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    lilgoldie
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    What's Inside:
    • Five Complete Shows
    • 5/11/77 St. Paul Civic Center Arena, St. Paul, MN
    • 5/12/77 Auditorium Theatre, Chicago, IL
    • 5/13/77 Auditorium Theatre, Chicago, IL
    • 5/15/77 St. Louis Arena, St. Louis MO
    • 5/17/77 University Of Alabama, Tuscaloosa, AL
    •14 Discs, 111 tracks
    •Mastered in HDCD by Jeffrey Norman, Plangent Processes playback system for maximum sonic accuracy
    •Artwork by Grammy Award-winning graphic artist Masaki Koike
    •Period Photos by James R Anderson
    •Historical Essay by Steve Silberman
    •Individual show liner notes

    MAGICAL, MYTHICAL MAY 1977!

    If you're a Dead Head, chances are you've spent many an hour expounding upon the distinction of May 8, 1977, Cornell University, Barton Hall. Well, at the risk of preaching to the choir, we'd like to reintroduce you to a series of shows that matches said greatness from that same gloriously fertile season. While Barton Hall is well known, the astounding tour that surrounded it has occasionally flown under the radar due to the uneven quality of tapes in circulation. May 1977 is set to change all of that with a boxed set that zeroes in on this high-water mark in the Grateful Dead's long strange trip.

    For a band resurrecting itself after a 20-month hiatus, there was a great frenzy of expectancy that surrounded the Spring of 1977. We anticipate a grand reoccurrence of this fervor with the release of May 1977, a 14-disc boxed set featuring five complete shows from consecutive stops on that magical tour. Mastered in HDCD by Jeffrey Norman at Mockingbird Mastering, the "psychoacoustic phenomena" as Jerry once put it, of St. Paul Civic Center Arena, St. Paul, MN (5/11) Auditorium Theatre, Chicago, IL (5/12, 5/13), St. Louis Arena, St. Louis MO (5/15) and Coliseum at the University Of Alabama, Tuscaloosa, AL (5/17) can now finally be appreciated. Each of these shows finds the Dead delivering punchier, more focused sets, tightening up the framework; each night turning out first-ever renditions ("Passenger,""Iko Iko,""Jack-A-Roe"), unloading potent new pairings ("Scarlet Begonias">"Fire On The Mountain", "Estimated Prophet">"Eyes Of The World"), classic covers ("Dancing In The Street") and soon-to-be staples ("Estimated Prophet," "Samson and Delilah"), and ultimately rising up to paradise.

    And now for the nitty-gritty...

    Due June 11, May 1977 is limited to 15,000 individually numbered copies. Presented in a psychedelic box that boasts an intricate die-cut design created by Grammy®-winning graphic artist Masaki Koike, the set also includes a book filled with stories about each show, as well as an in-depth essay by Dead historian Steve Silberman, who delves deep into the history behind the tour and the band’s return from its extended hiatus.

    Once these 15,000 boxes are gone, May 1977 and its shows will never be available again on CD. However, the 111 tracks will be made available on release date as FLAC and Apple lossless full-set-only downloads for $99.98.

    Like its predecessors Europe '72: The Complete Recordings and Spring 1990, we expect May 1977 to sell out. Your best bet is to pre-order it now, then sit back, relax, and enjoy all the exclusive content we'll be rolling out over the next few weeks right here and on Facebook.com/GratefulDead and Youtube.com/gratefuldead.

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  • #611
    One Man
    Joined:
    Vinyl
    I am willing to bet the Dick's Picks vinyl sounds much better than the CDs, just like Jeff Norman says. It's hard to imagine the superiority of vinyl until you listen to the same recording back to back on both formats. Even mp3s sound okay until you compare them to a lossless format -- then you realize what you are missing. Zuckfun, that is a good point about the upgrade from hissy cassette bootlegs. I had about a hundred of them back in the day, and now my memory of them is dim. I also spent a lot of time zeroing in on good audio from other sources, and that is where I am coming from these days. I'm an amateur recording engineer, so I know specifically how some of these releases could be better. But as you said, everyone hears something a little different. Besides the original albums (which all sound great to me each in their own way), my favorites are the Fillmore 1969 box, the movie soundtrack, and the Closing of Winterland -- all multi-track recordings professionally mixed by Jeff Norman before he was required by Rhino to cut corners.
  • #612
    deadegad
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    Joined:
    Winterland 73 & 77. . ..
    I am not sure about Warlocks vs. Sprig 90 but I concur that Winterland 73 & 77 sound great to me. The Closing of Winterland release sounds equally great. What do you guys think of the 180 gram Dicks Pick's releases? I have heard these 'albums' being 'in living color' sound-wise as opposed to to 'black and white' cd Dick's. Just wondering if when I have the money for a turntable and albums,, etc.. Is it worth the investment? Is the sound that good?
  • #613
    Zuckfun
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    Joined:
    Funny thing about sound...
    How everyone hears different things. Spring of 90 is the first release (with maybe some 80's releases) where I wasn't thrilled with the sound quality. It still sounds great, it's just bass shy. Check out the bottom end of the Warlocks Box- that is very absent from most of Spring of 90. They're both great recordings, just very different flavors, at least to me. Maybe I'm in the minority, but most of Europe 72 sounds fantastic to me. Is it perfect- of course not, they're not modern professional recordings. Winterland 73 and 77- the sound is about just exactly perfect for me. Maybe it's my memory of hissy distorted cassettes, but I'm consistently thrilled with the sound quality year after year.
  • #614
    cub
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    Joined:
    Eight Days till Shipping
    I too want ALL THE WARLOCKS 1989 Shows released as a box, please. I have "American Beauty and Workingman's Dead" dolbyD DVD Audio and so far nothing touches those mixes. But of course those were mixed by band members too. I gladly went furthur and purchased my 77 box over tickets.
  • #615
    One Man
    Joined:
    Sound Quality (Again)
    I find the Warlocks box almost unlistenable because of edgy, digital harshness, among other things. The Spring '90 box is much warmer, but suffers from on-the-fly mixing decisions and therefore unbalanced instrument levels at times. The last release that sounded professionally mixed was (gasp) the Fillmore 1969 box. That one has some ill-matched patches, but that's better than missing parts of the shows. I do like the Betty Boards in general because she obviously paid a lot of attention to making a nice reference tape, even though they were not designed for release. I dare say we will never see another professionally-mixed release from multi-track. The budget has been drastically slashed (hear the Europe box for example) and I think that is a travesty. By cutting corners now, the multi-track archives will never be professionally mixed in our lifetime because profit rules the day and no one cares that the audio quality is getting short-changed when it could in many cases be much, much better. I'm glad I'm not Jeff Norman. That would be painful.
  • #616
    stoltzfus
    Joined:
    Spacebro, here's hoping you get a gig TODAY and keep your house.
    Save your $$$ for the house payment. There is plenty of GD around to listen to.
  • #617
    Zuckfun
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    Joined:
    Sounds of the Vault
    Spring of '90 sounds great- Every release sounds amazing to me. Such a huge improvement from the sound quality I grew up with. Lucky time to be a fan, that's for sure. Hope things pick up quick for you Spacebro
  • #618
    SPACEBROTHER
    Joined:
    Spring 1990 and the Warlocks Box...
    ...both sound great on my home system, my computer, my iPod and my car stereo. As of yet, I still haven't ordered the May '77 box. I really want to, but for the last several weeks and through at least the next couple of weeks am financially strapped. I've hit a point of being between jobs and actually hope to keep my home. Bummer. :(
  • #619
    Underthevolcano
    Joined:
    sound quality
    I like the Spring 90 sound better than the Warlocks box which I find rough and boomy to my ears. Of course, all this is highly subjective and probably system dependent. I'll keep both of them and happy to do so.
  • #620
    Star Dark
    Default Avatar
    Joined:
    BCJ
    Betty certainly had the magic touch - in part b/c her mixes were - as I understand it - "off board" and thus much more malleable than the typical SB recording. Owsley's belt buckles and steaks put both his mixes and aggressively egotistical personality to shame - but I digress. If we could only know how a "Betty Board" of 1989-90 would have sounded... :o)
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Submitted by lilgoldie on
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Dead Store Products

What's Inside:
• Five Complete Shows
• 5/11/77 St. Paul Civic Center Arena, St. Paul, MN
• 5/12/77 Auditorium Theatre, Chicago, IL
• 5/13/77 Auditorium Theatre, Chicago, IL
• 5/15/77 St. Louis Arena, St. Louis MO
• 5/17/77 University Of Alabama, Tuscaloosa, AL
•14 Discs, 111 tracks
•Mastered in HDCD by Jeffrey Norman, Plangent Processes playback system for maximum sonic accuracy
•Artwork by Grammy Award-winning graphic artist Masaki Koike
•Period Photos by James R Anderson
•Historical Essay by Steve Silberman
•Individual show liner notes

MAGICAL, MYTHICAL MAY 1977!

If you're a Dead Head, chances are you've spent many an hour expounding upon the distinction of May 8, 1977, Cornell University, Barton Hall. Well, at the risk of preaching to the choir, we'd like to reintroduce you to a series of shows that matches said greatness from that same gloriously fertile season. While Barton Hall is well known, the astounding tour that surrounded it has occasionally flown under the radar due to the uneven quality of tapes in circulation. May 1977 is set to change all of that with a boxed set that zeroes in on this high-water mark in the Grateful Dead's long strange trip.

For a band resurrecting itself after a 20-month hiatus, there was a great frenzy of expectancy that surrounded the Spring of 1977. We anticipate a grand reoccurrence of this fervor with the release of May 1977, a 14-disc boxed set featuring five complete shows from consecutive stops on that magical tour. Mastered in HDCD by Jeffrey Norman at Mockingbird Mastering, the "psychoacoustic phenomena" as Jerry once put it, of St. Paul Civic Center Arena, St. Paul, MN (5/11) Auditorium Theatre, Chicago, IL (5/12, 5/13), St. Louis Arena, St. Louis MO (5/15) and Coliseum at the University Of Alabama, Tuscaloosa, AL (5/17) can now finally be appreciated. Each of these shows finds the Dead delivering punchier, more focused sets, tightening up the framework; each night turning out first-ever renditions ("Passenger,""Iko Iko,""Jack-A-Roe"), unloading potent new pairings ("Scarlet Begonias">"Fire On The Mountain", "Estimated Prophet">"Eyes Of The World"), classic covers ("Dancing In The Street") and soon-to-be staples ("Estimated Prophet," "Samson and Delilah"), and ultimately rising up to paradise.

And now for the nitty-gritty...

Due June 11, May 1977 is limited to 15,000 individually numbered copies. Presented in a psychedelic box that boasts an intricate die-cut design created by Grammy®-winning graphic artist Masaki Koike, the set also includes a book filled with stories about each show, as well as an in-depth essay by Dead historian Steve Silberman, who delves deep into the history behind the tour and the band’s return from its extended hiatus.

Once these 15,000 boxes are gone, May 1977 and its shows will never be available again on CD. However, the 111 tracks will be made available on release date as FLAC and Apple lossless full-set-only downloads for $99.98.

Like its predecessors Europe '72: The Complete Recordings and Spring 1990, we expect May 1977 to sell out. Your best bet is to pre-order it now, then sit back, relax, and enjoy all the exclusive content we'll be rolling out over the next few weeks right here and on Facebook.com/GratefulDead and Youtube.com/gratefuldead.

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7 years 4 months

Submitted by icenine2 on Wed, 01/31/2018 - 14:07

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When will this be available as downloads again? I own the high-res digital download of Get Shown the Light and it is spectacular.
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7 years 9 months

Submitted by Sawwwn on Thu, 07/12/2018 - 07:03

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Oh man! Still waiting for these (May 77 and July 78) to be available for download! Please open this up or at least stop listing them as available. Killing me.
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7 years 9 months

Submitted by Sawwwn on Thu, 07/12/2018 - 07:04

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Oh man! Still waiting for these (May 77 and July 78) to be available for download! Please open this up or at least stop listing them as available. Killing me.
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6 years 3 months

Submitted by DanielSpace on Mon, 08/13/2018 - 13:02

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I think a fundraiser for the tapes is the dumbest idea Ive ever heard.
product sku
081227965365