Ithaca, NY.
May 8, 1977
*40th Matrix*
SBD (shnid=4982):
Betty Board -- Master 7" Nagra reels 1/2 track @ 7.5ips>Sony PCM 501. Playback on Sony PCM 701>DAT (Digital Transfer) -- Rob Eaton DBX Decoding (Spring '99) Playback on Panasonic 4100 DAT>DB 924 D/A>Dolby 361's w/dbx K9-22 Cards>DB 124 A/D>Neve Capricorn (Digital mixing console)>DB 300S>Panasonic 4100 DAT>DAT>Digi Coax Cable>Tascam CD-RW 700>CDR (x1)>SHN (Rob Eaton remaster)
AUD (shnid=29303):
Handheld Shure 57's, 10 Feet From Stage, DFC>TC152>MCMC>CDR>EAC>WAV>FLAC
Recording And Transfer: Jeff Stevenson
Thank you to Rob Eaton for the SBD transfer, and to Jeff Stevenson for recording this all-time great show.
Matrix by Hunter Seamons using Final Cut Pro (SHN & FLAC>AIFF>Final Cut>WAV>FLAC)
February 5, 2009
Set I
d1t01 - Minglewood Blues
d1t02 - Loser
d1t03 - El Paso
d1t04 - They Love Each Other
d1t05 - Jack Straw
d1t06 - Deal
d1t07 - Lazy Lightning ->
d1t08 - Supplication
d1t09 - Brown Eyed Women
d1t10 - Mama Tried
d1t11 - Row Jimmy
d2t01 - Dancin' In The Streets
Set II
d2t02 - Take A Step Back
d2t03 - Scarlet Begonias ->
d2t04 - Fire On The Mountain
d2t05 - Estimated Prophet
d3t01 - St. Stephen ->
d3t02 - Not Fade Away ->
d3t03 - St. Stephen ->
d3t04 - Morning Dew
Encore------
d3t05 - One More Saturday Night
Jerry Garcia - Lead Guitar, Vocals
Donna Jean Godchaux - Vocals
Keith Godchaux - Keyboards
Mickey Hart - Drums
Bill Kreutzmann - Drums
Phil Lesh - Electric Bass, Vocals
Bob Weir - Rhythm Guitar, Vocals
Notes:
Warning: this might steal your face - the sound is impeccable, thanks to truly excellent sources for a matrix.
-Hunter February 14, 2010
Revisiting
The Grateful Dead's 1977 Barton Hall show
By
Luke Z. Fenchel | Wednesday, February 10, 2010
For
a large subset of music fans, a single concert on May 8th of 1977 captured a
monumental moment, and ranks above any other show in rock history. It speaks to
the lasting significance of the Dead, and the lives of its listeners, that only
a few thousand people were there to hear it.
The legendary show is best known as "Barton Hall '77". Fame often distorts factual details, and the myth of May 8th might make what went on up at Cornell that strange and snowy spring night ultimately unknowable. But long before it was etched in the minds of Deadheads through the viral spread of audience tapes, culminating with the pristine soundboard recording that surfaced in 1987, Barton Hall was simply a stop between Boston and Buffalo on a well-regarded live band's itinerary.
"The Barton Hall show has - as have many things Grateful Dead - grown in stature over the years," said John Scher, who co-promoted the '77 show with the Cornell Concert Commission, revolutionized concert promotion while working with the band, and transformed The Capitol Theatre in Passaic, New Jersey into one of rock's most hallowed halls. "And probably if as many people were there as say they were there, you'd be talking about hundreds of thousands of people."
"I actually know people who I know weren't there who thought they were there because they've heard the tapes for so long," Scher continued. "It's hard to say. I saw hundreds upon hundreds of Grateful Dead shows, and it is one that sticks out in my mind, but probably to some degree I'm as guilty as the next: I was there, I remember it being a very joyful show, but because I've heard it many times since, and because of the legend of the show, it magnified itself."
Booking the band
"I always thought of this as my show," said Pat O'Brien, who was graduated from Cornell in 1977, and who was the chair of the Cornell Concert Commission during the lead-up to Barton Hall show. "From the moment it was booked. This was my graduation month, and they were my favorite band."
According to Mike McEvoy, the CCC's chairman of the selection and market research committee from '76-'78, a well-received Monday night appearance at Bailey Hall in October 1975 by a Jerry Garca side project "began to lay some of the groundwork."
"Ithaca is not on the route maps for most bands. So it has to fit in well from a scheduling standpoint too," he said. "And after all the discussions I had with [Scher's business partner] David Hart and the people at Monarch over time, we were ready - and they were comfortable."
"The stars were all in alignment, shall we say" McEvoy added.
The legendary show is best known as "Barton Hall '77". Fame often distorts factual details, and the myth of May 8th might make what went on up at Cornell that strange and snowy spring night ultimately unknowable. But long before it was etched in the minds of Deadheads through the viral spread of audience tapes, culminating with the pristine soundboard recording that surfaced in 1987, Barton Hall was simply a stop between Boston and Buffalo on a well-regarded live band's itinerary.
"The Barton Hall show has - as have many things Grateful Dead - grown in stature over the years," said John Scher, who co-promoted the '77 show with the Cornell Concert Commission, revolutionized concert promotion while working with the band, and transformed The Capitol Theatre in Passaic, New Jersey into one of rock's most hallowed halls. "And probably if as many people were there as say they were there, you'd be talking about hundreds of thousands of people."
"I actually know people who I know weren't there who thought they were there because they've heard the tapes for so long," Scher continued. "It's hard to say. I saw hundreds upon hundreds of Grateful Dead shows, and it is one that sticks out in my mind, but probably to some degree I'm as guilty as the next: I was there, I remember it being a very joyful show, but because I've heard it many times since, and because of the legend of the show, it magnified itself."
Booking the band
"I always thought of this as my show," said Pat O'Brien, who was graduated from Cornell in 1977, and who was the chair of the Cornell Concert Commission during the lead-up to Barton Hall show. "From the moment it was booked. This was my graduation month, and they were my favorite band."
According to Mike McEvoy, the CCC's chairman of the selection and market research committee from '76-'78, a well-received Monday night appearance at Bailey Hall in October 1975 by a Jerry Garca side project "began to lay some of the groundwork."
"Ithaca is not on the route maps for most bands. So it has to fit in well from a scheduling standpoint too," he said. "And after all the discussions I had with [Scher's business partner] David Hart and the people at Monarch over time, we were ready - and they were comfortable."
"The stars were all in alignment, shall we say" McEvoy added.
Taping the show
"Of what I was able to listen to, and from the crowd response, you could tell the band was on that night," McEvoy said of the show he booked and worked. "The Grateful Dead have a little bit of history, and there are nights that the band is not really on as much as other nights. And that night at Cornell they were really on."
"The band was at their playing peak," said Scher. "Cornell and Ithaca in general were very hospitable to the band and to their fans. I think there were a lot of Cornell students, a lot of Ithaca College students, and lot of Syracuse students for whom the Dead were their favorite band of the era. It was a nice day; the topography around Cornell is really different and interesting - the gorges. I remember seeing Deadheads staring at and looking at, with sort of 'Wow' on their faces."
Scher continued: "And everything just clicked for the band that night: both onstage, sound-wise for the audience, and vibe-wise for the interaction between the band and audience."
"I guess where we get most of our converts is from any of a number of good nights we have," Bob Weir told musician and journalist David Gans in an Aug. 9, 1977, interview. "It's pretty evident that what we're doing is going fishin' and sometimes we come up with catfish and sometimes we come up with trout."
"'Barton Hall '77' became that legendary for a number of reasons," Scher said. "The band was at the height of their powers. And because the band always shared their music with the fans, and always let them tape, which in those days was very, very unusual, and pretty much unheard of, when they performed a show as magical as this one was, the word spread not only by word of mouth, but also by listening."
He added, "I'm sure the tapes were duplicated thousands - tens of thousands of times."
"If you wanted to listen to field recordings, you either listened to somebody's fifth- or seventh- generation copy, or you went out and made your own," said Eddie Claridge, who was responsible for more than a few field recordings of the Dead, and whose audience tape from May 16, 1981, at Barton Hall is a phenomenal document of a completely different period for the band. (Claridge also recalled a May 7, 1980, tape he made when the Dead changed "Playing in the Band" to "Playing in the Barn" "because of the interesting acoustics.")
"We loved the music, and this was the most effective way to do it. If you spent the time to learn what you were doing, you could make quite a good field recording," he said. "And once you got it, it was hard not to do it at other shows. And that made some of us persona non grata at some other bands' shows."
"I missed Barton hall because I had a business commitment," Claridge added. "Of course I regret I wasn't there."
"Just because I saw 50 shows that year doesn't mean I wouldn't have wanted to see more." He continued, wistfully: "Of the whole spring ['77] tour, Barton Hall and Buffalo were the only ones I missed."
But the show was captured by someone who was probably in Claridge's social circle. Claridge didn't want to speculate, but likely candidates include Jerry Moore or Steve Maizner. (Moore, who edited Dead Relix magazine from 1974-1977, and who was one of the "original tapers," passed away on June 3, 2009; Maizner was unavailable for comment). The provenance is less important than the tape's existence.
Between October '74 and June '76 "[t]he underground Grateful Dead tape trading network had blossomed," Blair Jackson writes in his biography "Garcia: An American Life." Even before the Dead's "retirement" was better recognized as an 18-month hiatus from touring (between October 1974 until June 1976 the Dead only performed a handful of live shows), grassroots dissemination of live Dead recordings unofficially partnered with more traditional means of distribution, like the radio. (Jackson pointed out that of the four 1975 shows, one was broadcast nationally on the radio, and another was a free concert with Jefferson Starship that drew 25,000 people even though it took place the day it was announced.)
"Between audience-made concert tapes and the numerous Dead shows that had been recorded for FM radio broadcasts, there were many tapes in circulation among traders by the mid-'70s," Jackson writes. "This encouraged more people to collect tapes and become tapers themselves."
"There were not very many people taping in '75," Claridge said. "If you were to cite a number in the double digits for the whole country you'd be pretty close." He continued: "If I went to a show in '77, chances are that anyone in the room that was recording was someone I knew. And by 1980, at any given show there would be 150 guys recording."
Though Scher seemed to be speaking of field recordings - known as audience tapes by Dead fans - the "Betty Boards" were just as important to a show's acclaim.
"[Barton Hall '77] was the first really great tape to come out that everybody had in their collection," Rob Eaton, Dark Star Orchestra's founding member said. "So it became a favorite listening piece: a vehicle to listen to the Dead at all times because it was pristine quality of a really good show from a really great time period."
"Of what I was able to listen to, and from the crowd response, you could tell the band was on that night," McEvoy said of the show he booked and worked. "The Grateful Dead have a little bit of history, and there are nights that the band is not really on as much as other nights. And that night at Cornell they were really on."
"The band was at their playing peak," said Scher. "Cornell and Ithaca in general were very hospitable to the band and to their fans. I think there were a lot of Cornell students, a lot of Ithaca College students, and lot of Syracuse students for whom the Dead were their favorite band of the era. It was a nice day; the topography around Cornell is really different and interesting - the gorges. I remember seeing Deadheads staring at and looking at, with sort of 'Wow' on their faces."
Scher continued: "And everything just clicked for the band that night: both onstage, sound-wise for the audience, and vibe-wise for the interaction between the band and audience."
"I guess where we get most of our converts is from any of a number of good nights we have," Bob Weir told musician and journalist David Gans in an Aug. 9, 1977, interview. "It's pretty evident that what we're doing is going fishin' and sometimes we come up with catfish and sometimes we come up with trout."
"'Barton Hall '77' became that legendary for a number of reasons," Scher said. "The band was at the height of their powers. And because the band always shared their music with the fans, and always let them tape, which in those days was very, very unusual, and pretty much unheard of, when they performed a show as magical as this one was, the word spread not only by word of mouth, but also by listening."
He added, "I'm sure the tapes were duplicated thousands - tens of thousands of times."
"If you wanted to listen to field recordings, you either listened to somebody's fifth- or seventh- generation copy, or you went out and made your own," said Eddie Claridge, who was responsible for more than a few field recordings of the Dead, and whose audience tape from May 16, 1981, at Barton Hall is a phenomenal document of a completely different period for the band. (Claridge also recalled a May 7, 1980, tape he made when the Dead changed "Playing in the Band" to "Playing in the Barn" "because of the interesting acoustics.")
"We loved the music, and this was the most effective way to do it. If you spent the time to learn what you were doing, you could make quite a good field recording," he said. "And once you got it, it was hard not to do it at other shows. And that made some of us persona non grata at some other bands' shows."
"I missed Barton hall because I had a business commitment," Claridge added. "Of course I regret I wasn't there."
"Just because I saw 50 shows that year doesn't mean I wouldn't have wanted to see more." He continued, wistfully: "Of the whole spring ['77] tour, Barton Hall and Buffalo were the only ones I missed."
But the show was captured by someone who was probably in Claridge's social circle. Claridge didn't want to speculate, but likely candidates include Jerry Moore or Steve Maizner. (Moore, who edited Dead Relix magazine from 1974-1977, and who was one of the "original tapers," passed away on June 3, 2009; Maizner was unavailable for comment). The provenance is less important than the tape's existence.
Between October '74 and June '76 "[t]he underground Grateful Dead tape trading network had blossomed," Blair Jackson writes in his biography "Garcia: An American Life." Even before the Dead's "retirement" was better recognized as an 18-month hiatus from touring (between October 1974 until June 1976 the Dead only performed a handful of live shows), grassroots dissemination of live Dead recordings unofficially partnered with more traditional means of distribution, like the radio. (Jackson pointed out that of the four 1975 shows, one was broadcast nationally on the radio, and another was a free concert with Jefferson Starship that drew 25,000 people even though it took place the day it was announced.)
"Between audience-made concert tapes and the numerous Dead shows that had been recorded for FM radio broadcasts, there were many tapes in circulation among traders by the mid-'70s," Jackson writes. "This encouraged more people to collect tapes and become tapers themselves."
"There were not very many people taping in '75," Claridge said. "If you were to cite a number in the double digits for the whole country you'd be pretty close." He continued: "If I went to a show in '77, chances are that anyone in the room that was recording was someone I knew. And by 1980, at any given show there would be 150 guys recording."
Though Scher seemed to be speaking of field recordings - known as audience tapes by Dead fans - the "Betty Boards" were just as important to a show's acclaim.
"[Barton Hall '77] was the first really great tape to come out that everybody had in their collection," Rob Eaton, Dark Star Orchestra's founding member said. "So it became a favorite listening piece: a vehicle to listen to the Dead at all times because it was pristine quality of a really good show from a really great time period."
The
second set
"I was in the back of the hall when the second set started, and they launched into 'Scarlet > Fire' which is kind of a classic hallmark of the Cornell show," said McEvoy, who went on to work with rock promoter Bill Graham (the promoter of that nationally broadcast radio show in '75). "I've come to realize that all I need to do is mention the Cornell show and a knowledgeable person who knows The Grateful Dead would say, Scarlet Fire."
"I would say that it is one of the highlights, but it is not the only highlight," David Lemieux, The Dead's tape archivist and CD producer since 1999 said of Barton Hall's "Scarlet > Fire" in a phone conversation from his home in British Columbia, Canada. "When you listen to April 22 - May 28, you realize there are a lot of highlights." Lemieux quickly added: "There is so much great music; it is without a doubt one of the great tours in the history of The Dead."
Barton Hall may be simply the most well known. "I agree with the people who say [the Dead reached its peak on] May 8, 1977," a fellow named Jimmy - who said he had been to every show in the New York area since 1972 - told the Times' Ben Ratliff in the Fall of 2008.
"It's sort of ubiquity breeding consensus," said Gary Lambert, longtime editor of the Grateful Dead and host of "Tales from the Golden Road" on Sirius XM's Grateful Dead Channel. "It's like saying that the popularity of 'Star Wars' somehow makes it inherently greater than a film like 'Shoot the Piano Player.'" He continued: "I would just rather talk about the fact that the band was playing at such a level."
Lambert noted up front that "Barton Hall does not particularly stand out because I was never a great seeker of or accumulator of tapes at the time." He first "stumbled" on the Dead on May 5, 1968 in Central Park, but was living on the West Coast by '77. "I first heard the 'Terrapin' [album] material in March of '77 at Winterland," he told me, with palpable excitement in his voice. "And hearing those songs for the first time in was already revelatory, even though they were just testing them out as live pieces, because they had a compositional complexity was apart from what [the band] had tried before."
"Instead of coming up with a riff and developing it live - [the Dead's] method used to be to turn a jam into a tune - 'Terrapin' was a really well-written song, and it came out well-realized," he continued. "So by the time it become a live performance piece it was already very well developed and only got better."
The next shows Lambert caught came after the spring tour, again at Winterland. "Those June '77 shows were extraordinary, and for those of us who had seen them in March, June was like the payoff." He continued: "Everything had become a glorious beautiful monster, and there was a sense that the band had emphatically shaken off whatever cobwebs they had acquired during their nearly two year hiatus."
"Any number of shows from the spring circuit are arguably just as good as Barton hall," Lambert said finally, citing Hartford, Buffalo and Chicago as examples."
Buffalo and Chicago are not commercially available, but the Hartford soundboard recording is (05/28/77, as "To Terrapin"), as is the second of three nights at the Palladium in New York (04/30/77, released as the first installment in the Grateful Dead download series), and three consecutive Southern dates (05/19/77, 05/21/77 and 05/22/77, released as Dick's Pick's 29 and 3).
Lemieux compared soundboards in the vault (Hartford, for instance) to Barton, one of the many that are missing. "It's not exactly comparing apples and oranges, but comparing oranges and tangerines." He continued: "[Barton Hall] sounds pretty good. The non-commercial release was never mastered in HDCD. The commercial releases have gone through some technology that adds a heck of a lot."
"WOW!!" John Dwork writes of the audience recording in the Hartford '77 entry of The Deadhead's Taping Compendium, Vol. II. "Highlights: The entire tape." The entire review continues ecstatically, concluding with a wish, "What a fine, fine performance. I sure wish there was a soundboard of this show." That wish is now a reality.
Barton Hall '77 does not include the "Terrapin" suite, though it does include "Estimated Prophet" from the '77 studio record "Terrapin Station," as well as Hart and Hunter's "Fire on the Mountain." ("TS," "EP" and "Samson and Delilah" from the album were played in Boston on May 7; the complete Barton Hall '77 set-list and almost all others are available on The Taping Compendium as well as on deadlists.com, and all over the internet).
"If Barton Hall '77 only existed in the memory of 4,000 people, and if every show had been equally available and equally recorded, I engage in [the] hypothetical if," Lambert mused. "If you could separate the experience and the artifact, then probably the Barton show would not be as highly regarded."
Later, Lambert said: "I could get into analysis [of Barton Hall] I'm happy to get into that. If you ask me about the best shows of 1977, I would be hard pressed to call any show a best show without 'Terrapin Station.'"
"It doesn't matter what they played!" Lemieux exclaimed after hearing about Lambert's comments. "To me it's about performance quality... I have never even considered [the set-list part] of the quality of the show."
"Remember Barton Hall saw one of the rare 'Morning Dew's' played at the time," Lemieux continued. "They only played it a few times on that tour, so 'Morning Dew' itself is something significant. As is 'Saint Stephen.' And a brand-new 'Estimated Prophet.'"
O'Brien recalled: "The only specific thing is that I do remember when they started up "St. Stephen," because I thought, Oh Yes!"
"You always wondered if they were going to play 'St. Stephen,'" Dave Pohl, a local musician and music fan said over his dining room table last week. "And same with 'Morning Dew.' So to hear both things in such proximity was important for me."
Pohl continued: "And 'Estimated Prophet.' That's not even my favorite song, but I remember when they played it something was going on there. It was special."
"If you look at the five songs Deadheads would want to hear, 'St. Stephen' was always there. It is one of the songs you seek out like crazy," Lemieux said.
"I've characterized the Grateful Dead as 'America's longest-running musical argument-" Gans told Phil Lesh in an interview on June 30, 1982 for a piece in Musician magazine. "The very definition of a musical argument is something that keeps going, and that you uncover new details and new combinations," Lesh said in response. "A musical argument is not the same as a verbal argument...That's really a good description, in sort of an abstract verbal sense."
"You know, I'm not as obsessed as the next ten people you're going to talk to and I don't make lists of favorites," Gans said by phone from his home in the bay area. "It's just not something I can rattle off. I don't give a shit." Gans continued: "What I can say of the spring tour is that it's interesting-great-music, and I can tell you why."
"I can't tell you what I think about the show," O'Brien said, firmly and flatly. "Most of my family was there. Many of my brothers came up; one worked the show." O'Brien added, "I could never be objective because, as I said, It was my show. I can't be objective."
More than 30 years on, Barton Hall '77 has become one of the best-known performances of arguably the finest live band in American history. "It's simply classic. It makes the hairs on the back of your neck stand up," Dennis McNally told Cornell Magazine in 1997.
"What the Grateful Dead invented, and what they inherently knew, was that the more people that had the music, that got to participate, the better fans they would become. The community created camaraderie, and they would make fans and [fans] would make tapes. Lifelong friendships were made by audience members, not only by seeing friends at shows, but the relationships that were made by trading of tapes."
"There has been no band in history that has the sociological effect on the public more than the Dead," Scher said towards the end of our interview. "The Dead had social impact on millions of people."
Audience and Soundboard, Experience and Artifact
"What the Grateful Dead invented, and what they inherently knew, was that the more people that had the music, that got to participate, the better fans they would become," Scher said. "The community created camaraderie: they would make fans, and [fans] would make tapes. Lifelong friendships were made by audience members, not only by seeing friends at shows, but the relationships that were made by trading of tapes."
"There were lots of tapes around before that," Artie, a longtime Ithaca music scene veteran, told me when we met on a late afternoon at the State Street Gimme! Coffee. He opened his briefcase, and took out three CD-Rs that he placed on the table in front of us.
"Well this was, as you know, one of the first Betty Boards that widely circulated. As a matter of fact, I brought for you the soundboard of the entire show," he said, nodding to the CD-R stack of three.
He pressed a fourth CD-R into my hands, and said, "But this is the audience that I prefer. There were tapers around. Many of them traveled some of the same social circles I did."
"Personally," Artie continued, "the soundboards are amazing, but on the other hand they are... for me I listen to recreate the experience of being there. The audience tapes crackle with energy. In fact I stood right there, and I can hear myself on the tape. So at times when I would yell, or the people I was with would yell, you can hear it."
"In fact, people who have passed away...I...uhh listened to it today." Artie was tearing up. He continued, "And I thought about one person I was with who was my best friend at that point, and who has since passed away, and you can hear him on the tape. He yells out periodically during solos. And in fact for me, that's one of the most important parts of the tapes, when I will periodically listen to tapes." He paused. "I don't listen to tapes much anymore."
"For most people, when they have special moments like this, there is no artifact. Their memory is their only connection to it. What a luxury I have to have this artifact. I play it, people who are gone are there with me. The space sounds the same, and the connection is amplified-it's so much more real."
"It's a memory-reinforcing-tool"
"What's the difference between the best and my favorite," Artie asked later. "Who am I to judge?"
"It's less about the best and more about your experience. To me, Barton Hall is a largely widespread if not universally acknowledged Dead show." He added: "33 years on, people are still talking about Is It Or Isn't It. Well, is not that the indicator right there?"
"If you're into it, who am I to judge?"
More than 30 years on, Barton Hall '77 has become one of the best-known performances of arguably the finest live band in American history. "It's simply classic. It makes the hairs on the back of your neck stand up," Dennis McNally told Cornell Magazine in 1997.
"I was in the back of the hall when the second set started, and they launched into 'Scarlet > Fire' which is kind of a classic hallmark of the Cornell show," said McEvoy, who went on to work with rock promoter Bill Graham (the promoter of that nationally broadcast radio show in '75). "I've come to realize that all I need to do is mention the Cornell show and a knowledgeable person who knows The Grateful Dead would say, Scarlet Fire."
"I would say that it is one of the highlights, but it is not the only highlight," David Lemieux, The Dead's tape archivist and CD producer since 1999 said of Barton Hall's "Scarlet > Fire" in a phone conversation from his home in British Columbia, Canada. "When you listen to April 22 - May 28, you realize there are a lot of highlights." Lemieux quickly added: "There is so much great music; it is without a doubt one of the great tours in the history of The Dead."
Barton Hall may be simply the most well known. "I agree with the people who say [the Dead reached its peak on] May 8, 1977," a fellow named Jimmy - who said he had been to every show in the New York area since 1972 - told the Times' Ben Ratliff in the Fall of 2008.
"It's sort of ubiquity breeding consensus," said Gary Lambert, longtime editor of the Grateful Dead and host of "Tales from the Golden Road" on Sirius XM's Grateful Dead Channel. "It's like saying that the popularity of 'Star Wars' somehow makes it inherently greater than a film like 'Shoot the Piano Player.'" He continued: "I would just rather talk about the fact that the band was playing at such a level."
Lambert noted up front that "Barton Hall does not particularly stand out because I was never a great seeker of or accumulator of tapes at the time." He first "stumbled" on the Dead on May 5, 1968 in Central Park, but was living on the West Coast by '77. "I first heard the 'Terrapin' [album] material in March of '77 at Winterland," he told me, with palpable excitement in his voice. "And hearing those songs for the first time in was already revelatory, even though they were just testing them out as live pieces, because they had a compositional complexity was apart from what [the band] had tried before."
"Instead of coming up with a riff and developing it live - [the Dead's] method used to be to turn a jam into a tune - 'Terrapin' was a really well-written song, and it came out well-realized," he continued. "So by the time it become a live performance piece it was already very well developed and only got better."
The next shows Lambert caught came after the spring tour, again at Winterland. "Those June '77 shows were extraordinary, and for those of us who had seen them in March, June was like the payoff." He continued: "Everything had become a glorious beautiful monster, and there was a sense that the band had emphatically shaken off whatever cobwebs they had acquired during their nearly two year hiatus."
"Any number of shows from the spring circuit are arguably just as good as Barton hall," Lambert said finally, citing Hartford, Buffalo and Chicago as examples."
Buffalo and Chicago are not commercially available, but the Hartford soundboard recording is (05/28/77, as "To Terrapin"), as is the second of three nights at the Palladium in New York (04/30/77, released as the first installment in the Grateful Dead download series), and three consecutive Southern dates (05/19/77, 05/21/77 and 05/22/77, released as Dick's Pick's 29 and 3).
Lemieux compared soundboards in the vault (Hartford, for instance) to Barton, one of the many that are missing. "It's not exactly comparing apples and oranges, but comparing oranges and tangerines." He continued: "[Barton Hall] sounds pretty good. The non-commercial release was never mastered in HDCD. The commercial releases have gone through some technology that adds a heck of a lot."
"WOW!!" John Dwork writes of the audience recording in the Hartford '77 entry of The Deadhead's Taping Compendium, Vol. II. "Highlights: The entire tape." The entire review continues ecstatically, concluding with a wish, "What a fine, fine performance. I sure wish there was a soundboard of this show." That wish is now a reality.
Barton Hall '77 does not include the "Terrapin" suite, though it does include "Estimated Prophet" from the '77 studio record "Terrapin Station," as well as Hart and Hunter's "Fire on the Mountain." ("TS," "EP" and "Samson and Delilah" from the album were played in Boston on May 7; the complete Barton Hall '77 set-list and almost all others are available on The Taping Compendium as well as on deadlists.com, and all over the internet).
"If Barton Hall '77 only existed in the memory of 4,000 people, and if every show had been equally available and equally recorded, I engage in [the] hypothetical if," Lambert mused. "If you could separate the experience and the artifact, then probably the Barton show would not be as highly regarded."
Later, Lambert said: "I could get into analysis [of Barton Hall] I'm happy to get into that. If you ask me about the best shows of 1977, I would be hard pressed to call any show a best show without 'Terrapin Station.'"
"It doesn't matter what they played!" Lemieux exclaimed after hearing about Lambert's comments. "To me it's about performance quality... I have never even considered [the set-list part] of the quality of the show."
"Remember Barton Hall saw one of the rare 'Morning Dew's' played at the time," Lemieux continued. "They only played it a few times on that tour, so 'Morning Dew' itself is something significant. As is 'Saint Stephen.' And a brand-new 'Estimated Prophet.'"
O'Brien recalled: "The only specific thing is that I do remember when they started up "St. Stephen," because I thought, Oh Yes!"
"You always wondered if they were going to play 'St. Stephen,'" Dave Pohl, a local musician and music fan said over his dining room table last week. "And same with 'Morning Dew.' So to hear both things in such proximity was important for me."
Pohl continued: "And 'Estimated Prophet.' That's not even my favorite song, but I remember when they played it something was going on there. It was special."
"If you look at the five songs Deadheads would want to hear, 'St. Stephen' was always there. It is one of the songs you seek out like crazy," Lemieux said.
"I've characterized the Grateful Dead as 'America's longest-running musical argument-" Gans told Phil Lesh in an interview on June 30, 1982 for a piece in Musician magazine. "The very definition of a musical argument is something that keeps going, and that you uncover new details and new combinations," Lesh said in response. "A musical argument is not the same as a verbal argument...That's really a good description, in sort of an abstract verbal sense."
"You know, I'm not as obsessed as the next ten people you're going to talk to and I don't make lists of favorites," Gans said by phone from his home in the bay area. "It's just not something I can rattle off. I don't give a shit." Gans continued: "What I can say of the spring tour is that it's interesting-great-music, and I can tell you why."
"I can't tell you what I think about the show," O'Brien said, firmly and flatly. "Most of my family was there. Many of my brothers came up; one worked the show." O'Brien added, "I could never be objective because, as I said, It was my show. I can't be objective."
More than 30 years on, Barton Hall '77 has become one of the best-known performances of arguably the finest live band in American history. "It's simply classic. It makes the hairs on the back of your neck stand up," Dennis McNally told Cornell Magazine in 1997.
"What the Grateful Dead invented, and what they inherently knew, was that the more people that had the music, that got to participate, the better fans they would become. The community created camaraderie, and they would make fans and [fans] would make tapes. Lifelong friendships were made by audience members, not only by seeing friends at shows, but the relationships that were made by trading of tapes."
"There has been no band in history that has the sociological effect on the public more than the Dead," Scher said towards the end of our interview. "The Dead had social impact on millions of people."
Audience and Soundboard, Experience and Artifact
"What the Grateful Dead invented, and what they inherently knew, was that the more people that had the music, that got to participate, the better fans they would become," Scher said. "The community created camaraderie: they would make fans, and [fans] would make tapes. Lifelong friendships were made by audience members, not only by seeing friends at shows, but the relationships that were made by trading of tapes."
"There were lots of tapes around before that," Artie, a longtime Ithaca music scene veteran, told me when we met on a late afternoon at the State Street Gimme! Coffee. He opened his briefcase, and took out three CD-Rs that he placed on the table in front of us.
"Well this was, as you know, one of the first Betty Boards that widely circulated. As a matter of fact, I brought for you the soundboard of the entire show," he said, nodding to the CD-R stack of three.
He pressed a fourth CD-R into my hands, and said, "But this is the audience that I prefer. There were tapers around. Many of them traveled some of the same social circles I did."
"Personally," Artie continued, "the soundboards are amazing, but on the other hand they are... for me I listen to recreate the experience of being there. The audience tapes crackle with energy. In fact I stood right there, and I can hear myself on the tape. So at times when I would yell, or the people I was with would yell, you can hear it."
"In fact, people who have passed away...I...uhh listened to it today." Artie was tearing up. He continued, "And I thought about one person I was with who was my best friend at that point, and who has since passed away, and you can hear him on the tape. He yells out periodically during solos. And in fact for me, that's one of the most important parts of the tapes, when I will periodically listen to tapes." He paused. "I don't listen to tapes much anymore."
"For most people, when they have special moments like this, there is no artifact. Their memory is their only connection to it. What a luxury I have to have this artifact. I play it, people who are gone are there with me. The space sounds the same, and the connection is amplified-it's so much more real."
"It's a memory-reinforcing-tool"
"What's the difference between the best and my favorite," Artie asked later. "Who am I to judge?"
"It's less about the best and more about your experience. To me, Barton Hall is a largely widespread if not universally acknowledged Dead show." He added: "33 years on, people are still talking about Is It Or Isn't It. Well, is not that the indicator right there?"
"If you're into it, who am I to judge?"
More than 30 years on, Barton Hall '77 has become one of the best-known performances of arguably the finest live band in American history. "It's simply classic. It makes the hairs on the back of your neck stand up," Dennis McNally told Cornell Magazine in 1997.
The highlight of this show for me may be Dancing the Streets. The feeling and sound of it is sublime. But, the main thing about this boot is the quality of the sound. The band was at peak musical performance, the sound board recording is high quality, and when you matrix that with a quality audience recording, you have Grateful Dead Bootleg perfection.
ReplyDeleteAfter the destruction caused to the Martha & the Vandellas original by Mick Jagger & Bowie's dire version, circa Live Aid. It was a song I never thought I could listen to again but the Dead take it somewhere else and all bad memories of the 'pouting duo' recede into distant memory.
Deletehttps://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BHkhIjG0DKc
DeleteI was born in 1966. I grew up close to the punk and reggae generation of the mid-to-late seventies, too. But somehow, probably as a result of my interest in psychedelia, I got into the Grateful Dead as a young teenager. I first saw the Grateful Dead live in 1984. Within the following five years, I saw so many live shows, I lost count. I think the total is just over thirty. More than half of what I still listen to now is either live Grateful Dead shows, Jerry Garcia solo, or his shows with other artists, and related artists and material. To my ears, Jerry Garcia's guitar is like the sound of my mother's loving voice, always there to comfort me. I guess I'm a Dead Head.
DeleteIndeed, it sounds like you are. Your last sentence includes a very warm and heartfelt analogy.
DeleteHello. I'm sure most Deadheads have this recording as it's reached legendary status, but it's still an important show to post on here. I grew up saying I disliked the Grateful Dead. Truth be told, I didn't know much about them, aside from hearing Truckin on the radio every once in a while. Then a pal gave me a copy of this show. I heard sounds of rock n roll, country, funk, (funk? , yea it's kinda funky) and more all rolled into one show. From that point my appreciation for this great American band grew as did my collection of live shows.
ReplyDeleteWith all that said, I thank you for posting this show for all to enjoy.
Coming from the punk / reggae generation of the mid to late seventies the Dead were 'Persona non grata'
DeleteSo much like yourself they were a band I never heard or knew about until much older.
This was my live introduction to them and for anyone new to the Grateful Dead it offers a supreme initiation.