Peter Conner “Cornell 77” (Cornell University Press, 2017)
Before I say anything about what I thought about this book,
maybe I should say something about who the audience for this book actually is.
If you aren’t interested in the Grateful Dead, you won’t want to read this
book. If you aren’t a deadhead, you won’t
be interested in this book. If you think that there’s no reason to talk or
write about a particular show, you won’t be interested in this book. It’s not
for the casual. It’s for people on the
bus.
5-8-77 grew to fame and adoration because of the wide
circulation of great sounding tapes of this show. What some of y’all don’t know
is that back in the day, we didn’t have access to almost any show that you wanted
to hear. You had the shows that you had. And they were on cassettes. And some
of the sound quality sucked. (And we walked up hill both ways to get them in
the snow! OK I’m just kidding about that
part). But this show from Cornell was spread far & wide in some great
sounding tapes.
Best show of all time? I don’t know, and Conner doesn’t even
really try to answer that.
Without cooperation from the band, he does a good job of
telling the story of that night. He talks to some former students and folks who
were at the show, and does a good job of fleshing out details that don’t show
up on the tape.
I thought it was a lot of fun. Not earth shattering, but
there were more than enough interesting anecdotes about that evening to make
this worth my time.
Look, if you saw the title of this book & thought “maybe
I should read this”, then the answer is “yes you should”. And here’s a link to the show, if you need
any help https://archive.org/details/gd77-05-08.sbd.hicks.4982.sbeok.shnf
