{"id":384678,"date":"2026-07-03T06:41:36","date_gmt":"2026-07-03T06:41:36","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/384678\/"},"modified":"2026-07-03T06:41:36","modified_gmt":"2026-07-03T06:41:36","slug":"albums-of-the-week-grateful-dead-fillmore-auditorium-san-francisco-ca-7-3-66","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/384678\/","title":{"rendered":"Albums Of The Week: Grateful Dead | Fillmore Auditorium, San Francisco, CA (7\/3\/66)"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"\"<\/a>
\n THE EDITED PRESS RELEASE: \u201cSeven months after changing their name from The Warlocks, Grateful Dead were a scuffling, unsigned band searching for an identity when they played Bill Graham\u2019s Independence Ball on July 3, 1966. That show \u2014 making its vinyl debut exactly 60 years later \u2014 captures the transformative energy of a band moving almost too fast to catch.<\/p>\n

The performance captured on Fillmore Auditorium, San Francisco, CA (7\/3\/66) was originally recorded by Owsley \u201cBear\u201d Stanley, and produced for this release by Grateful Dead legacy manager and archivist Dave Lemieux. It was mastered by Jeffrey Norman at Mockingbird Mastering with speed correction and tape restoration by Plangent Processes.<\/p>\n

While the Dead\u2019s archive is legendary for its depth, complete high-fidelity documents of the band\u2019s first year are rare. The July 3 recording \u2014 which debuted in 2015 as part of the 50th-anniversary boxed set 30 Trips Around The Sun \u2014 stands as a primary exception. It captures the group in the midst of a radical mutation, a charged R&B dance band already moving toward new musical terrain in the star-spangled ether of the Independence Ball. At the time, the band featured Jerry Garcia, Bill Kreutzmann, Phil Lesh, Ron \u201cPigpen\u201d McKernan\u00a0and Bob Weir.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/p>\n

The performance includes the earliest known live recordings of several songs, including rare originals like Tastebud, You Don\u2019t Have To Ask and Cardboard Cowboy. These tracks, along with a cover of Johnny \u201cGuitar\u201d Watson\u2019s Gangster Of Love, would largely vanish from the band\u2019s repertoire by the end of the summer. One of the staples that would survive, Cold Rain and Snow, possesses a raw urgency that wouldn\u2019t settle into its more familiar, laid-back arrangement for several years. Says Lemieux: \u201cOne of the Grateful Dead\u2019s longest-tenured songs in their repertoire, Cold Rain & Snow was around from 1965 to 1995, played every year of the Dead\u2019s performing career aside from 1968 and 1975. This was played when it was still in its peppier arrangement.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cGrateful Dead are a profoundly young band on the recording of the Independence Ball,\u201d writes Jesse Jarnow (co-host of the Good Ol\u2019 Grateful Deadcast and author of Heads) in the album\u2019s liner notes. \u201cThere\u2019s a round of applause after every song, but rarely cheers. It\u2019s only been 14 months since The Warlocks made their live debut, and they sound it \u2014 sometimes raw, but always thrilling. And, honestly, maybe a little jittery, too\u2026 As alien as they sound from the present, the miracle of the Dead tapes from 1966 is that they\u2019re not from alternate timelines at all, but realities that manifested into ours for the briefest of flashes.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u00a0<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"THE EDITED PRESS RELEASE: \u201cSeven months after changing their name from The Warlocks, Grateful Dead were a scuffling,…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":384679,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[30],"tags":[155264,93,38728,153981,155265,155266,101,103,102,104,106,105],"class_list":["post-384678","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-san-francisco","tag-album-review","tag-featured","tag-grateful-dead","tag-live-album","tag-on-repeat","tag-reissue","tag-san-francisco","tag-san-francisco-headlines","tag-san-francisco-news","tag-sf","tag-sf-headlines","tag-sf-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/384678","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=384678"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/384678\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/384679"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=384678"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=384678"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=384678"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}