The Grateful Dead will continue their 50th anniversary series when they release a deluxe edition of their 1968 album, Anthem of the Sun. Recorded on both sides of the country between 1967 and 1968, Anthem of the Sun marked the Grateful Dead’s second full length album as well as their first to feature percussionist Mickey Hart.

The new deluxe edition of the record will be available on July 13th—almost 50 years to the day after the band first released it. It will be sold as a limited edition picture disc vinyl and as a remastered two-CD set, the latter of which will come with a bonus disc featuring previously-unreleased live recordings.

While Anthem of the Sun is typically classified as a studio album, the band famously created each track by combining multiple live and studio versions of the album’s various songs. As drummer Bill Kreutzmann noted in his 2015 autobiography, Deal, “Jerry and Phil went into the studio with [soundman/producer Dan] Healy and, like mad scientists, they started splicing all the versions together, creating hybrids that contained the studio tracks and various live parts, stitched together from different shows, all in the same song — one rendition would dissolve into another and sometimes they were even stacked on top of each other… It was easily our most experimental record, it was groundbreaking in its time, and it remains a psychedelic listening experience to this day.”

The album’s experimental nature made for a challenging listening experience for some fans, so a second—ostensibly more accessible—mix was produced in 1971. The forthcoming box set will include both the original 1968 mix and the 1971 mix that most fans or more familiar with. Additionally, the CD set’s second disc will include a previously-unreleased live recording of the Grateful Dead’s October 22, 1967 concert at San Francisco’s Winterland Ballroom, a show that has the distinction of being the band’s first known performance with Hart.

“This is one the most thrilling albums the Grateful Dead ever produced, mixing portions of live recordings from the first six months of Mickey’s tenure with the band, along with studio experimentations that would hint at where the Dead would go when they started recording to 16-track tape the following year,” Grateful Dead archivist David Lemieux said in a press release. “The 1971 remix, produced in order to make the album more accessible to the newer fans who were brought on board with Workingman’s Dead and American Beauty, has been the most commonly heard version for the past 45+ years. However, having this side-by-side with the original 1968 mix demonstrates countless differences, with the original mix being more primal, psychedelic, and experimental.”

Fans can pre-order the two-CD set and/or the picture disc vinyl via Amazon.

Anthem of the Sun deluxe edition track list:

Disc: 1

  1. That’s It For The Other One (Cryptical Envelopment / Quadlibet For Tender Feet / The Faster We Go, T)

  2. New Potato Caboose (1968 Mix) [Remastered]

  3. Born Cross-Eyed (1968 Mix) [Remastered]

  4. Alligator (1968 Mix) [Remastered]

  5. Caution (Do Not Stop On Tracks) [1968 Mix] [Remastered]

  6. That’s It For The Other One (Cryptical Envelopment / Quadlibet For Tender Feet / The Faster We Go, T)

  7. New Potato Caboose (1971 Remix) [Remastered]

  8. Born Cross-Eyed (1971 Remix) [Remastered]

  9. Alligator (1971 Remix) [Remastered]

  10. Caution (Do Not Stop On The Tracks) [1971 Remix] [Remastered]

Disc: 2

  1. Morning Dew (Live at Winterland, San Francisco, CA 10/22/67)

  2. New Potato Caboose (Live at Winterland, San Francisco, CA 10/22/67)

  3. It Hurts Me Too (Live at Winterland, San Francisco, CA 10/22/67)

  4. Cold Rain And Snow (Live at Winterland, San Francisco, CA 10/22/67)

  5. Turn On Your Love Light (Live at Winterland, San Francisco, CA 10/22/67)

  6. Beat It On Down The Line (Live at Winterland, San Francisco, CA 10/22/67)

  7. That’s It For The Other One (Cryptical Envelopment I / The Other Side / Cryptical Envelopment II)

[H/T – Jambands.com]