For tape collectors and completists, this here live extravaganza from Barton Hall, Cornell University in Ithica, NY has a hallowed status. Quite whether one buys into the “… single best rock performance anywhere, anytime, by anyone” horsefeathers is moot and Marx Brothers. Off the road in 1975 to patch their bones, take stock, compose and develop musical ideas in a rest-is-as-good-as-a-change kinda way, a remarkable studio album emerged. (Nothing from Blues For Allah appears here, indicative of the pace of their creativity.) In 1976 they got stuck back into business - their business being the one-off concert experience. By 1977 they could fly on a good night and Cornell was a red letter boon. Why it never appeared commercially until 2017 is detailed in Nicholas Meriwether's first-rate notes. The tapes went AWOL. What Meriwether doesn't say, is, “Well, let's unpick the myth”. While they had heads both in the clouds and up their own arses, sound engineer Betty Cantor-Jackson was strapped for cash and defaulted on the rental on her storage unit. The contents, soundboard tapes included, ‘went west’ in lieu of rent. The interpretations are exhilarating. Whether underpinning or moving the narrative on with contrapuntal melody, Lesh's electric bass is riveting. (‘Brown-Eyed Women’ does both.) Hart and Kreutzmann's eight-limbed rhythmicality is gorgeous. The superlative tape restoration brings out Keith Godchaux's keyboards as seldom heard. But the entire septet delivers. Listen to ‘Fire On The Mountain’ and ‘Morning Dew’. The Dead at their finest, most fluid, most fluent.