![]() ![]() On this night, the biggest musical swerve came early. Overall, the setlist looked like the sort that Dead & Company are known to play on the final night of their tours when they stack up their biggest and most popular songs and play them until the venue’s curfew forces them offstage. and opened with reliable warhorse “New Minglewood Blues”, the opener of the 1977 show.īut once the band started into Mayer’s signature Dead & Company song “Althea” as the second song instead of “Loser”, the song-by-song replay possibility was no more, but the band did incorporate seven songs from the Dead’s 1977 show into Monday’s show. And for one song, it looked like that might actually happen when the band took the stage just after 7:30 p.m. It was a long and generous night of music by any standard, and with three hours and 27 minutes of actual music over two sets the show actually ran longer than 14 of the 22 shows on the Grateful Dead’s Europe ’72 tour, whose extended running times remain legendary.Īlmost immediately after the show was announced in March, there was speculation that Dead & Company would stage a song-by-song recreation of the Grateful Dead’s 1977 Cornell show. Fortunately, the band delivered a long, satisfying concert that hit the hoped-for high points while paying direct homage to highlights from the Grateful Dead’s 1977 Cornell show. But it’s a cavernous room with almost two acres of floor space, and its high ceiling and hard surfaces have wreaked havoc on amplified sound for decades, and that continued when large sections of the crowd struggled to hear a series of pre-show announcements and welcomes by a Cornell alumni association VP, a Cornell dean, and a county legislator, all of whom were experienced and clear public speakers.Īmidst all this, Dead & Company had a tall order in front of them: play a memorable and special show in front of people who spent big and traveled far to be there, and do so in a room where their predecessor band played the most popular show in their 30-year history, but that’s also had lousy acoustics the whole time. Originally built in 1915 as an indoor drilling area for the university’s ROTC units, it’s been refurbished several times and is now the indoor home of Cornell’s track and field team, with large windows letting in lots of natural light. With the exception of the Cornell students in attendance, the audience looked and felt very much like the crowds at Dead & Company’s annual Playing in the Sand destination events in Mexico, minus the staggering drunks.īarton Hall, despite its old-school charm and storied history, is a facility whose acoustics for live music events remain suboptimal at best. with people eating very early dinners before making their way up to campus, pre-show partying was noticeably restrained, and nearly everyone was lined up outside Barton Hall well before doors opened. Restaurants in town were filled at 3 p.m. ![]() ![]() Throughout the day, both on campus and in town, there were clear signs that attendees knew just exactly how lucky, fortunate, and privileged they were. Despite the higher prices, demand vastly exceeded supply and only a slim minority of applicants got tickets. Aside from an allotment of $77 tickets for current Cornell students, ticket prices ranged from $300 to $1,500 and were allocated via lottery. However, the ticket prices were very much of the 2023 benefit gig variety. The band, consisting of Grateful Dead alumni Bob Weir (guitar/vocals) and Mickey Hart (drums) alongside John Mayer (lead guitar/vocals), Oteil Burbridge (bass/vocals), Jeff Chimenti (keyboards/vocals), and Jay Lane (drums, sitting in for GD alumni Bill Kreutzmann) have consistently played arenas, sheds, and stadiums over their eight-year history, so the crowd of 5,000 was a throwback to earlier eras. Exactly 46 years later on May 8th, 2023, the Grateful Dead spinoff band Dead & Company honored the 1977 show by returning to Barton Hall and playing a benefit concert, with proceeds split equally between Cornell’s 2030 Project and MusiCares.īy Dead & Company standards, it was a small show. Back on May 8th, 1977, the Grateful Dead played a concert at Cornell University’s Barton Hall that would become so legendary that an entire book would later be written about it, and the recording by the band’s engineer Betty Cantor-Jackson would go on to become the most popular recording of the band amongst Deadheads. ![]()
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