Grateful Dead’s Best Year Ever Captured On New Box Set

A large majority of heads single out 1977 as the year the Grateful Dead gave their best concerts. Winterland, June 1977: The Complete Recordings, a new nine-disc box set remastered in pristine sound, finds the jam band kings exploring the stoner classic concept album Terrapin Station, as well as all-time classics like “Wharf Rat,” “Uncle John’s Band” and “Fire On The Mountain. The album is available exclusively through Dead.net.

Here’s the press release:

LOS ANGELES — The Grateful Dead rolled into San Francisco riding a long streak of hot-damn shows during the spring of 1977, a legendary road trip that many Dead Heads agree was a tour for the ages. The band didn’t disappoint the hometown faithful when it took to the stage June 7-9 at Winterland Arena — the Dead’s spiritual home — for one of the group’s most beloved hometown runs. As veteran Dead archivist David Lemieux puts it, “A lot of Dead Heads say ’77 is their favorite year. And of these shows, the first night is a Top 15, the second is a Top 10, and the third is a Top 3.”

WINTERLAND, JUNE 1977: THE COMPLETE RECORDINGS packs every note from those three transcendent nights into nine discs that encompass what might be some of the greatest live Dead ever. A worthy successor to last year’s extraordinary Winterland 1973 collection, this set surges and sighs with the inspired sound of rock’s most unpredictable dance band hard at work, in peak communion.

WINTERLAND, JUNE 1977 is presented in HDCD, mastered from the original soundboard reels and enhanced using cutting-edge audio engineering technology including Plangent Processes’ state-of-the-art audio-time alignment procedure. Handsomely packaged in a custom archival box, the set contains 68 previously unreleased tracks as well as an extensive, full-color booklet featuring rare photos, a thoughtful essay by Rolling Stone senior editor and Winterland veteran David Fricke, and a few other surprise goodies.

On sale now exclusively from www.dead.net for $99.99, WINTERLAND, JUNE 1977 will be shipped by the end of September. Fans who order the set before then will also receive an exclusive bonus disc featuring more than an hour of unreleased music recorded live May 12, 1977 at Chicago’s Auditorium Theatre.

During these Winterland performances, the band previewed all but one song from Terrapin Station, its then-forthcoming ninth studio album. Among the highlights are Bob Weir and John Perry Barlow’s “Estimated Prophet”; Phil Lesh’s locomotive “Passenger”; and the title track, a beautiful marriage of ideas by Jerry Garcia and his lyricist-soulmate Robert Hunter.

Fricke nominates the second set from June 9 as the band’s best ever, calling it: “an instant opera of spiritual biography (“St. Stephen” from 1969’s Aoxomoxoa), non-denominational salvation (Buddy Holly’s “Not Fade Away”), tumult and wonder (a big chunk of “Terrapin Station”) and, finally, sunshine and daydreams (American Beauty’s “Sugar Magnolia”). It is, in a sense, all of the Deads in one — the lysergic delirium; the country-rock comfort; blues-party time, the electric seeking — making split-second choices in tone and parable with confidence, on the run.”

At the time of these recordings, the band included guitarist Jerry Garcia, singer Donna Jean Godchaux, keyboardist Keith Godchaux, drummers Mickey Hart and Bill Kreutzmann, bassist Phil Lesh, and guitarist Bob Weir.

WINTERLAND, JUNE 1977: THE COMPLETE RECORDINGS
Track Listing

Disc 1: 6/7/77
1. “Bertha”
2. “Jack Straw”
3. “Tennessee Jed”
4. “Looks Like Rain”
5. “Peggy-O”
6. “Funniculi Funnicula”
7. “El Paso”
8. “Friend Of The Devil”
9. “The Music Never Stopped”

Disc 2: 6/7/77
1. “Scarlet Begonias”
2. “Fire On The Mountain”
3. “Good Lovin’”
4. “Candyman”
5. “Estimated Prophet”
6. “He’s Gone”
7. “Drums”

Disc 3: 6/7/77
1. “Samson And Delilah”
2. “Terrapin Station”
3. “Morning Dew”
4. “Around And Around”
5. “Uncle John’s Band”
6. “U.S. Blues”

Disc 4: 6/8/77
1. “New Minglewood Blues”
2. “Sugaree”
3. “Mexicali Blues”
4. “Row Jimmy”
5. “Passenger”
6. “Sunrise”
7. “Brown-Eyed Women”
8. “It’s All Over Now”
9. “Jack-A-Roe”
10. “Lazy Lightning”
11. “Supplication”

Disc 5: 6/8/77
1. “Bertha”
2. “Good Lovin’”
3. “Ramble On Rose”
4. “Estimated Prophet”
5. “Eyes Of The World”
6. “Drums”

Disc 6: 6/8/77
1. “The Other One”
2. “Wharf Rat”
3. “Not Fade Away”
4. “Goin’ Down The Road Feeling Bad”
5. “Johnny B. Goode”
6. “Brokedown Palace”

Disc 7: 6/9/77
1. “Mississippi Half-Step Uptown Toodeloo”
2. “Jack Straw”
3. “They Love Each Other”
4. “Cassidy”
5. “Sunrise”
6. “Deal”
7. “Looks Like Rain”
8. “Loser”
9. “The Music Never Stopped”

Disc 8: 6/9/77
1. “Samson And Delilah”
2. “Funniculi Funnicula”
3. “Help On The Way”
4. “Slipknot!”
5. “Franklin’s Tower”

Disc 9: 6/9/77
1. “Estimated Prophet”
2. “St. Stephen”
3. “Not Fade Away”
4. “Drums”
5. “St. Stephen”
6. “Terrapin Station”
7. “Sugar Magnolia”
8. “U.S. Blues”
9. “One More Saturday Night”

Dead.net Bonus Disc
Auditorium Theatre — Chicago — 5/12/1977
1. “Mississippi Half-Step Uptown Toodeloo”
2. “Dancing In The Street”
3. “Terrapin Station”
4. “Playing In The Band”
5. “Drums”
6. “Not Fade Away”
7. “Comes A Time”
8. “Playing In The Band”