Ben Ratliff on the Grateful Dead

"Deadheads have often been polled about their favorite show, through fanzines and Web sites. The answers have stayed fairly consistent. May 8, 1977, at Barton Hall, Cornell University. The pairing of Feb. 13 and 14, 1970, at the Fillmore East in New York — perhaps the first widely traded shows. The Veneta and Binghamton shows. … David Lemieux has been the tape archivist and CD producer for the Grateful Dead’s official archival releases since 1999. Mr. Lemieux said he has listened to the Cornell concert 'virtually weekly' since the late ’80s. … Mr. Lemieux characterizes the recording as the Dead concert one would likely want to pass on to the most people: it pleases the most tastes. But … the Dead played a concert 20 days after Cornell, in Hartford, that some, including Gary Lambert, a host of the Grateful Dead Radio show 'Tales From the Golden Road' on Sirius XM, consider just as good. (That show, taken from the master tapes engineered by [Betty Cantor-Jackson, the Dead’s live recording engineer], has just been released by Rhino in heretofore unbeatable audio as 'To Terrapin: Hartford ’77')" ("Bring Out Your Dead," New York Times, 4/12/09).