Grateful Dead - Terrapin Station Live - 1977

Terrapin Station was the Grateful Dead's ninth album. While generally well received, the band, the critics and the fans were a bit perplexed, annoyed, even a bit angry about the production values of the LP in general. Especially the band.

After the folding of their own record label the Dead signed with newly formed Arista records. One of the contingencies set by label president Clive Davis was that the band must work with a producer on the next record. Something they hadn't done since their third album Aoxomoxoa. They settled on Keith Olsen who had just finished producing Fleetwood Mac's first LP with Lindsey Buckingham and Stevie Nicks. Clive's one instruction to Olsen was that he wanted a commercial record.

Keith Olsen's production style clashed with the Dead's recording style right from the start. Olsen wanted the band to do 20 takes until it was perfect while the Dead would just play it until it felt good. Once principal recording was done Olsen layered on strings and horns in ways the Dead never did and pushed them to the front of the mix. It was this over the top production that prompted me to see if this project was possible. So what would it sound like if the Dead played the album live in its entirety with no overdubs?

01 Estimated Prophet [1977-03-18 - Winterland Arena]
02 Dancin' In The Streets [1977-05-15 - St. Louis Arena]
03 Passenger [1977-06-08 - Winterland Arena]
04 Samson and Delilah [1977-03-18 - Winterland Arena]
05 Sunrise [1977-05-09 - War Memorial]
06 Terrapin Station [1977-03-18 - Winterland Arena  (end coda 1977-12-29 - Winterland Arena)]

Reality Notes

To make sure that this construction was even possible I first had to confirm that every song on the album was performed live. Thankfully they were. My next task was to track down all performances and whittle them down to the best versions. I limited myself to 1977 which was the year of release for the album itself so the songs would be their freshest. Keith and Donna left the band in 1978 after the next album. Once they left Donna's Sunrise was retired from the setlist.

I trawled through the live Dead collection on the Internet Archives looking for the best sounding shows. I ended up going with matrix sources which consist of soundboard recordings synced up with audience tapes as they tended to have a better and fuller live feel to them.

For the core I used the 1977/03/18 Winterland Arena show. I chose this show because they played three of the six songs that night and this was the most complete Terrapin Station suite they ever played. Unfortunately this version ends with drums then segues into Not Fade Away instead of reprising and resolving the suite. To fix this I tacked on the end of the performance of this song from 12/29 after finding a good spot during drums to segue back into the song. A slightly dodgy edit but it works.

I then chose the best versions of the remaining songs that struck the best balance between performance and sound quality that would blend well with the tracks from 3/18. Sunrise proved the most problematic. Not because of poor performances but due to the fact that most recordings (even soundboards) had Donna's vocals mixed almost to the point of being inaudible. (I know some of you think that that would be a good thing but I mostly like her voice.)

Even though these are live recordings I did my best to simulate a studio album by trimming as much of the audience that I could. I did attempt to create a full live version that kept the crowd in but the results did not come out as well as I had hoped. I also did not attempt to edit these songs down to match the original album lengths. While my editing skills might be capable I find it hard to edit Jerry when he's in the zone. Which is why we have a 16 minute epic version of Dancing in the Street and an overall length of 55 minutes. Maybe that's a task for John Hilgart over at Save Your Face. He excels at getting to the best parts of a performance.

The cover is a collage of several elements from the original. I wanted to keep the original cover but also wanted it to be different. Love those turtles.