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The Grateful Dead - Live at the Cow Palace: New Years Eve 1976 Audio CD

A fair review of the The Grateful Dead "Live at the Cow Palace: New Years Eve 1976" Audio CD. Please note that the below review is the views of the authors, and authors only. You can get a complete list of all The Grateful Dead reviews here, or go back to the The Grateful Dead tabs.

The Grateful Dead Band: The Grateful Dead
Title: Live at the Cow Palace: New Years Eve 1976
Rating:
Release Date: 2007-01-23
Media: Audio CD

Tracks: 1: Promised Land 2: Bertha 3: Mama Tried 4: They Love Each Other 5: Looks Like Rain 6: Deal 7: Playing In The Band 8: Sugar Magnolia > Eyes Of The World 9: Wharf Rat 10: Good Lovin' 11: Samson and Delilah 12: Scarlet Begonias 13: Around and Around 14: Help On The Way > Slipknot! > Drums > Not Fade Away > Morning Dew 15: One More Saturday Night 16: Uncle John's Band 17: We Bid You Goodnight

Grateful Dead Cow Palace Review
He absolutely LOVES the CD. The CD was bought as a present for my husband, who is a long-time Grateful Dead fan.


Great Live Deat Mid Seventies
I've been listening to the Dead since 69. I like this 3 CD set. I love the new sound quality. Through my studio AKG's this sounds great! The Dead were on this night. For me Jerry was the band, the others joined in from time to time. Keith also plays well here. I'm happy I have this. BTW I do love "Steppin Out". I'm happy I have both of these to add to my listening.


Jerry and his Bean
There is a slow jam into a Samson and Delilah like no other and, later, a Morning Dew so good and long that rivals it's 77 iterations. It's a B Plus show with excellent sound that bumps up it's "star rating".

Jerry plays well overall, and the singing is good, and Phil and Bob are well represented in the mix.

Okay, so I WAS there, and it's a nostalgia show for me, sure enough and that probably did cause me to give it an extra star. I'm ambivalent about 1976 just as the reviews show, but after a slow start the band plays very well. The Good Lovin rocks, the Help on the Way is short but jazzy and leads into a deep Allah flavored space jam that's pretty doggone long.

If you're a deadhead, like me, and I know you are, you will enjoy this show, because it's nothing like that hard rockin 77 sound, more like a 73-74 show, but with that Jerry bending the Travis Bean guitar sound.

So: a B plus show, killer Dew, great sound, Travis Bean era consistently good with A plus nuggets.

.


Grateful sound
This one will get you up and dancing. Great sound and production. The Dead always sound awsome live. I'm Glad I found it.


Beautiful ending for 1976
"Live at the Cow Palace" features the complete show The Dead gave on New Year's Eve 1976. First 2007 release of the Grateful Dead (I hope there's more to come). Nicely "digipaked", this set also includes a nice booklet with interesting liner notes which focus on (of course) the band, but also on the history of the Cow Palace. These notes point out the bad acoustics of this big hall, but forget about that for this set is beautifuly recorded and the sound quality is simply superb. All the instruments are clearly heard and the sound is certainly warm and tremendously enjoyable.
As for the performance, The Dead were surely inspired that evening. Let's take a brief look at the contents of this 3-cd set.

The first set, as it has happened with The Dead before, proves to be the least interesting. It starts off with "Promised Land", which is nice but doesn't say much. "Bertha" is played more slowly than the classic "Skull and Roses" version. "Mama Tried", in contrast, is played in a more hurried pace than on the aforementioned record. Anyway, there are both nice to hear. "They Love Each Other" proves to be a real treat. It includes a very strong piano solo by Keith Godchaux, and the band sounds very tight. Unfortunately, the results are not the same with "Looks Like Rain", where the group make a couple of easily detectable mistakes, apart from sounding uncomfortable with the song. A nice "Deal" brings the things back together and set the mood for a magnificent "Playing In The Band" which includes, as you can imagine, an extended, pure-beauty jam where everybody flies freely.

1977 started in Winterland with "Sugar Magnolia", and the second CD kicks off. A faster-than-usual and splendid-as-always "Eyes of the World" continues and segues into one of the most wonderful "Wharf Rat" versions I ever heard (a song that is naturally beautiful made even more beautiful. Can you picture that?). After this sonic Eden, we are taken back to reality with some interesting yet more earthy "Good Lovin'" and "Samson and Delilah". "Scarlet Begonias" closes the second CD in its usual relaxed, lovely and cheerful manner.

The last CD takes off with "Around And Around", which usually sounds (to these ears) just plain fair. This version is not the case, embellished with a effective rhythm change in the middle and a fantastic segue into a outstanding "Help On The Way/Slipknot!". Jerry Garcia expands his talent all over, and the band enters into an ethereal landscape where he can speak freely with them in a classic telephatic-empathic-Grateful-Dead-type manner. All this beauty derives in a very short "Drums" and the time comes for a pleasant "Not Fade Away" to distract the listener's mind before a sublime and touching "Morning Dew". "One More Saturday Night" follows and the show finds its proper ending with "Uncle John's Band" (including some usual lyrics confusion) and a simply wonderful "We Bid You Goodnight".
Well, top-notch Dead, warts and all.
A great night of a tremendously talented ensemble.

Post scriptum:
I still can't find the reason for all that detraction against Donna Jean. Go on and loathe her while I enjoy her voice, I don't care.


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