Seven months after changing their name from The Warlocks, Grateful Dead were a scuffling, unsigned band searching for an identity when they played Bill Graham’s Independence Ball on July 3rd, 1966. That show — making its vinyl debut exactly 60 years later — captures the transformative energy of a band moving almost too fast to catch.
The original performance was recorded by Owsley “Bear” Stanley and the new release was produced by Grateful Dead legacy manager and archivist Dave Lemieux, and mastered by Jeffrey Norman at Mockingbird Mastering with speed correction and tape restoration by Plangent Processes.
While the Dead’s archive is legendary for its depth, complete high-fidelity documents of the band’s first year are rare. The July 3rd recording — which debuted in 2015 as part of the 50th-anniversary box set “30 Trips Around the Sun” — 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 “Pigpen” McKernan and Bob Weir.”
The Fat Angel Sings 