Dead of the Day: 05-08-1977
Barton Hall, Cornell University
Ithaca, New York
Our Dead of the Day could be nothing other than 5-8-77. No shows loom larger in the Dead’s oeuvre, and it is doubtful any other show has been listened to more than this one. And while you can put forth an argument that there are better nights for the boys, you surely would never try to argue that the evening at Barton Hall is not one of the very best they played. The band is crisp on every single tune, and Jerry’s guitar has rarely sounded sweeter, providing a heady lift to everything, including the frequently played songs like Minglewood and El Paso. But other tunes in that first set become purely stratospheric under the spell of this awesome night. Just for instance, the Row Jimmy is utterly perfect with Jerry playing some pregnant licks on the slide guitar and the entire band delivering a ferocious little jam. What’s more, it heads into a funky, grooving Dancin’ in the Streets that is easily one of the best versions of the disco-infused, post-Pig, late seventies versions of that tune, taking the crowd right into set break.
As great as the first set it, the second clearly eclipses it. Even the Take a Step Back banter is the one by which all others are judged. From there, things get seriously tasty with an absolutely epic – both in time (27 minutes) and otherworldly playing from everyone – Scarlet> Fire. A song later, the Stephen emerges, which is face-melting, torching everything in its path after its sweet and lovely opening. The Not Fade Away that it bleeds into continues to deliver hints of Stephen while scorching its own path at the same time. After a drums dominated segue, the band returns to the Stephen theme in earnest, rising up to a final verse. And with the last lick of Stephen, they also begin the opening bar of Morning Dew, which is so powerful, almost sacred, that words cannot do it justice.
The story of the recording of this show is almost as legendary as the music itself. The soundboard never circulated and only some marginal audience tapes made the rounds until 1986 when the cache of Betty boards were found and auctioned off from a storage unit. Fairly quickly after that, the 5-8-77 board came into heavy circulation, becoming the go to first tape that most heads acquired over the ensuing decades and enshrining it as “the best” show the Dead ever played. While many of those boards made their way back to the vault, the Dead still do not have the original tape of the Barton Hall show, which caused Bob to spin his tale that the concert never happened, that it was just a CIA mind control test. As they say in the interview, if that was the case, there really was no downside to the experiment. However, if it was all the CIA, then the agency also tricked the Library of Congress because back in 2012, the Library of Congress inducted it into the National Recording Registry. 2017 addendum: And now, with the band having just released a remastered Betty board of the show, we can assume the conspiracy has been laid to rest, or the CIA really is that good.
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