainted meat from the A&P of the culture.
Disgusting.
I’m sorry, man. I don’t mind the fact that there are people who play music but don’t play very well. I really don’t. Everybody’s got their own thing. But if major league baseball players couldn’t hit, catch, run or throw worth a damn, could they get away with the same incompetence that you hear in that band? No. Of course not. You been sold a bill of goods ‘cuz you were never taught how to understand the language in which that bill is written.
Sorry, that’s just the way it is.
Later…
AG
They call taking LSD “taking a trip” or “tripping.”
That’s what the Dead allow you to do, with or without the accompanying drug.
The band that is the most similar to the Dead is the Allman Brothers, mainly because they have the same composition of players (2 guitars, 2 drummers, bass, and keyboards). The Allman Band is full of more professional musicians and they can jam pretty well, but they can’t take you on the same trip.
The garbage you hear in the playing is actually kind of an integral part of the music, ironically.
It’s like you are on a voyage and all of a sudden you are lost, things are chaotic, nothing seems familiar, you start to become disorientated, and then suddenly everything clicks together and everything is okay and you know where you are and you are ready to continue your trip. And that reassurance actually increases your enjoyment.
I have been at shows that were absolutely magical and then listened to the tape and wanted to puke it’s so bad. In fact, I feel that way about the vast majority of shows I ever attended. Other than the summer tour of 1985, which had a string of stellar shows, the band hardly ever played at an acceptable level after about 1980. They were too screwed up and ravished by drugs. Phil and Bobby play a lot better today than they did during the last 15 years of the Dead. The reason I quit seeing shows in 1990 is that they had become dreadful. But, if you were at those shows, there were many moments of sheer joy, of miraculous synchronicity.
There’s a reason that there are millions of Deadheads and it isn’t that they were sold some b.s. about what’s hip, at least for the most part. It’s because they have heard something that you can’t hear. They have gone on the trip and they liked it. A lot.
And they are willing to tolerate a lot of crap to feel those magical moments. It’s not like Deadheads go to the shows to hear a certain song or sing along to a hook. They go for the jams. The best moment in a show can come in virtually any song, even ones you normally hate.
You know, if you lie down, turn down the lights, put on some headphones and listen to this you should be able to sail around the world, the moon, and Saturn before its through. If you have the balls to take the trip.
Mentioning the Allman Brothers reminds me of Uncle Duke’s description of them (when he was doing pentenance on the Cher beat for Rolling Stone):
“They don’t play music – they emit a series of unpleasant vibrations capable of sterilizing a frog at 75 yards.”
Personally I liked listening to the Dead occasionally but never worshipped them. Analogous to recreational drugs. Funny most of the people I know who were heavily into either drugs or the Dead were also heavily into the other.
You remind me of the guy I knew in college who had an absolute fit over some Styx song because the rhythm guitar player had flubbed a lick in the middle of one of the songs. He played it over and over for me to listen to me to prove his point. THE HORROR! Yeah it was a minor flub in one measure, but big deal. Most people wouldn’t notice and fewer could care less. It’s doubtful they had a better take to choose from.
The Grateful Dead didn’t play shows to be perfectionists, they played shows to create atmosphere. I’m really sorry you don’t get it, or maybe you didn’t get to go to one. Dead shows were events and the people at them were not music critics, they were mostly trust fund kids with too much time and money on their hands. They were a carnival of crazy and I’m glad I got to see a couple of them.
No one ever said the Grateful Dead were classical musicians, not even them. They just wanted to avoid having jobs where they had to wear a tie and show up at an office 5 days a week.
Additionally, you might be interested to know one thing Jerry Garcia always required of each of the members of the Grateful Dead was that they ALWAYS contribute at least ONE song entirely of their own or they were out. He might tolerate them for an LP or 2, but if they didn’t cough up something, ANYTHING, they dearly departed.
There are entirely too many musical groups today run as a dictatorship either of convenience or necessity, because there is only ONE member of the band contributing. This is ironic because Jerry was always the reluctant leader.
You’re an insufferable snob, but that’s ok.
What’s not ok is that you seem to think that anyone who does not categorically agree with you, follow your line, hoe your row… is some robotically programmed slave of the machine.
We’re not. And you’re not right about everything, or really right about much more than anyone else.
Relax. Chill. Lay off. Get all intense and meaningful on your own time and with your own dime. I am doing my part, and if I want to do my part listening to music I like, who the fuck are you to say “boo” about it.
Frankly, I could be a huge Monkees fan, and spend hours listening to Nancy Sinatra… and if I were there for you when the time came, then what difference does that make?
It’s a discussion about music, and people who do not share your taste are not programmed.
Wow, you’re really quoting Ron Paul here and expecting anyone to give a rats ass what you have to say… about anything. Are you really calling the Dead “Alternate Rock”? Is that even a genre? You clearly don’t know shit about politics and you know even less about music.
Arthur is an accomplished jazz musician. It’s not that he doesn’t know anything about music. He’s just a snob.
He’s actually not that different from most of the band members. They couldn’t stand to listen to their old concerts because all they heard were their screw-ups and shortcomings. They listened as musicians, which is not how you need to listen to the Dead. If you do that, you can’t even hear what is happening.
I guess you can be a snob about just about any kind of music, just as long as it’s not the absolute mainstream of the moment. Personally, I despise jazz and don’t find it to have any aesthetic value other than its use in movie and TV soundtracks, such as Blowup or Bullitt.
I personally don’t see how anyone under 65 who has any openness to life can not like the Dead, although I only went to one of their concerts and bought one of their records. Also, when it comes to contemporary music, I don’t think it matters that much how polished a band usually is when they play live: what matters is what they do in the studio. One of my favorite bands is New Order, and the one time I heard them live, they sucked. (Bernard Sumner admitted as much at one point.)
That’s “rat’s” ass, Dansoninthestreets. With an apostrophe. Ron Paul is right about almost everything he is saying as far as I am concerned. He can spell, too.
How much of his direct material…not the media-promoted lies that have been quite effectively used to make sure that he doesn’t upset the thieves’ applecart that is currently known as “The United States”…have you actually examined?
Not much, I’m betting.
Not much at all.
AG
Well, I’ll give it to you Arthur — apparently you DO know a rat’s ass. Too bad you’re unable to escape the narrow confines of whatever musical aesthetic it is that you deem superior to the Grateful Dead and actually listen to and appreciate the musicianship and talent of Jerry Garcia and Phil Lesh, both of whom are widely recognized by their peers as being superior musicians. It seems to be the same thing with most of you libertarian/quackatarian types, that you buy the tired old conspiracy theories, but belittle everyone else’s political/philosophical beliefs as hogwash. Oh well, c’est la vie.
Beautiful.
And who might these “peers” be, Dansoninthestreets?
Pray tell me.
Oh.
Wait.
I know already.
Other no-playing motherfuckers who can’t even match pitches plus pop/rock/whatever hustlers who do know the difference but are in it for fame, power and glory so they keep their mouths shut in public and backslap whomever it seems best for them to hustle in order to get richer.
Their “peers?”
Please.
Ask a great actor about soap opera or porn stars and you’ll get the same answers I’m giving you here. But the soap operas and porn have their awards festivals as well, where their peers compliment them on their acting or the size of their breasts or whatever else counts in that scene.
Go drown in your own lame scene, Dansoninthestreets. I don’t really give a damn.
AG
Dave Grisman is no slouch, and he was a huge fan of Jerry Garcia.
Don’t know if you need to get stoned or laid,
but you obviously need some relief.
Chill out,
Some people enjoyed the Dead live,
I did quite a few times.
I also enjoy Beethoven, Mendelssohn and Pink Floyd.
It’s music,
ain’t no need to be so acidic in everything you write
especially in a vein like this.
I guess different people relieve the stress in different ways,
I hope you find a better more mellow way in your future,
like I said,
get stoned or laid, or maybe even both.
Call me a ‘snob” because I object to so-called mathematicians who cannot accurately add 2 + 2.
So-called athletes who cannot play ball.
So-called musicians who cannot even play in tune.
I’m not a snob, folks.
I just never fall for the Emperor’s New Clothes schtick.
And you do.
Over and over and over again.
So it goes.
Down.
So be it.
Later…
AG
I like comic books too.
I guess I will never live to enjoy the fruits of revolution.
If the comic books you read were drawn by someone who cannot draw a straight line or anything better than a barely recognizable stick figure then you would be reading Grateful Dead Comix.
Enjoy.
AG
http://xkcd.com/
smartest comix around. Stick figures… sometimes with hats.
You said “comic books,” RedDan. Not idea cartoons.
Comic books…which of course range from the sublime to the almost subhuman. But they are drawn fairly well. At least…I have never seen a “comic book” that wasn’t.
AG
P.S. Yes..xkcd is very good. All is not lost for you. I am so relieved!!!
lol.
You’re all right, Arthur. Curmudgeonly and crotchety bastard, perhaps, but all right.
i’m not the deadhead you are booman but i do happen to have five tracks from your augusta show: feel like a stranger, jack-a-roe, cumberland blues, the music never stopped, cold rain & snow
the only tracks i have from a show that i’ve attended are from philly ’86: mississippi half-step, women are smarter, high time, lost sailor, saint of circumstance, drums, morning dew, midnight hour
Those were all excellent. The Stranger and Cold Rain were the best I ever saw, easily. The Music and Cumberland were close to the best. The Jack-a-Roe was average but novel enough to be a rare pleasure. The real gems of the show were the best Lost/Saint ever, the best Morning Dew of the 80’s and a totally dominant Uncle John’s Band, plus the best I Don’t Need Love ever despite the problem with the speakers.
I was at that Philly show. I was at all three nights. That was the second night and it was notable because they only played one song after drums/space, but it was one of the best Morning Dews of the 1980’s and definitely the second best I ever saw. I still left pissed off though because I felt shortchanged.
I have an alternate theory on 1977, which I’ve never been a huge fan of (it is great, but I think the early 70’s and late 60’s were better).
SIince the vast majority of people who saw the Dead did so in the 1980’s and 1990’s, the 1977 year is the first to showcase the fixed format they are all accustomed to. There were first set songs and second set songs, fixed couplings, fixed rotations of songs, no Dark Stars, Space and Drums, etc.
Barton Hall is definitely a fantastic show, as is the 4/23/77, among a great run.
That said, the October and November 73 run after they ditched the horns is probably better, with the 10/19/73 show being better than Barton Hall.
Also, February and April 1969 are more stunning start to finish, with 2/28/69, 3/1/69, 4/5/69 and 4/21/69 all being better shows.
The 1973 and 1974 Wall of Sound one-drummer sound is pretty awesome, and it was definitely the jazziest and most improvisational period for the band. If you want to hear a Dark Star or a Playin’ in the Band or a Bird Song, you definitely want to go to 1973 or 1974. If you want to hear Lesh at his apex, 1972-74 is where to look.
But if you want to hear Jerry Garcia at his very finest, you can’t beat 1977. His playing reached its zenith and the band was clicking. Even Donna managed to sing in tune some of the time on the spring tour, instead of spoiling otherwise fine performances with her screaming.
No arguments there. I always look to Sugaree, Deal, Mississippi Half-Step and Peggy-O for what you’re talking about. I’m very schizophrenic about 1977 because it has the best stuff they did, Franklin’s Tower, Scarlet Fire, the songs above, but it is also the point where they introduced songs in constant rotation that I just want to skip, mainly being Good Lovin’, Samson and Delilah, and Estimated Prophet (yeah, I said it). I love listening to entire shows and skipping songs is like skipping church sometimes. It just doesn’t seem right.
Really glad you’re putting dead content up as the politics of the day are quickly becoming less important than whatever dead dhow I’m thinking of listening to this week.
Lastly, here is a link to an article that I think you’ll love if you need a diversion.
http://deadessays.blogspot.com/2011/02/dick-latvala.html
Its about Dick Latvala, of Dick’s Picks fame. It has near religious significance, not because it has to do with the dead, but because it is the story of a man who got the one thing he ever wanted, but found out that it wasn’t what he thought it would be.
I’ve never been a huge fan of Estimated Prophet, but the lead guitar on the Cornell version is just stunning. I wish I could have seen him play on that level just once, but he never even came close in all the shows I saw, whether with the Dead or solo.
Lots of great shows in ’77. ’76 had the same kind of fluid energy but not as powerful. I usually go for something in the ’71 – ’73 period when the music still seems to be springing from its acoustic roots. ’70 – ’71 has some great Pigpen, and they were not politically correct. Live Skull and Roses inspired me to get a stereo that I could play LOUD.
Agree. Well said. Check out the Dancin’ in the Streets to close out the first set of 5/8/77. Phil’s bass playing is absolutely incredible, the transitions in the middle section are practically flawless and Donna actually sounds good. Not one of my favorite songs usually, but this version is awesome and presages what was to come in the second set. When Bobby steps up after it’s over to tell the audience that they’ll be back after a short break, I love thinking of the folks in the audience who were sitting there on the cusp of history, unaware of what was just about to transpire, on the stage, and all around them.
Doesn’t Bobby start singing too early on that Dancin’?
Either him or Donna. I mean come on, it’s still the Grateful Dead.
The Dead were a notoriously sloppy band known for their unprofessionalism, …
Just like Crazy Horse!!
Saw the Dead in April of 1969 at a union hall in Minneapolis that probably held 500 people. In 1967-68, I saw first the Jefferson Airplane and later The Who in Fargo, ND at an auditorium that maybe held 1,000-2,000 people.
Never was big fan of the Dead. They didn’t rock hard enough for me. Too mellow. Give me a jam band like the Allman Brothers anyday. Or early Santana(best concert I’ve ever seen in 1975). Or electric Neil Young. And others.
Booman,
I was at that Augusta, Maine show. I was 14, and got tickets for an early birthday present.
It was one of the best shows of any kind I have ever seen.
I had just turned 15.