This second box of 1977 shows documents four gigs, including the famous 5/8/77 performance at Cornell University’s Barton Hall. Betty Cantor-Jackson recorded these tapes and you can feel her sense of space. The band is at a peak but also in a time of transition. They’re about to release the complexly composed Terrapin Station. They have Blues for Allah material that hasn’t been in rotation for long. Donna Godchaux’s co-lead vocals and Keith Godchaux’s piano and synthesizer are essential. Mickey Hart has fairly recently returned; he and Bill Kreutzmann seem to be getting their footing across the first three shows, seeking balance between the big bouncy and the subtler trap-kit shuffles that the cowboy songs and these new compositions require.

There are some fine moments in the New Haven and Boston shows—the wide-open oceanic spaces in “Peggy-O,” Jerry Garcia making his guitar talk like Frampton’s on “Estimated Prophet.” Some of the tunes come off too bouncy, although “Tennessee Jed” works well on this frame. At Cornell, they have all of the energy they’ve been using to fill hockey rinks—but with only 5,000 people, they can get the subtleties across. They play a note-perfect show, like they are leaning back in their chairs and just when they’re about to tip over backward, they find perfect balance—and hold it. It’s album-quality improvisational rock-and-roll spun out live and bottled on the fly by Betty. It’s a fucking miracle. Note Garcia’s solo on “Deal” and his interplay with the drummers on a blues-holler “Not Fade Away” jam. They amp up the intensity in Buffalo, back in the big War Memorial. Check out that “Not Fade Away,” too—its jam is a fusion of post-Ned Lagin avant-garde and old-time blues. It descends into a “Comes a Time” that is simply sublime.