Grateful Dead: Road Trips
Vol. 1 No. 2 - October 1977

CD354 - 2-CD set
GRA2-6002
Grateful Dead Productions, 2008

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Road Trips Vol. 1 No. 2
October 1977

Ah yes, the glorious year of 1977, a favorite of discerning Dead Heads for three decades now! For the second volume in our new Road Trips series, we’ve chosen another tour that was not tapped previously through Dick’s Picks—a blazing swing through the Southwest, Colorado and down to Louisiana during the first weeks of October 1977.

This was a great time for the band: Both the years-in-the-making Grateful Dead Movie and the new Terrapin Station album had come out a few months earlier and the group was riding high on momentum from both of those projects. There was exciting new material that had debuted at the beginning of the year, including “Estimated Prophet,” “Terrapin” and “Fire on the Mountain,” and steady touring through the spring allowed the band to really explore the nuances of the new repertoire, while they also continued to hone the material that had come in following the band’s return to the stage in mid-1976 after their hiatus. What you’ll find on these great-sounding discs is a mixture of old favorites played with that fabled ’77 energy, and more recent material that was hitting new peaks nightly. There’s a “Let It Grow” that will knock your tie-dyed socks off, one of the great versions of “Sugaree” of that or any year, the famous “Help on the Way > Slipknot! > Franklin’s Tower” from Norman, Oklahoma, epic workouts on “Playing in the Band” and “The Other One” and a jammed-out “Black Peter” for the ages. Hot stuff!

One again, the discs have been lovingly compiled and painstakingly mastered (in HDCD) from the original master tapes (in this case reels) by Jeffrey Norman. The booklet that accompanies the CDs boasts scads of great photos from the era and a very cool historical essay by the ever-hip and erudite scribe Steve Silberman.

TRACK LIST

DISC 1:
1. Let It Grow (10:17) (10/11/77)
2. Sugaree (17:41) (10/16/77)
3. The Music Never Stopped (8:59) (10/16/77)
4. Mississippi Half-Step Uptown Toodleoo (11:53) (10/14/77)
5. El Paso (4:52) (10/14/77)
6. Help On the Way (5:48) (10/11/77)
7. Slipknot! (4:02) (10/11/77)
8. Franklin's Tower (14:59) (10/11/77)

DISC 2:
1. Playing In the Band (17:12) (10/14/77)
2. Drums (3:09) (10/16/77)
3. The Other One (8:24) (10/16/77)
4. Good Lovin' (5:53) (10/16/77)
5. Terrapin Station (11;29) (10/16/77)
6. Black Peter (13:17) (10/16/77)
7. Around and Around (9:08) (10/16/77)
8. Brokedown Palace (5:51) (10/14/77)
9. Playing In the Band reprise (5:23) (10/14/77)