To mark the 60th anniversary of their Independence Ball performance on July 3, 1966, Grateful Dead will release a vinyl edition of Fillmore Auditorium, San Francisco, CA (7/3/66).
A 3LP-set will be available exclusively from Dead.net, limited to 6,600 copies and featuring a custom etching on the final side. The live album will also be available digitally to stream and download. The original performance was recorded by Owsley "Bear" Stanley and produced by Grateful Dead Legacy Manager and Archivist Dave Lemieux. The album also arrives on 2CDs on July 3 from Rhino.com.
The July 3 recording, featuring Jerry Garcia, Bill Kreutzmann, Phil Lesh, Ron "Pigpen" McKernan, and Bob Weir, debuted in 2015 as part of the 50th-anniversary boxed set 30 Trips Around the Sun.
The performance includes the earliest known live recordings of several songs, including rare originals like "Tastebud," "You Don't Have To Ask," and "Cardboard Cowboy." These tracks, along with a cover of Johnny "Guitar" Watson's "Gangster Of Love," would largely vanish from the band's repertoire by the end of the summer.
"The Grateful Dead are a profoundly young band on the recording of the Independence Ball," writes Jesse Jarnow (co-host Good Ol' Grateful Deadcast, author of Heads) in the album's liner notes. "There's a round of applause after every song, but rarely cheers. It's only been 14 months since the Warlocks made their live debut, and they sound it—sometimes raw, but always thrilling. And, honestly, maybe a little jittery, too... As alien as they sound from the present, the miracle of the Dead tapes from 1966 is that they're not from alternate timelines at all, but realities that manifested into ours for the briefest of flashes."
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