Blues For Allah

The four albums gathered here were released by the band's own label, Grateful Dead Records: Wake of the Flood (1973), From the Mars Hotel (1974), Blues for Allah (1975) and the much-maligned live compilation, Steal Your Face (1976). The three studio albums, even if they suggest songs really different from what they have become later, are enjoyable. This is the album "live" that benefits most from the remastering, which it well deserved.

The six CDs – seven, if you count the separate, limited-edition bonus disc – housed within the Vault Box (2007) include a trio of otherwise available From the Vault volumes. Each installment houses a (more or less) complete concert, presented in its entirety from very high fidelity multi-track sources. Interestingly, while the first and second sets were issued in fairly rapid succession in the early '90s, it took over a decade-and-a-half before Three from the Vault surfaced.

During the mid-1970s, the Grateful Dead saga was unfolding like a Greek classic. The Sisyphean Wall Of Sound had nearly broken the band. From it spawned a Medusa head of countless side projects, all deliciously fruitful but woefully not the same as the whole. The chorus lay in wait, pondering the reemergence of their heroes, and wondering if "THE LAST ONE" had really been it…

If you're a died-in-the-tie-dye fan, you've probably already heard a tape of this show and will be pleased to know that here it sounds amazing; the entire three hour performance is included, mixed and mastered off of original 16-track live master recordings. If you're not already a Deadhead, Live at the Cow Palace: New Years Eve 1976 is an excellent encapsulation of mid '70s Dead. Recorded in-between 1975's invigorating Blues for Allah and 1977's dreadfully myopic Terrapin Station, it's eminently preferable to the live album Steal Yr Face, and goes a long way towards showing that the critically-maligned Godchaux era had a lot going for it. A few of the songs lumber a bit, but there's a real funkiness and versatility to this segment of the band's career that they never really had at any other time. Several stages of the band's career converge, such that the elastically funky version of the late '70s Dead, the almost jazz-fusion Dead of the early '70s, and the soft cowboy folk sound of 1970 of are all here. It's lovely. –Mike McGonigal

If you're a died-in-the-tie-dye fan, you've probably already heard a tape of this show and will be pleased to know that here it sounds amazing; the entire three hour performance is included, mixed and mastered off of original 16-track live master recordings. If you're not already a Deadhead, Live at the Cow Palace: New Years Eve 1976 is an excellent encapsulation of mid '70s Dead. Recorded in-between 1975's invigorating Blues for Allah and 1977's dreadfully myopic Terrapin Station, it's eminently preferable to the live album Steal Yr Face, and goes a long way towards showing that the critically-maligned Godchaux era had a lot going for it. A few of the songs lumber a bit, but there's a real funkiness and versatility to this segment of the band's career that they never really had at any other time. Several stages of the band's career converge, such that the elastically funky version of the late '70s Dead, the almost jazz-fusion Dead of the early '70s, and the soft cowboy folk sound of 1970 of are all here. It's lovely. –Mike McGonigal

If you're a died-in-the-tie-dye fan, you've probably already heard a tape of this show and will be pleased to know that here it sounds amazing; the entire three hour performance is included, mixed and mastered off of original 16-track live master recordings. If you're not already a Deadhead, Live at the Cow Palace: New Years Eve 1976 is an excellent encapsulation of mid '70s Dead. Recorded in-between 1975's invigorating Blues for Allah and 1977's dreadfully myopic Terrapin Station, it's eminently preferable to the live album Steal Yr Face, and goes a long way towards showing that the critically-maligned Godchaux era had a lot going for it. A few of the songs lumber a bit, but there's a real funkiness and versatility to this segment of the band's career that they never really had at any other time. Several stages of the band's career converge, such that the elastically funky version of the late '70s Dead, the almost jazz-fusion Dead of the early '70s, and the soft cowboy folk sound of 1970 of are all here. It's lovely. –Mike McGonigal

If you're a died-in-the-tie-dye fan, you've probably already heard a tape of this show and will be pleased to know that here it sounds amazing; the entire three hour performance is included, mixed and mastered off of original 16-track live master recordings. If you're not already a Deadhead, Live at the Cow Palace: New Years Eve 1976 is an excellent encapsulation of mid '70s Dead. Recorded in-between 1975's invigorating Blues for Allah and 1977's dreadfully myopic Terrapin Station, it's eminently preferable to the live album Steal Yr Face, and goes a long way towards showing that the critically-maligned Godchaux era had a lot going for it. A few of the songs lumber a bit, but there's a real funkiness and versatility to this segment of the band's career that they never really had at any other time. Several stages of the band's career converge, such that the elastically funky version of the late '70s Dead, the almost jazz-fusion Dead of the early '70s, and the soft cowboy folk sound of 1970 of are all here. It's lovely. –Mike McGonigal

The 41 shows the Grateful Dead played in 1976 constituted a kind of shakedown cruise for the band, which had gone on hiatus from live performing in October 1974 and given only four concerts during 1975. In the spring of 1976, they suddenly reappeared with a film, The Grateful Dead Movie, and a live album, Steal Your Face, and between June 3 and October 15 they toured the U.S. They then woodshedded for four and a half months before re-emerging again in late February 1977, having recorded a new studio album, Terrapin Station. The only interruption in those efforts came with the New Year's Eve show they played at the Cow Palace in San Francisco, chronicled here, their first such seasonal appearance in four years.