Two stars does not reflect the music on this first official release of The Dead’s 1976 New Year’s Eve show. Rather, they reflect how Dead fans are being fleeced. On their website, the Dead kindly offer a bonus disc, Spirit Of ’76, ‘with over an hour of previously unreleased music’. That’s just plain bribery. Moreover, not a month goes by without another so-called ‘unreleased’ triple, quadruple or quintuple album being sold on a similar basis (‘unreleased’ usually means so-so live gigs, of which the Dead played thousands).
So what does this offer that hasn’t been heard many times over? It was broadcast on KSANFM by over-enthusiastic DJ Glenn Lambert, who says the band “were airborne from the start”. This is belied by the flat-sounding first disc, which only takes off near the end with sprightly versions of Looks Like Rain and Deal. Disc Two fares much better, especially on Eyes Of The World and the Garcia tour de force Wharf Rat, while fans of the Blues For Allah period will love Disc Three’s Help On The Way/Slipknot suite. But the staggering asking price and hype (“climbing fast on a jet to the Promised Land”) are unworthy of the great group who gave us Live/ Dead and Europe ’72.
