Audio: Grateful Dead Live at Barton Hall, Cornell University, 1977-05-08

To listen, click here.

Generally considered one of The Grateful Dead’s best performances, here captured with high quality recording equipment and freshly remastered by Rob Eato on a Betty Board with AUD splices. Barton Hall was an ROTC auditorium with architecture resembling a Blimp hangar, so the sound bounced around as if in an echo chamber, but the remastering has smoothed out a lot of the echo noise, and the version is very listenable.

The Grateful Dead allowed audience members to tape and distribute recordings of their live performances, so there are many versions of their songs available on the internet, but most are of poor quality.

The Grateful Dead was an American rock band formed in 1965 in Palo Alto, California. The band is known for its eclectic style, which fused elements of rock, folk, country, jazz, bluegrass, blues, rock and roll, gospel, reggae, world music, and psychedelia; for live performances of lengthy instrumental jams that typically incorporated modal and tonal improvisation; and for its devoted fan base, known as “Deadheads”.