Grateful Dead – Fillmore Auditorium, San Francisco, CA, 7/3/66 (2-CD)

Check out our Grateful Dead Preview 60-Year Anniversary Live Collection ‘Fillmore Auditorium, San Francisco, CA (7/3/66)’ with “Cold Rain and Snow" feature on relix.com here. 

When the Grateful Dead took part in Bill Graham’s Independence Ball at the Fillmore Auditorium in San Francisco on July 3, 1966, they had only recently adopted their new band name after dropping the Warlocks. Unassigned to a label and discovering their footing, the group offered some of their earliest renditions of rare originals, “Tastebud,” “You Don’t Have To Ask,” and “Cardboard Cowboy,” among others that would be regarded as standards, “Cold Rain and Snow,” “Viola Lee Blues,” et al. Now, 60 years after the show date, it will be released by Rhino. 

Officially titled Fillmore Auditorium, San Francisco, CA (7/3/66), the forthcoming live offering will be available for purchase in various formats, including 2CDs and a 3LP set – limited to 6,600 copies and featuring a custom etching on the final side. Initially recorded by Owsley “Bear” Stanley and produced by Grateful Dead Legacy Manager and Archivist Dave Lemieux, it was mastered by Jeffrey Norman, with speed correction and tape restoration by Plangent Processes.

The rare and early capture of the Grateful Dead’s mid-1960s sound, the July 3 recording was initially debuted in 2015 as a part of the 50th-anniversary boxed set, 30 Trips Around the Sun. The collection of live material is represented by the joint appeal of Jerry Garcia, Bill Kreutzmann, Phil Lesh, Ron “Pigpen” McKernan, and Bob Weir as a collective focus of musical might. In addition to the aforementioned rarities that would eventually drop from their setlist, the group also delivers a rendition of “Cold, Rain and Snow,” the collection’s lead single, out today. 

Regarding today’s release, Lemieux says, “One of the Grateful Dead’s longest-tenured songs in their repertoire, Cold Rain & Snow was around from 1965 to 1995, played every year of the Dead’s performing career aside from 1968 and 1975. This was played when it was still in its peppier arrangement.”

“The Grateful Dead are a profoundly young band on the recording of the Independence Ball,” writes Jesse Jarnow 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.”