This year marks the 40th anniversary of the Grateful Dead’s legendary Barton Hall show, a performance that took place on 5/8/77 at Cornell University in Ithaca, New York and that is widely considered one of the “best” Grateful Dead show—this is for a number of reasons including the pristine soundboard recording by Betty Cantor-Jackson, which was then widely disseminated to fans across the United States. However, it’s important not to lose the Barton Hall show in history; their extensive ’77 run was chock full of wonderful shows, particularly because the tour came on the heels of Terrapin Station, which the entire band was stoked on as their most polished album up to that point (eliciting Weir to tell Rolling Stone “People won’t believe it’s us. . . . It’s the Dead without all those wrong notes.”). In honor of the anniversaries of both the 5/8/77 Barton Hall show and their May ’77 tour as a whole, two new records have been released: the long-awaited official release of the iconic 5/8/77 Barton Hall show as well as an 11-disc box set, Get Shown The Light, which features a collection of performances captured by Cantor-Jackson during May, forty years ago.
Listen To The Grateful Dead’s Most Famous Performance, Cornell ’77, On Its 40th Anniversary
Somewhat ironically, both of these releases have made their way onto Billboard’s top 15 albums chart—marking the two highest-charting Grateful Dead albums in over thirty years. The Cornell ’77 release came in at #10 on the chart. The massive Get Shown The Light compilation (which includes Dead spring ’77 performances at Cornell, as well as New Haven, CT; Boston, MA; and Buffalo, NY) rings in at #15. As the 40th anniversary of these shows come and go, with the Grateful Dead’s albums receiving more commercial “success” than ever in the past three decades, I think it’s pretty clear that no, our love will not fade away. You can buy these albums for download or physical copy at Dead.net.
EXCLUSIVE: Betty Cantor-Jackson Rekindles Her Love Of Taping Through The Chris Robinson Brotherhood
[H/T Jambands]