May 10, 1977 review: Grateful Dead at the Aud

 

Of all the times I’ve seen the Grateful Dead, this just might be the best one. Plus I got a chat with Jerry Garcia backstage before the show. The interview appeared in the first issue of our new weekend entertainment magazine Gusto a few weeks later. 

May 10, 1977

Audience Is Grateful

For Return of ‘Dead’ 

          The little luminous sticker on Jerry Garcia’s solid-bodied electric guitar says, “The enemy is listening.” It must be Garcia’s strategy, then, to win them over by rocking their socks off.

          That’s the little surprise tucked into the current edition of the Grateful Dead, and it took nearly four hours for all its rhythmic delights to unfold Monday night in Memorial Auditorium before 9,000 generally ecstatic witnesses.

          With former mate Bill Kreutzmann having returned to work beside Mickey Hart, there are two drummers now. And what a fine beat they lay down. It’s like instant power. No waiting.

          So forget about that old half-hour warm-up period. The band is cooking within minutes under Garcia’s thin tenor and sensual chording as they open the night with “Help Is on the Way” from 1975’s “Blues for Allah.”

* * *

THE HEAT OF the following number, “Franklin’s Tower (Roll Away the Dew),” raises the possibility that they’ll boil the crowd out too early, but then they settle back to alternate selections from Garcia and guitarist Bob Weir.

          Neatly bearded Weir is the courtly cowboy on stage, sending up gunfighter ballads and ominous Western swing numbers like “Big River.”

          Garcia, bushy-haired and graying, responds with energetic runs and spiffy trills, lifting fans to their feet, halting for intermission only after some rousing cosmic explorations in “The Music Never Stops.”

          The second half features oldies like Buddy Holly’s “Not Fade Away” and the Rascals’ “Good Lovin’” and such Dead delights as “Bertha,” “Ship of Fools” and, finally, “Sugar Magnolia,” a sunny anthem from the height of their popular success five years ago.

* * *

ANOTHER AGING talisman is their encore – the whimsical, Latin-flavored “Uncle John’s Band,” which embodies the innocent flipside of the road wisdom of what the kids are all yelling for, the band’s all-time rave, “Truckin’.”

          All is not perfect in this lively revised edition of the Dead, however. There’s the tuning problem. Long periods between numbers cost them some of their momentum and make the crowd restive.

          The fans, of course, offer a few surprises of their own. There’s the staggering crazy who nearly starts a brawl in this reviewer’s section. Particularly, there’s the blond kid down front exhaling the flaming blast of lighter fluid. After half a dozen blasts, even the band is alarmed.

* * * * *

IN THE PHOTO: The Grateful Dead on YouTube performing "Bertha" at the Aud. 

* * * * *

FOOTNOTE: The Dead’s concert the previous night in Barton Hall at Cornell University is considered one of their greatest of all time. It’s captured on “Cornell 5/8/77,” a three-disc CD released in 2017. They played only three of the songs from the Cornell date in the Aud, according to setlist.fm. Here’s what they did in Buffalo (songs from previous night marked with an asterisk):

(First set)

Help on the Way

Slipknot!

Franklin’s Tower

Cassidy (Bob Weir song)

* Brown-Eyed Women

Mexicali Blues (Bob Weir song)

Tennessee Jed

Big River (Johnny Cash song)

Peggy-O (traditional song)

Sunrise

The Music Never Stopped

(Second set)

Bertha

Good Lovin’ (Young Rascals song)

Ship of Fools

* Estimated Prophet

The Other One (first verse only)

Drums

* Not Fade Away (Crickets song)

Comes a Time (Jerry Garcia song)

Sugar Magnolia

(Encore)

Uncle John’s Band 

          Lineup at this point behind Garcia included Donna Godchaux, vocals; Keith Godchaux, keyboards; Mickey Hart and Bill Kreutzmann, drums; Phil Lesh, bass; and Bob Weir, guitar and vocals. 

          Meanwhile, the Buffalo show can be heard in its entirely at gratefuldeadoftheday.com/05-09-1977. The commentary there notes:

          "Coming the night after the heralded Barton Hall show, this night in Buffalo cannot help but be compared to that earlier show, despite deserving a place in the canon solely on its own merits.  What seems obvious is that the two concerts are entirely different beasts, both spectacular in their own right. Today’s starts off with one of the high points of not just the night, but of the entire tour, an epic Help> Slip> Franklin’s. The rest of the first set is excellent, but maybe a little more loose and freewheeling than the almost precious perfection of the previous night. Undoubtedly, the Scarlet> Fire second set opener from Barton Hall beats out any Bertha> Good Lovin’ sans Pigpen, even this fine one from Buffalo. But from there, the differences between the rest of the two nights’ second sets are a matter of taste."