Grateful Dead: Steal Your Face (2LP, grateful red & stealie blue vinyl, Spirit of '76 series) [RHINO]

Why you'll love it

This 2LP set comes on the Dead's official Pantone colours, grateful red and stealie blue, newly remastered by David Glasser from tapes restored and speed-corrected with Plangent Processes. Chris Bellman cut the lacquers at Bernie Grundman Mastering.

This edition

• 2LP set
• Grateful red & stealie blue vinyl
• Spirit of '76 series
• 50th anniversary remaster
• Plangent Processes tape restoration
• Lacquers cut at Bernie Grundman Mastering
• Stereo mix
• Pressed in the Czech Republic

About the album

In October 1974 the Grateful Dead played five nights at Winterland in San Francisco and then parked the Wall of Sound, their famous tower of speakers, for what turned into a 20-month break. Cameras rolled for The Grateful Dead Movie, and the tape machines caught the music for this album.

With Jerry Garcia busy editing the film, Phil Lesh and engineer Owsley Stanley went back through the 16-track tapes to build the record. It leans on the band's love of rock and roll and country: Chuck Berry's "The Promised Land" and "Around And Around," Johnny Cash's "Big River," Marty Robbins's "El Paso." Their own songs shine too, from "Stella Blue" and "Ship Of Fools" to "U.S. Blues," "Sugaree" and a closing "Casey Jones," with "Mississippi Half-Step Uptown Toodeloo" and Bob Weir's "Black-Throated Wind" along the way.

It arrived in 1976 just as the band went back on the road, and the album's skull-and-lightning logo has been on more T-shirts than anyone can count. Fifty years on, it's nice to see the record get as much care as the shirt.

Also at Kops: more Grateful Dead on vinyl · browse Rock

Tracklist

Listen

On Grateful Dead Records / Rhino (cat# R1 728874), a reissue of the 1976 live album.