Six Takes From The Last Boston Run September, 1991

Here's a little ditty from the boys courtesy of the Stucco Dat Project of perhaps the best run of shows in the past decade of the band (ok, maybe MSG, right before this is equally stellar). After 1991, the band was never as great again.  So per my Reddit friend, this should read Last Great Boston Run.

I stopped going to see the Dead in 1987 right before I moved from Berkeley to West LA. True.
I only saw 2 shows in 1987 reaching the 79 show mark (80 was a one-off in 1994 in LA along with Kirko who you see above with me from Frost 5-2-87 and Bradford 12-16-94). And my last show in Boston proper was November 14, 1978 at the Music Hall.  itunes files or flacs, just choose  By the way, I fixed the Boston Globe articles at the bottom.


And it wasn't until after Jerry's death in 1995, and my reconnecting with the advent of amazing board tapes that I discovered the last golden era from about Warlocks in 1989 through 1991. But nothing from this era quite gets me like the shows from September 1991. Now a few years back, my buddy Arnie told me that he and Liza get invited to the Boston Garden in September 1991 by our college buddy Katie to get backstage passes to the Dead. WTF. How did I stray so far, and what's this about.







Turns out that Cameron Sears was pals with Katie from high school in Maine and he was the source of this gratitude.  Someday I will tell you all about my lunch with Cameron and Peter McQuaid near the old Stone location on Broadway around 2004, but that's for another day. Back to Arnie's story. Arnie said the Dead played Dark Star and then wound up into I Need A Miracle which disappointed him (I guess expecting Dark Star>St Stephen>The Eleven etc). So I went back and found Arnie's show which turned out to be that amazing show where Bruce Hornsby played this incredible Pacobell classical  piece out of space after Dark Star that just rocked my world. I even put this in like my third blog post two years and 200 blog posts ago . So for your listening pleasure are six segments from this run

9/20/91 Help On The Way [4:04] > Slipknot! [6:04] > Fire On The Mountain [12:20]
9/21/91 Uncle John's Band > Saint Of Circumstance > Eyes Of The World
9/22/91  He's Gone > Nobody's Fault But Mine > Spoonful >
9/24/91  after Dark Star Space > Foolish Heart > I Need A Miracle > Standing On The Moon 
9/25/91  That Would Be Something > Playing> China Doll > Throwing Stones > Not Fade Away

9/26/91   Dark Star [16:04] > Saint Of Circumstance > Eyes Of The World > Drums > Space > The Other One > Dark Star [6:40] ; Attics Of My Life > Good Lovin'

Encore Brokedown Palace > And We Bid You Good Night

https://www.bostonglobe.com/arts/music/2015/06/27/assessing-grateful-dead-local-legacy/aJJVIkL2YR7CeUuR8iOUWM/story.html

Night 5 and 6 :
Night 5 is whatever songs the copyright folks allow me to stream

A long, strange trip: eternal Grateful Dead 26 years of mystique comes to Boston

[City Edition]

Boston Globe (pre-1997 Fulltext) - Boston, Mass.

Author:	Gilbert, Matthew
Date:	Sep 20, 1991
Start Page:	1
Section:	METRO/REGION

Document Text

The operative word will be jam.

For six nights over the next week, Boston's arteries and airwaves will be thick with Grateful Dead. On the congested
expressway near the Boston Garden, shiny sedans will mingle with rusty Volkswagens. On radio stations, Dead classics
like "Sugar Magnolia" will clog playlists. Within the Garden itself, some 15,000 crowded fans per night will reinvent
a psychedelic Eden, while extra thousands mill about North Station seeking a "miracle," a ticket. And onstage,
the San Francisco band that inspires a quasi-religious fervor will weave its bright, celestial funk, jamming on the songs
 they've been reviving for 26 years and counting.

How is it that the most hippie-passe, most gimmick-free, most idealistic rock band ever is, so far, America's No. 1
 top-grossing concert act of 1991?

While fresh mainstream players like Whitney Houston and Guns N' Roses have struggled to fill recession-era concert
halls, the graying Grateful Dead sold out six Garden dates in three hours last month. Tonight's Dead arrival comes
on the heels of nine packed shows at the even larger Madison Square Garden in New York, where a media circus
 including a visit from Dan Rather encircled the band.

There is, it seems, something about the Dead that is recession-proof. They are even sturdier than Wall Street at this
point. Most rock-era listeners will sneer at the band, damning them as tired '60s relics dwelling on a bygone
 love-Haight romance. But their fans, known as Deadheads, are profoundly, eternally dedicated.

There are Deadheads who follow the band cross-country, catching every show in every city at sometimes
$25 per ticket, talking of the musicians as if they're old buddies. Promoters, aware of the Deadheads' tenacity, are
 increasingly eager to book their guaranteed full-house shows.

And there are fresh crops of Deadheads every year. While curiosity-seekers come and go, new converts arrive and
never leave, college-age youths eager to don the tie-dye and grow the ponytail. Now at shows they sway and boogie
 alongside the elder statesmen, daydreaming of the fiction of Jack Kerouac and Ken Kesey and canonizing free-thinking
 figures like Neal Cassady and the Merry Pranksters.

What exactly has engaged the unlimited devotion of these fans, young and old? Ironically, it's the opposite of what draws
 the masses to, say, Madonna. The Dead is a family-like band that has never had financial triumph, or even simple icon
 status, as its goal. Their mission has always been low-rent and iconoclastic, in league with the working-class characters
 on one of their most popular early albums, "Workingman's Dead." Musical craftsmanship has always been their priority.

Dead fans revel in the intimacy of the Dead endeavor. For instance, when a Dead show is announced, close to half
 of the tickets are reserved for Deadheads by the Dead's West Coast organization, then distributed through a mail-order
 system. Also, at Dead shows there is a section reserved for tapers, whose microphones reach into the air like eager
giraffes. The Dead have officially condoned bootlegging, aware of the importance of tapes to their many fanatical
archivist fans.

In such small but critical ways, the psychic distance between the Dead and their audience is closed. They are a
 band of six middle-aged men who refuse to lord it over their fans. Dressed in T-shirts and jeans, they stand
unassumingly on the stage, no egos flaring, no limelight, no choreography. Jerry Garcia, pudgy and gentle,
 emits an undeniable solar force, a dynamism that is far from sexual.
But the attention stays on the music.

The music itself is discursive and democratic. There are no backup musicians in the Dead; each band member
 has the same musical say. The songs, and especially the extended jams within them, are like conversations among
equals, with Phil Lesh playing bass to match the two drummers, Mickey Hart and Bill Kreutzmann, or perhaps carrying
 on a subtle dialogue with Garcia's lead.

Similarly, no single musical style predominates. Grateful Dead music is an uncanny melting pot of bluegrass, folk, blues,
 jazz, reggae, experimental "acid rock," African rhythms . . .

Deadheads also thrive on a spontaneity found at Dead shows that flies in the face of MTV-era prefabricated touring.
 The band draws impulsively from a song repertoire that can take them through six or so nights without a repeat.
As they reach back to early, trippy tunes like "China Cat Sunflower" and forward to the more poppish strains of
"Touch of Grey," they reward the Deadhead who is attending every show with variety. The Dead also grant themselves
 the room to jam on songs as long as they like -- sometimes as long as 30 minutes.

With all this flexibility, Dead concerts are free to vary radically in quality. If the inspiration doesn't flow -- the band
members
 are tired, say, or the sound system is vexingly muddy -- then it shows. A bad Dead concert can be like a summer cold:
You feel listless and burnt. But a good show, fans will say,
 makes the bad ones worth bearing.

The concert experience is the cement between the Grateful Dead and their fans. Except for moments on albums like
 "From the Mars Hotel" and "Blues for Allah," the true Dead sound has evaded their studio efforts; they are first and
foremost a performing band. And a Dead concert is a Scene, what some might even call a religious rite. As Deadheads
descend on a city, in full silk-screen regalia, there is a sense of pilgrimage. The preachers are at the altar, spiritual lift is
 in the air, magical hymns are in the ears . . .

The Dead have turned out to be quintessentially American shamans. They are children of technology and freedom, of
electric guitars and improvisation. They travel across the country, taking their music and business in new and democratic
 directions. They offer their fans a dose of group spirit and organic music -- for a night for some, a lifetime for others.

Illustration

PHOTO; CAPTION:1. Grateful Dead leader Jerry Garcia in New York this month. / NEWSDAY PHOTO / DAVID POKRESS
2. The Grateful Dead at one of the nine packed concerts the band gave in New York this month. / NEWSDAY PHOTO
 / DAVID POKRESS

Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction or distribution is prohibited without permission.

 Grateful Dead are `still into the moment'

[City Edition]

Boston Globe (pre-1997 Fulltext) - Boston, Mass.

Author:	Morse, Steve
Date:	Sep 15, 1991
Start Page:	A.1
Section:	ARTS & FILM

Document Text

No Grateful Dead story is complete without telling of the first encounter. A striking first memory came at the Boston Tea
 Party in the late '60s. Organist Ron McKernan, alias Pigpen, sang his climactic tune of the night, "Lovelight." Wobbly
 after hours of serious hedonism, he fell off the stage in midsong, splatting on the floor. Helped up by a roadie, he dusted
 himself off and finished the song as if nothing had happened.

A fitting sign of the band's spirit?

For sure.

That's life in the Grateful Dead -- the stubbornly determined hippie band that's defied the odds of the fickle pop world,
plus the deaths of three keyboardists (Pigpen, Keith Godchaux and Brent Mydland) and the diabetic coma of guitarist
 Jerry Garcia to keep making music based on instinct, not commercial greed. For rock's greatest antitrend band, the
song is still the same.

"What keeps it alive is our approach," says guitarist Bob Weir, whose compatriots -- bolstered since their last visit by
new keyboardists Bruce Hornsby and Vince Welnick -- play Boston Garden for six sellout shows starting Friday. "We try
 to walk out each night with our eyes open, as if we were playing together completely anew.

"I like to think we're a bit more articulate than back in the '60s, but there was a certain brutal honesty about what we
 were doing then," Weir adds from his home near the band's birthplace of San Francisco, where they often jammed in
Golden Gate Park back when Haight-Ashbury was a melting pot of experimentation, not a tourist trap.

"We're more sophisticated now, but we're still into the moment," Weir says. "We're still into deeply improvisational stuff
 where we have no idea where we're going. We do our best to achieve a sort of hallucinogenic realm and just go there
and live a little while."

"Still into the moment" is the key, since juggling continuity and continuous reinvention is what the band's about. But the
 Dead are not a completely free-form group, whatever some Deadheads like to believe. While they rarely repeat songs
 night to night, there's more structure than meets the eye. For a typical concert of two 90-minute-plus sets, they plan the
 first song of the first set and the first four of the second. And they always do their ritualized "space jam" in the second,
 sparked by dual drummers Mickey Hart and Bill Kreutzman.

A few song arrangements have also become formalized, such as "Touch of Grey" (their only Top 10 hit), their many
covers of Bob Dylan tunes (they backed Dylan on a live album four years ago) and their country covers, such as
 "Big River" and Merle Haggard's "Mama Tried."

But improvisation colors most everything else. The one constant through the years, despite personnel changes, is that
 the Dead can resemble a genre-splitting jazz troupe more than a rock band. Maybe that's because they never fit any
pop pigeonhole, since they've ransacked the whole closet of musical influences, from Chuck Berry to Bill Monroe and
back again. Certainly that image is enhanced by their latest chemistry with the jazz-trained Hornsby, who studied at
Boston's Berklee College of Music; and former Tubes keyboardist Welnick, who's been known to play John Coltrane
tunes during sound checks.

"There are times when I get goosebumps with this band," says Hornsby, the well-known solo star who has an open
 invitation to sit in with the Dead and expects to make 60 of their 80 shows this year, including all the Boston dates.
 As a teen-ager, Hornsby joined his brother in a Dead cover band called Bobby Hightest & the Octane Kids in his
 hometown of Williamsburg, Va. He first met the Dead in 1986, after they heard he was doing an occasional Dead cover
with his Grammy-winning band, the Range.

"There really is a magic some nights," Hornbsy adds from a tour stop in Cleveland. "One thing the Dead do, which not
many bands dare do, is they're willing to wing stuff and play songs with minimal rehearsal. The Dead are a group willing
 to screw up to get to the great stuff -- and I admire that. There's a certain recklessness. They don't play it safe in that sense. And there's a time when it all comes together. It can be a certain thing the drummers do" with bassist Phil Lesh. "It has its own build; and the ebb and flow is unique. It's a collective thing that just happens. I can't explain it. And that's one good thing about it. It hasn't been whittled down to a formula."

"There's an immeasurable amount of freedom," adds Welnick, who studied at the San Francisco Conservatory and
played with the Tubes (anyone remember their hit "White Punks on Dope"?) and Todd Rundgren before auditioning
 for the band last year, after Mydland's death.

"The Dead are like a cross between a Dixieland band and a progressive jazz band, blues band, country band and
 folk band," says Welnick. "Kind of folkie-country-bluesy-jazzy-progressive-avant-garde."

That ought to do for definitions. Whatever you call it, don't look for it on MTV, or on any of the image-drenched,
computer-programed package tours that have become the rage.

"These days, there's too much importance placed on trends," says Weir. "And music to me is not a matter of fashion or
 trend. It's a matter of feeling. All too often these days, if you're concentrating on whether something is appropriate for the
 times or the current trend, you're forgetting about the feeling you're putting into it and what it is you're doing. And the
 music comes out sounding like that. It may be polished, it may be glamorous, but it's lacking in depth."

The Dead are still led by the R&B-based Weir, whose chunky chords marry a garage-rock feel with a Stax/Volt session;
and Garcia, the congenially inscrutable singer/guitarist who grounds the band in country, blues and bluegrass when
he's not traversing psychedelic realms. The two trade songs during a Dead concert and, through subtle nods and
gestures, urge other members to solo.

"Garcia and I tend to go back and forth and play off of each other a lot," says Hornsby, who moves from piano to
accordion on stage. "That's been happening more and more lately. He likes me to get in his face sometimes and
enter the fray." Adds Hornsby: "I'm not up there to hang out. I'm up there to push it and some nights to jack up the
energy level."

"The nod comes at any time," says Welnick, who grew up in Phoenix and attended Dead shows there. "You never
 know. It doesn't happen at the same time in every song, or necessarily ever in the same song again. So you don't
have preconceived notions of what to play and you just do it for better or worse. Maybe they'll be laying back, so you
 might play a big synth solo; or maybe play something in half-time, so it doesn't sound so busy."

Sounding busy has reportedly been a problem sometimes for the 1991 Dead. With two drummers, two guitarists and,
on many nights two keyboardists, the potential is there for mayhem. "A lot of my input has been to get people to play
a little less," says Hornsby. "There's so many people on stage now. It's easy to get up there, get excited and overplay.
 I'm really aware of it."

"Knowing when not to play is the biggest challenge. . . . And you've got to be careful you don't step on the big fellas,"
 says Welnick, meaning Garcia and Weir.

After all, the big fellas and their rhythm sections have been at this a long time; and it's hard to argue with the Dead's
 unique brand of success. The group has been the No. 1 concert draw of the last several years in terms of average
grosses per show. They're playing Boston Garden for an unprecedented six nights, following nine nights at New York's
 Madison Square Garden. And the recent tribute album "Deadicated," featuring Dead covers by everyone from
Los Lobos and the Indigo Girls to Elvis Costello and Jane's Addiction, only confirms the group's stature among
 their peers.

"They're an absolute phenomenon -- and it's not based on any obvious thing," says a recently chatty Robbie Robertson,
 formerly of the Band, who played the legendary 1973 Watkins Glen, N.Y., show with the Dead and Allman Brothers in
 front of 600,000 people. "They don't have the greatest vocalists or the greatest songs or the greatest musicians.
 There's nothing you can really pinpoint, except they give off a kind of love that's unique in music."

That uniqueness is about to invade Boston Garden, which is a long, long way from Golden Gate Park. Or is it?

Stay tuned.

Illustration

PHOTO; CAPTION:Garcia (left) with newcomers Bruce Hornsby and Vince Welnick.

DAY OF THE DEAD While Garcia & Co. rock the Garden, the lyricist gratefully
 works at home

[City Edition]

Boston Globe (pre-1997 Fulltext) - Boston, Mass.

Author:	Gilbert, Matthew
Date:	Sep 20, 1991
Start Page:	43
Section:	ARTS & FILM

Document Text

THE MUSIC SECTION

"A box of rain will ease the pain . . ."

Tonight, while cowboy-adventurers Jerry Garcia, Bob Weir and Phil Lesh tread the frontier of rock improvisation at
the Boston Garden, one of the most vocal members of the Grateful Dead will be at home sharpening pencils, pruning
roses, or possibly playing cards.

He is the official lyricist of the "band beyond description," painter of the images that are essential to the Dead's
peculiarly psychedelic but earthbound gestalt. While the band also sings Bob Dylan and Chuck Berry classics,
originals by John Barlow, as well as American traditional pieces like "I Know You Rider," the lyrics written by
Robert Hunter inevitably form the definitive script of a Dead show.

Some of Hunter's lines, which Viking has collected in a book called "Box of Rain," have slipped permanently into the
 mass-cultural memory, most notably "What a long strange trip it's been." Others are found among nouveau-American
folk classics -- "A friend of the Devil is a friend of mine," for instance, or "Come hear Uncle John's Band by the riverside."
Still others, Hunter's most far-flung lines, have given voice to the logic/illogic of LSD: "Dark star crashes / pouring its
light / into ashes."

On the phone from his home 25 minutes outside of San Francisco, drawing on light cigarettes through an aqua-filter
("Hot air in, hot air out," he says), Hunter describes the art of songwriting as "freedom within a box. . . . You're in a certain
box and you have to make the best you can out of that." In other words, like the Dead's starlit jams, Hunter's lyrics take
giant leaps but must fit within a tight rhythmical rhyming structure.

Early in his connection with the Dead, which began in the late '60s, Hunter was a traveling band member. "We used to
compose on the road, so there was a purpose for me being there. It was a way to corner people to get songs written."
 But over the years, he says, the road has become so all-encompassing that "it's best to get work done at home.
" Either way, he's considered full-fledged Dead, and unlike most nonperforming lyricists, he's listed in the band lineup
 on album jackets.

Hunter says that working with Garcia and the Dead is a predictably unpredictable process. "Any way that you can think
of coming up with a song we've done it. Sometimes a jam during rehearsal has turned into some lyrics, where the whole
band and myself have worked together. That's a very fine way. Everybody really feels a sort of common ownership of
 a song."

"Dark Star," the eternal Dead classic that has yielded some of the most cosmic of jams, was born by such committee,
Hunter says. "I had just joined the band. We were in Rio Nido down on the Russian River and I was in my cabin, and
 I heard this far-out music coming from the hall where they were going to be playing, and I grabbed my pencil and ran
over there and started writing."

Other times, Hunter brings his words to Garcia, who then sets them to music. While Hunter composes with guitar in hand,
 he doesn't play his music for Garcia. "The most effective songs," he says, "come up when Jerry has worked out the
 changes, and gives me something which is not what I would think of. I used to give him tapes with my version of how
 something went -- and there came a point when he said, `You know, I'd just as soon not have this stuff. Because it
 takes a while to get your changes out of my head, man.' " Hunter laughs.

Other times, Garcia or another band member will approach Hunter with a set of chord changes and scat-like
phrasing. Hunter will then color in the lyrics. This was the case recently with "So Many Roads," a new, as-yet-unplayed
song with Garcia. It also happened with "Box of Rain," which he wrote for a melody by bassist Phil Lesh more than
 20 years ago. "I had scat stuff to work with. So that I heard Phil singing, just minus the words. I knew exactly what
 it would sound like then." The song, highly melodic and plaintive, was written for Lesh's father, who was dying of
 cancer.

Hunter feels that the song "Box of Rain" has held up since its creation. "You can listen to it many times over the
 years and it will go ahead and fluctuate with you; it'll change with you. As opposed to say, `Itsy Bitsy Teeny
 Weeny Yellow Polka Dot Bikini,' which will probably mean the same thing 20 or 30 years later." Other songs
Hunter thinks have withstood the years are "Ripple" and "Stella Blue." "When I'm asked a question about specific
 songs," he says, "I mostly go blank."

As a songwriting team, Hunter and Garcia have gained a reputation not unlike durable, influential duos such as
 Mick Jagger-Keith Richards and Elton John-Bernie Taupin. Earlier this year, a tribute album called "Deadicated"
 featured mainstream artists like Elvis Costello, Suzanne Vega and Midnight Oil performing a number of
 Hunter-Garcia songs. "I was just knocked out," Hunter says about the best-selling release. "It was like
 somebody sent me chocolates, roses and a Jaguar all at once. . . . It was just such a pleasure to hear
someone else do the material, and to feel that the material did have an independent existence. It validated it."

When the Dead tour -- which is nearly always -- they play the older songs as frequently as the newer ones.
A glance at a recent song list will show titles reaching back to the late '60s, such as "China Cat Sunflower,"
 which Hunter mailed to the Dead before he'd even joined up. For Hunter, this causes some creative frustration.
"The fire that was, well fine. But it doesn't keep you warm in the present. Not a writer, anyway. It does the band
 because they're out playing that stuff.

"There's kind of an idea flying around that the band wants new material, and maybe were going to take some
time off and get that done this year. And if that happens -- ooh, to have that excitement again. It's something
 dynamic for me to do. I'm sort of hanging here on the vine turning into a raisin."

Meanwhile, Hunter has "drifted off into other directions," which includes writing songs for a band called Zero,
as well as a pair of songs for Bob Dylan. Hunter has also just released a Rykodisc CD called "Box of Rain,"
a live solo outing on which the songwriter sings a group of his Dead songs (he's toured alone and with bands
 like Comfort since the late '70s). He has also just published a book of poetry with Viking called "Night Cadre"
and finished a long, commissioned poem called "Idiot's Delight" for Hanumen Press, which publishes work
 by writers like Jack Kerouac and John Ashbery. But his poetic endeavors, he says, are "rather minor
compared to the Grateful Dead."

"Night Cadre," which he wrote in a three-year period, "was a way of working out a hard and difficult time.
 I was trying to put pieces of my life back together and getting into some serious stuff, and that's done.
 I don't intend to be the world's darkest poet. I've got another book of poetry completed since, and its
 considerably brighter."

Hunter is perhaps the most well-read of rock lyricists, and his songs are deeply allusive. All over his lyrics are
 references to American and English history, Chinese proverbs and Biblical events. "Roll away the dew," for
 instance, the exquisitely enigmatic line from "Franklin's Tower," has its roots in rolling away the stone from
 Jesus' grave.

"Whatever comes in goes through my own little matrix, and if it impresses me sufficiently, it will probably
enter my work somewhere. . . . You digest things and they become your own. And my readers will digest
what I do, and it will come out in their work. It's nice. This is the unbroken chain."

But even with his literary links, Hunter remains a unique talent, a sculptor whose finely sanded lines
resemble nothing else on the rock 'n' roll landscape. "I can touch that dreamspace," he says. "The stuff you
dream is kind of close to consciousness for me, which is a bit of a talent and in normal life it's a bit of a disability.
I've got a little tunnel into my subconscious . . . There's a space you get into. I know when I'm there. And I know
 that I couldn't manufacture it."

Illustration

PHOTO; CAPTION:Jerry Garcia, left, and Bob Weir, below, are highly visible members of the band. Robert
Hunter, far left, performs his magic far away from the madding crowd. / PHOT

The Dead keep it real mellow at the Garden

[City Edition]

Boston Globe (pre-1997 Fulltext) - Boston, Mass.

Author:	Morse, Steve
Date:	Sep 21, 1991
Start Page:	9
Section:	ARTS & FILM

Document Text

MUSIC REVIEW

GRATEFUL DEAD At: Boston Garden, last night

The Grateful Dead haven't played Boston Garden in 10 years, so last night's fever pitch was only natural.
 Mingling, tie-dyed Deadheads, showing yogic patience under the circumstances, were herded through
sidewalk gates and frisked carefully before being allowed in. The process was slow, but served to build
the excitement even more. "It's like the World Series has begun," said Garden president Larry Moulter.

For many Deadheads, it was no doubt better than a World Series. It was the opener of six nights of the
Dead at Boston Garden -- a precedent-setting run -- and you might have assumed the band would
respond with a gritty, rocking celebration.

You would have been wrong.

Typical of the Dead, when pressures build to the bursting point, they respond with a low-key show that
almost seems deliberately understated, as if to cool the crowd down before anything gets out of hand.
At least it seemed that way last night, as a sold-out concert of 15,000 fans caught a show that was far
 more cerebral than physical.

If you like long, midtempo jams thick with soloing, you would have enjoyed it. But if you looked for more
 energy to befit the occasion, you would have been disappointed. "This feels more like a Monday night in
Seattle than a Friday night in Boston," a fan next to me said.

The Dead only erupted in the second set with ``Truckin'," then right near the end with their raucous cover of
Bob Dylan's "All Along the Watchtower" and the moldy-oldie, '60s party fave, "Lovelight." Otherwise, most of the
night was mellow, with the band focusing more on softer country-blues and svelte vocal harmonies (newcomer
 Vince Welnick is a nice addition in that regard) than rock 'n' roll.

As they did to start their recent nine-night run in New York's Madison Square Garden, they opened with their
survivalist anthem "A Touch of Grey," with singer Jerry Garcia offering his familiar credo: "I will get by/I will survive."

But sound problems reared up immediately (you could barely hear Bruce Hornsby's piano and couldn't
hear his accordion). The band used a huge vertical stack of speakers, but the sound didn't start to jell until later
in the set. The sound problems -- and the fact that the band wasn't really in sync -- might explain their cutting
 the first set to an hour (a half-hour below their norm).

The opening set did have its moments, though. The blues standard "Little Red Rooster" had flashes of greatness,
 from Bob Weir's cutting slide solo to some Sunnyland Slim-style barrelhouse from Hornsby.
Garcia's "Jack a Roe" was taken at a smooth gait, while Weir's "Black-Throated Wind" was
an artful R&B surprise. Garcia's "Stagger Lee" rode a country-blues groove, then came a stately
cover of Dylan's "When I Paint My Masterpiece" and a fairly meandering "Birdsong" to close it out.

At intermission, Weir admitted that the crowd's pent-up, Friday night boisterousness threw him a bit.
"West Coast crowds show their appreciation more quietly. You don't get as many war whoops,"
he said with a laugh backstage.

Mellow grooves also defined the second set: "Help on the Way," Garcia's "Fire on the Mountain"
(his most affecting vocal), Weir's "Estimated Prophet," then finally some vintage rock with "Truckin',"
with the crowd bobbing to life as huge overhead spotlights shone on them. (The Dead's light show was
 still first-class, though they didn't use the psychedelic video that's characterized their Foxboro Stadium
shows in recent years.)

And then came a delayed, drum-bantering space jam that brought the mood back to a cerebral tone,
where it was, strangely, for most of this long-awaited debut night.

Illustration

PHOTO; CAPTION:GLOBE PHOTO/PAM BERRY / The Dead opened with their survivalist anthem
 "A Touch of Grey," with singer Jerry Garcia offering his familiar credo: "I will get by/I will survive."

HANGING OUT BACKSTAGE IN THE HIDAWAY
OF
 JERRY GARCIA 

The Grateful Dead leader 

shares a few thoughts 

about music,

 touring and why he needs a break

[City Edition]

Boston Globe (pre-1997 Fulltext) - Boston, Mass.

Author:	Morse, Steve
Date:	Sep 24, 1991
Start Page:	69
Section:	LIVING

Document Text

It is late Sunday afternoon. Outside Boston Garden, hundreds of Deadheads roam the sidewalks,
hunting for tickets, buying tie-dyed shirts and peace buttons, milling around psychedelic hippie vans and
 listening to street musicians play guitars and bongos. Everyone is biding time until the Grateful Dead
give another of their six sold-out Garden shows this week.

Hunkered down inside the Garden is singer/guitarist/guru Jerry Garcia. Now 49 and even more of a legend
since surviving a diabetic coma in 1986, Garcia has finished a sound check and retreated to a small, curtained-off,
 foxhole-like space at the back of the stage. It's known as his space -- he rarely leaves it on concert days
except to perform -- and it contains two chairs, an ashtray, a few muted lights and a video and stereo system.

Inside this "office," Garcia speaks candidly about last year's death of keyboardist Brent Mydland, about new
additions Vince Welnick and Bruce Hornsby (not a full-time member), about side projects and about the future,
which will likely include a six-month Dead hiatus next year. Now back to the foxhole:

Q. So this is your home away from home?

A. Yeah, I can't stand it backstage. Too many geeks.

Q. What's it like returning to the Garden? It's been 10 years.

A. To tell you the truth, I don't remember what it used to be like, so I can't compare it. It's smaller than Madison
Square Garden, where we just played, so it's a little like going into a nice cozy little room after that.

Q. How do you rate the shows here so far?

A. I can't do that. To me, it's too much of a personal thing. I get hung up in my own little world and I'm
not competent to call 'em. If I look from a judging perspective, I judge really harshly. So for me, I've got to
 escape that perspective.

Q. Is it more comfortable playing these long runs? You just did nine nights in New York and now six in Boston.

A. There are some things about it that are more comfortable. You don't have to travel a lot, so you take
that anxiety completely out of the experience. On the other hand, there's something about playing to an
audience in the same place over and over that gets me a little funny. If those runs go too long, I get to feeling
 really stale.

Q. What about working in the new musicians?

A. It's a very different band now -- and it will be another two or three years before this band becomes
something specific. Right now, it's a makeup game. The new guys are trying to learn what the rest of
us have learned together; and the rest of us are trying to unlearn what we've learned so we can see
 what the new guys can offer. . . . I'm not looking for real serious musical experiences now. These are
 like exploratories. You just have to take the long view. Sometimes we have a good night anyway, but
 we're still groping. We're still feeling around for the right form. Some things work better than others,
but we're making progress.

Q. What things are working better than others?

A. It varies from show to show. It's too early to say, `Well, this song definitely doesn't work; or does work.'
 It hasn't gotten to that level and hopefully it won't. We're not into accepting limitations at this point.

Q. Is it a style thing, like the rock 'n' roll elements work better than, say, the country blues?

A. No, it hasn't fallen along any lines so far. It mostly has to do with a Grateful Dead feel that's rhythmic in
 nature and is tough to teach. It isn't exactly a shuffle beat and isn't exactly a straight rhythm. It's an
 in-between thing, something we invented amongst ourselves early on.

Q. Regarding the tragedy with Brent, how were you struck by what happened?

A. It's always a blow to lose a friend and I find myself losing them more and more frequently now. And for
 that part of it, nothing helps. It's just pain. You share the pain with everyone else who's experiencing it; and
 that's about as much as you can do. Then you have to just push on. With us, it was tough, because Brent
 never really was totally comfortable. I don't think he ever felt completely a part of the band. . . . That may be
partly our fault, I don't know. We made a lot of effort to reach out to him; and he was with the band for 10 years.
 That's a long time . . . But the big thing is we miss him and there's no replacing him.

Q. Was the whole audition process a strain for you?

A. Yes, very much. Trying to teach somebody new so much music so quickly, that's a grind. And for me,
 going over all that material that I'm already pretty burned out on added to my fatigue. We're now talking about
 taking some serious time off.

Q. I've been hearing about a six-month hiatus next year.

A. Yeah, we're ready for it. We really are. We've been working real hard for a long time and haven't stopped to
take the temperature of the water or anything. We've just been blasting along. So it looks like a hiatus is going
 to happen.

Q. You stay busy outside of the Dead, too. Do you need time off from that as well? I hear you're coming to the
 Centrum in November with your solo band.

A. Some things are harder work than others. The Grateful Dead tends to be harder work than the other stuff.
The other things are more fun than they are work.

Q. About the whole phenomenon of the Dead, it seems like it's never been more popular. Is there a big
 responsibility to that?

A. No, I can't honestly accept that as a responsibility. I can't say, `Well, these are my people and I fee
l this way or that.' I just do what I do -- and I'm always amazed there are people that like it. Why do people like it?
 I don't know. I just do it -- and try to enjoy it if possible. I don't go on stage with some kind of messianic vision
 or anything. I'm basically going out there hoping my guitar is in tune.

Q. Ever since the diabetic coma, it seems you've played with a renewed sense of life. It seems you've had
 more good nights than ever before.

A. Well, that's flattering. But to tell you the truth, I can't remember what it used to be like. Not really. Not in
the sense of the quality. But I will say there's something about having a near-death experience that helps
 you cut through the B.S. . . . A lot falls by the wayside. And how much of that spills over to your playing
stylistically is something I'm not able to figure out. But certainly it changed me and must have changed
my playing. Most of my energy in life has been to make the line between myself and my playing as invisible
as possible.

Q. Are there any more musicians you want to play with? I notice you just made an album with David Grisman.

A. David and I work really well together. I'll play with him again. And I'm going to keep my own band
going because it's a really happy combination of musicians. And I love playing with Bruce {Hornsby}.
 I'll keep playing with him in the Grateful Dead or whatever. Otherwise, I'm pretty wide open.

Q. You must get so many requests to do outside things. You also did a session with Warren Zevon last year.
 What is your criteria for choosing at this point?

A. Only one -- is it going to be fun? That's the only criteria I ever have.

Illustration

THE LIFE OF A DEADHEAD For some followers, the long, strange trip never ends

[City Edition]

Boston Globe (pre-1997 Fulltext) - Boston, Mass.

Author:	Muro, Mark
Date:	Sep 25, 1991
Start Page:	69
Section:	LIVING

Document Text

Cactus Flower, 45, came from Oregon.

She's a hippie, "plain and simple."

Jay Starman, who quit the University of Buffalo, is 25 and bought a van last month with Julie and Kim to drive
to town, like modern-day hobos.

Steve Paschall, 31, from Virginia, came to his "profession" late. It was three years ago that he cashed
 a last check and headed out to join that free-form family that travels the "golden road to unlimited devotion."

They are all Deadheads, the members of that astonishing tribe of bearded pilgrims who follow America's
most durable rock band, the Grateful Dead, and who this week hunkered by the hundreds in their Navaho
 blankets and tie-dye beneath the shadow of Boston Garden.

Shivering in doorways, clustered around dingy old vans with plates from Montana, they're the city's most
noteworthy out-of-towners these days. As the Dead arrived for six shows at the Garden in seven
 nights this week and last, so did they, trudging the alleys and huddling patiently in the doughnut joints
and parking lots along Canal Street, waiting for night, waiting for the show.

Some were college kids; some were aging relics with children. Some had jobs elsewhere; some
seemed like Jay Starman, more or less youthful sojourners who "at least for now" are turning
a lark into a "total lifestyle." One young woman named Claire said she'd taken a sabbatical
from her job at a North Carolina community college to follow the band. "For me, it's a sort of a
 yuppie nirvana, like going to a monastery," she said. She was staying at the Marriott Long Wharf.

And then there are the hardest-core Deadheads, people like Steve Paschall. Harder-bitten than the others,
these are the most grizzled veterans of the yearly circuit who ride the concert schedule as if it were rails,
 living meal to meal, epiphany to epiphany.

Monday afternoon found Paschall -- wearing frayed cowboy boots and a rotting leather vest --
 crouching in a doorway on Friend Street with a backpack, eyeing the drizzle on a day the band took off.

Somehow, Paschall seemed to sum up worlds as he told the story of how he became a Deadhead.
Born in Newport News, Va., in 1960, the Jesus-bearded Paschall described his path to ecstatic
conversion as a trip out and away from "typical suburbia."

The son of a quality control man for the Anheuser-Busch Co., Paschall reports he was a "kind of
different little kid," that he quit Minstrel High in Newport News after one year, and then did "even worse
" in an alternative school "for kids who have trouble adjusting and where you call your teachers by their
 first names." Soon thereafter, he quit that school and left home for good.

By the time he was 17, he'd begun dealing drugs "a little," selling pot and in general "messing around."
 Not yet did he dig the Dead; he listened to Hendrix, Eric Clapton and Grace Slick, who stood for
"living your own life your own way." Sometimes he lived with friends. Sometimes he lived "on the streets,
 in the woods."

"It wasn't so bad," Paschall says of those amorphous years on the grift. "It's like the Bible says
: The birds get fed and people do too."

Finally, in 1984, Steve got busted, and was forced by a patient probation officer to find a trade.
 Soon he was working as a sheetrock installer in the booming Newport News construction scene.
In time he moved into a trailer home and set up a regular little American business.

"Had two guys working for me," he says. "Had tools and a truck." But even so, Paschall says,
he felt "kind of like an outsider." And so when he felt better after four months of convalescing
from a 1988 back injury, he figured he "needed a break."

The vacation that followed became his life. Just when he was thinking about a respite, along
came a buddy with a glittering plan.

"Man, the Dead are in Ohio: We should check it out," said the pal, recalls Paschall, to which
Paschall says he replied, "Man, let's go," and so they did.

Neither party had a dime, Paschall recalls; Paschall had to hustle $30 from his grandmother,
but no matter, the bus was leaving, "people were kind," and in three days they'd hitched and
Trailwaysed their way to the heartland and were settled into camp.

The venue was Buckeye Lake, Ohio, the date July 1988 -- only, to hear Steve Paschall tell it,
 the occasion was a personal revolution: one of those seminal moments when the road goes golden,
 lives change and a hitherto entropic existence comes together as never before.

"Man, it was beautiful," remembers Paschall, laughing with pleasure at that first incredible conversion.

"My buddy had this tent, we got in at evening, so we wake up and there's buses around and hippies
and VWs, like Woodstock or something. Pretty soon someone gives me a crystal. I was like in amazement.
And then, I find $20, so I buy myself a beer and a ticket to the show. Then I go to the show.
 It's a combination of all different ages and all different kinds: people with feathers, people doing primeval
dances, doctors, freaks. God, it was exhilarating. I felt like I was Jesus. It was like I was back with my
people again after years in exile. And the music went along with my thoughts. It was like I could make
 the notes go up or down, as if I had some say in it."

Or, as he put it the other afternoon, rolling a cigarette as the rain spat down on Friend Street:
"I'm a born traveler, and the Dead gave me a reason to travel more."

From Ohio Paschall trucked to Miami, saw the band there, went home and did some sheetrocking
, then hit the road again to see the band six nights at the Forum in Los Angeles. There, he met a
"nice chick from San Fran," saw five shows at the Oakland Coliseum and stayed two months, "writing poems."
Eventually he gathered some of his poems into a book called "Flowers and Stones" and started
 selling the little mimeographed books for $5 to support himself.

In time the road went on and on, as he saw the Dead more times than he can count: in Portland,
 Ore.; in Eugene, Ore.; in Denver; in Texas; in Minneapolis; in Ohio. Eventually he would travel
to the band's California promised land nine times. This year alone, in a time of limited band touring,
he's writhed and danced and pulsed and bounced with the band in LA; San Francisco;
Charlotte; Ohio; Kansas City on the Fourth of July; Greensboro; Orlando; and "some places I forget about."

In Greensboro, he says, "I don't know where we stayed, but it might have been a hotel."

Hitchhiking to Kansas City, he got picked up in the Nevada desert by Deadheads who drove him all the way.

Always, he says, he relies on the fluid togetherness of the Deadhead road, where he can always
 score a pint of whiskey or a meal by reading a poem.

No longer does Paschall have a real home, since he lives in a Newport News trailer park
 "but not in any one unit." But even so he's happy, cosmic, confident he'll sell enough poems to hit tonight's
 show, or maybe tomorrow's.

Illustration

PHOTO; CAPTION:1. Deadhead Steve Paschall hangs out in a Friend Street doorway near Boston Garden
, where the Grateful Dead are playing. / GLOBE STAFF PHOTO / JOHN BLANDING 2. Deadhead Dave Harris
 blows bubbles on Causeway Street near Boston Garden. GLOBE STAFF PHOTO / JOHN TLUMACKI

On the fourth night, the Dead spring to life

[City Edition]

Boston Globe (pre-1997 Fulltext) - Boston, Mass.

Author:	Morse, Steve
Date:	Sep 25, 1991
Start Page:	70
Section:	ARTS & FILM

Document Text

MUSIC REVIEW

GRATEFUL DEAD

At: Boston Garden last night

Was it the full moon? The better sound quality? The fact that everyone came to play? Whatever it was,
the Grateful Dead jerked to life last night. They reared back for an impassioned show that began
on an upward curve, stayed there for long stretches and road home with the rafters rocking as
though this were a playoff game.

Yes, if you love the Dead, but didn't go last night, you missed one. And yes, they did the epic,
 acid-era "Dark Star," a signature tune they had dropped for years.

After three Garden shows that had varying highs and lows, this was a sustained high. Fueled by
 an exceptional night from Dead anchor Jerry Garcia (his talk of feeling burned out lately was
gloriously dispelled), the Dead hit one groove after another. They jumped out of the box with

 Sam Cooke's "Let the Good Times Roll" (with new keyboardist Vince Welnick shining on a falsetto,
Cooke-like vocal harmony) and never looked back.

Singer Bob Weir then bristled through "Feel Like a Stranger" (with terrific cross-harmonies from Garcia),
aided by a much more aggressive role from pianist Bruce Hornsby, who took the song out with a gumbo
 of Russian classical music and Dixieland stomp. The sound mix on his piano has improved dramatically
 as the six-night run has moved along -- and so has his confidence and will to enter the musical fray.

Garcia, singing as soulfully as you'd ever want to hear, turned the stately country song "Althea" into
a total catharsis. (Unofficially, "Althea" is the only song the Dead have repeated in their four nights so far). T
hen the band roared through the Rolling Stones' "It's All Over Now," with Hornsby taking a rollicking,
 fist-pounding solo that earned the night's loudest ovation to that point.

Garcia emoted again with gospel fervor on "High Time," followed by the spiralling, chase-evoking
 "Beat It Down the Line" and churning "Big Railroad Blues." Weir counteracted with a sweetly lyrical cover
of Bob Dylan's "Desolation Row," keyed by stately interplay between Hornsby on accordion and Welnick on piano
. And to close this one-hour-10-minute opening set (happily longer than most first sets lately),
the Dead clipped in with "New Speedway Boogie," as the spotlights bathed the exultant crowd.

The energy level then went even higher. The second set began with the vintage, country-rocking
 "I Know You Rider" (with Garcia blistering on guitar), shifting wildly to Harry Belafonte's campy Caribbean hit
 "Women are Smarter" (with a brief Bo Diddley beat from drummers Mickey Hart and Bill Kreutzmann).
And catch this next run: "Ship of Fools," "Dark Star" (leading to a tumultuous drum space with
Hart wailing mallets at a standup drum as though at a punching bag); "Foolish Heart,"
 "Need a Miracle," "Standing on the Moon," Chuck Berry's "Round and Round" and the Band's
"The Weight." Let's just call it a masterpiece and leave it at that.Looking for life among the Dead

[City Edition]

Boston Globe (pre-1997 Fulltext) - Boston, Mass.

Author:	Gilbert, Matthew
Date:	Sep 27, 1991
Start Page:	25
Section:	LIVING

Document Text

Look out the saints are coming through
And it's all over now, Baby Blue
It's not easy to escape Boston Garden after a Grateful Dead show. The Escherian hallways are amazingly
 convoluted
, and the small exit signs hide in the rafters. The car-wash approach is, finally, the best: Hook your wagon
 to the stream
 of sweaty tie-dyes and hope they know better. Inch your way.
Friday night, the first night, the terrapin train wound past a screeching free-lance vendor. His red-white-and-blue
 T-shirts
 read: "Dead Sox." Flexing his throat muscles and waving his arms, he couldn't have known how poetically just
 he was.
 That night, the Grateful Dead had been more sporting event than music show. More Scene than sound.
Beneath waving Boston Bruins flags, the Dead bravely competed with a chorus of fans who know the lyrics t
o each 
song on the band's nearly inexhaustible list. Every song, in fact, is now a timeless classic, a cause for 
raucous 
applause, from the brooding "Black-Throated Wind" to the ironic "Estimated Prophet." Just the fact that it is 
really the 
Dead and they are really playing "High Time" is enough; how they play it seems increasingly less important.
And fans lean on the lines, cheering at truism or booze reference, no matter the context. Oddly, this passage
 from 
Bob Dylan's dreary "Just Like Tom Thumb's Blues" got a round: "I started out on burgundy/But soon hit 
the harder 
stuff/Everybody said they'd stand behind me/When the game got rough/But the joke was on me."
In other words, Dead fans seem bent on drowning the band in adulation -- sometimes blind adulation. 
They sanctify 
each member, especially Jerry Garcia, who can't rock his guitar in a gust of rhythm without tearing
 down the house.
The moment Bruce Hornsby begins one of his melodic tickles up and down the keyboard, his notes
 are buried beneath 
a thousand hands clapping. As the audience sings along, they don't seem to hear Garcia fudging 
many of his words,
 blurring them into concert-hall oblivion. They sing for him. On the melancholy "Looks Like Rain" 
Sunday night, 
Bob Weir's stunning vocals were crowded by mass singing for much of the song.
What the Dead do best is delicately woven and elliptical. Their most galloping jams ride parallel 
on a song, or soar 
away from it entirely. It's a risky, vulnerable art wide open to error. While a receptive audience 
certainly feeds the 
Dead's vibe, an aggressively adoring audience can explode it. Ripples, after all, are easily
 deluged. Friday, Saturday,
 Sunday and Tuesday nights, Dead fans came on way too strong. There was a palpable, 
pent-up sense of revelry for 
revelry's sake, recalling these lines from "The Music Never Stopped": "No one's noticed
 but the band's all packed and
 gone/Was it ever here at all?"
This is not to say that the famous Dead Scene has lost its charms. Approaching the Garden, in the
shadow of a full
 harvest moon, the scent of patchouli is sweet and gritty. On Canal Street, veterans and novices
 commingle and peddle
 peacefully, in their own and one another's movies. A sense of community dominates, an
eagerness to be pleasant all
 round. It may border on spoof, but there is an undeniable buzz in the air. At a Rolling Stones concert,
 the buzz is a 
charge, a more potentially explosive heat. A Dead crowd may be gregarious and self-important,
 but it is not violent.
The other side of the equation, of course, is the Dead themselves. Unspoiled by their 
uncanny midlife success, which 
has made them the highest-grossing concert band this year, they are nevertheless heading 
toward burnout. An unpopular notion, no doubt, but unavoidable in light of the bulk of the Boston 
run as of Wednesday (not including energetic portions of Sunday night and a stellar Wednesday).
 While fans at Tuesday's show could boast they'd heard "Dark Star," a seminal Dead song, could they
 truly say the jam took off?
For one thing, Garcia has at intervals seemed to be, as his song goes, "Standing on the Moon."
 He has sounded estranged from onstage musical conversations, slipping and sliding along his own path
. His usual fire-fingered riffs are few, and they don't seem to blend with or command the groove. With his long, 
white-wired hair, he still looks like a lightning rod; but there were
 few flashes evident through Tuesday. Wednesday came like a miracle, with a brilliant, jazzy dissection 
of "Playing in the Band" and a forceful "Terrapin Station." Along with Hornsby's rhythmic riffs and Lesh's 
finely tuned bass, Garcia took off into his best licks so far.

Garcia's voice, too, has been inordinately raw and unharnessed. Friday, in the noisy excitement of 
hearing "Fire on the Mountain" instead of "Franklin's Tower" out of "Help on the Way," fans may not 
have caught his scratchy -- if well-intentioned -- crooning. Strong melodies like "Ship of Fools" and
 "Althea" and more anthemic tunes like "Uncle John's Band" and "Eyes of the World" have been 
misshapen and torn. "I get hoarse just listening," a friend said behind his hand Friday night.
Aurally, other band members have also seemed slightly disconnected. Ace rhythm guitarist Bob Weir, 
who plays with deceptive subtlety, has spent as much time adjusting knobs and pedals as he has playing
. He's had great moments, as have Lesh and Hornsby, but those moments have been mostly solo, 
lacking in the tight confluence that distinguishes the Dead. Only on Wednesday did they seem to 
play fully together, especially Garcia and Hornsby, who exchanged electricity all night. The drummers, 
Mickey Hart and Bill Kreutzmann, generally found a fine sync during their nightly dual jam; 
during the songs, however, they have seemed miles behind the mix.

Naturally, the Garden acoustics haven't helped. To call the sound a black muddy river is an
 understatement. On Friday night, Hornsby was virtually inaudible; his hands were busy, bu
t to no end. By Wednesday, the sound was markedly improved, though still fuzzy. With such a
n oppressive system, it must be hard even to imagine risking a complex jam. Only the nightly Space,
 which comes like clockwork after the drum segment, has consistently beaten the system, rising 
prismatically and intensely from the ashes. Its unabashed dissonance is actually a relief.
In interviews with the Globe, both Garcia and lyricist Robert Hunter have indicated a need for 
Grateful Dead rejuvenation. While the Dead's business organization is remarkably efficient and fair,
 a model for the rock industry, the music seems endangered. For every lucid Wednesday night there 
are two frazzled Fridays. Perhaps new songs will recharge the musicians. Perhaps new songs will
 build in room for the new keyboardists, part-timer Hornsby and full-timer Vince Welnick; right now 
they seem squeezed.
Meanwhile, the musical malaise goes unnoticed. On Friday night, a shirtless listener jerked and 
writhed standing for the entire second set, playing cosmic traffic cop for the jamming action. Forward,
 he'd wave; now hold it; now onward again. His dance was fascinating and otherworldly, an arrhythmic 
moonwalk, a vibration vigil. He was at the heart of the Scene. But as the jam worked harder and harder, 
breathless and refusing to take flight, I couldn't help but wonder: Just how closely is this beautiful dancer listening?
Illustration
PHOTO; CAPTION:Dhurya, 2 1/2, plays her mother's drum while waiting for last Friday's Grateful Dead
 concert to begin. GLOBE STAFF PHOTO / JOHN TLUMACKI
Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction or distribution is prohibited 
without permission.The Dead bid Boston goodbye with their psychedelic best

[City Edition]

Boston Globe (pre-1997 Fulltext) - Boston, Mass.

Author:	Morse, Steve
Date:	Sep 27, 1991
Start Page:	34
Section:	ARTS & FILM

Document Text

MUSIC REVIEW
GRATEFUL DEAD
At: Boston Garden last night
Of the six Dead nights at the Garden, I caught three. Friday was the flattest. Tuesday was the best. And last night was . . . well . . .
 the trippiest, which in this case is a compliment.
How else to explain a final set that began with the mind-bending astral journey of "Dark Star," then swung back to finish "Dark Star" 
later on? The Dead went places last night that you'd need a round-table of Owlsley, Ken Kesey, Carl Sagan and Neal Cassidy to
 figure out.
It was an uneven show at the start, but gathered momentum -- and stratosphere -- as it went along, leading to some indescribable, 
quadrophonic-sound moments that had many of the 15,000 fans scratching their scalps in psychedelic bemusement.
But overall, there was still a solid lifeline of rock 'n' roll -- and a fine continuation of the energy felt Tuesday. The first set spanned a 
crackling "Jack Straw," a so-so "Cold Rain and Snow," a mixed Bob Weir romp through "Wang Dang Doodle," a surging "Mexicali Blues" 
(with pianist Bruce Hornsby, who's really earned his stripes this tour, adding another of his wild ragtime/jazz solos), a stunning 
"Cumberland Blues" (with Jerry Garcia threading silvery runs), a hot "Picasso Moon" (Weir said later it was the first time he remembered
 all the words to it); and a rare, Phil Lesh-sung "Box of Rain," hurt by some off-pitch harmonies.
The second set saw a buzz-saw drum space (with Mickey Hart and Bill Kreutzmann recalling their jolting "Apocalypse Now" soundtrack),
 though sagged with a Garcia/Weir/Lesh guitar space followup. But most of the second set was a jewel -- the two-fer "Dark Star,"
 "Saint of Circumstance," "Eyes of the World," "The Other One," "Attics of My Life," "Good Lovin'," "Brokedown Palace" and, yes,
 "We Bid You Goodnight."

An Academic Star Takes on 'Dark Star'

Assistant Professor of Music Graeme Boone

By SETH MNOOKIN, October 5, 1991

1

When one thinks of The Grateful Dead, the immediate image brought to mind is that of drugs, tie-dyes and Jerry Garcia, the silver-haired, overweight and unassuming leader of the group.

Yet today, the group is one of the most successful in pop history, precisely because it is able to attract more than just the hippie crowed that has been associated with the band. Indeed, among their audiences are often the most staid of listeners--even Harvard professors have been known to join the swaying, enthusiastic crowds at Dead shows.

Assistant Professor of Music Graeme Boone, however, took his interest in the group a little farther than the average Deadhead. Last October, Boone delivered a comprehensive address on The Dead and one of their songs, "Dark Star" at a conference given by the Society for Music Theory in Oakland, Calif.

Boone--who teaches the popular Literature and Arts B course, "Jazz: An American Music"--says he has had a lifelong interest in The Dead. His paper focused primarily on how The Dead's music plays an intimate role in the Grateful Dead experience of individuals.

The Grateful Dead have created a unique and very free style of their own, a style that allows them to play with originality and excitement, says Boone.

"This is an incredible achievement, to create a style where you have artistic freedom," he says.

"Dark Star"

Boone studied "Dark Star" because he said it raised many issues pertinent to both The Dead's musical style and their place in American popular culture.

"I wanted to show how 'Dark Star' raises some very interesting questions surrounding ambiguity and identity, as well as how it reflects the whole style of The Dead and how The Dead interact with their audience," Boone says.

"Dark Star," which is generally thought of as The Grateful Dead's signature song, originated in the 1960s, when it was often played during Ken Kesey's acid tests.

It begins with a well-situated, easily identifiable them carried out by a very simple chord progression. But then, "slowly, it starts to open up," says Boone. "So while it opens very comfortably, with a firm, definite identity, it soon begins to change, to transform and become very ambigious."

"It can turn very dramatic or romantic, or straight-forward, and then, while this ambiguity is taking place, the audience members at the same time are going different places, experiencing different things," and thus forming individual identifications, he continues.

The net effect of this experimentation, which takes place within a defined structure, is a sense of "being something and yet reaching for something else," Boone says.

"Otherness," Boone explains. "In a sense, all music is like this: reaching for something that doesn't quite exist, but could exist...The Dead's music is very much on the edge of existence," he says.

This sense of pushing the envelope, of breaking boundaries permeates many aspects of The Grateful Dead "experience," according to Boone. This is one reason drugs play such an important role. "Drugs reach through, beyond reality," says Boone.

"Also, the meta-politics of The Dead movement focus on this sense of creating what is not there, of making a better world. There is a feeling of the virtuality of nirvana that permeates many Dead concerts," Boone says.

Beyond their music, another aspect of the Dead's style that is so attractive is their down-to-earth attitude, says Boone. "They wear old jeans and T-shirts, they're overweight and their hair is dirty," he says. In this sense, he continues, "they seem to relate to their audience as equals, and the audience itself is made up of a lot of people who think of each other as equals."

"The Dead seem to be speaking to everybody--they play a lot for you, for the audience," continues Boone. "In this sense, they recall your local corner

From deadlists.com


Band Grateful Dead
Venue Boston Garden
Location Boston, MA
Date 9/20/91 - Friday
One Touch Of Grey ; Little Red Rooster ; Jack-A-Roe ; Black Throated Wind ; Stagger Lee ; When I Paint My Masterpiece ; Bird Song
Two Help On The Way [4:04] > Slipknot! [6:04] > Fire On The Mountain [12:20] ; Estimated Prophet [12:20] > Truckin' [7:20] > Jam [7:#09] > Drums [9:02] > Space [11:48] > All Along The Watchtower [7:13] > Morning Dew [11:40]
Encore Turn On Your Lovelight [5:52]


Date 9/21/91 - Saturday posters
One Hell In A Bucket ; They Love Each Other ; New Minglewood Blues ; Peggy-O ; Just Like Tom Thumb's Blues ; Cassidy ; Deal
Two Uncle John's Band > Saint Of Circumstance > Eyes Of The World > Drums > Space > The Other One > Wharf Rat > One More Saturday Night
Encore It's All Over Now, Baby Blue

Date 9/22/91 - Sunday posters tickets, passes & laminates
One Shakedown Street ; C C Rider > It Takes A Lot To Laugh It Takes A Train To Cry ; Me And My Uncle > Maggie's Farm ; Brown Eyed Women ; Let It Grow
Two Samson And Delilah ; Iko Iko ; Looks Like Rain > He's Gone > Nobody's Fault But Mine > Spoonful > Drums > Space > The Last Time > Stella Blue > Sugar Magnolia
Encore Knockin' On Heaven's Door

Date 9/24/91 - Tuesday posters
One Good Times ; Feel Like A Stranger ; Althea ; It's All Over Now ; High Time ; Beat It On Down The Line ; Big Railroad Blues ; Desolation Row ; New Speedway Boogie
Two China Cat Sunflower > I Know You Rider > Man Smart (Woman Smarter) > Ship Of Fools ; Dark Star > Drums > Space > Foolish Heart > I Need A Miracle > Standing On The Moon > Around And Around
Encore The Weight

Date 9/25/91 - Wednesday posters tickets, passes & laminates
One Help On The Way > Slipknot! > Franklin's Tower ; Walkin' Blues ; It Must Have Been The Roses ; Dire Wolf ; Queen Jane Approximately ; Tennessee Jed ; The Music Never Stopped
Two Victim Or The Crime > Crazy Fingers > Playing In The Band > Terrapin Station ; Drums > Space > That Would Be Something > Playing In The Band > China Doll > Throwing Stones > Not Fade Away
Encore The Mighty Quinn (Quinn The Eskimo)


Band Grateful Dead
Venue Boston Garden
Location Boston, MA
Date 9/26/91 - Thursday posters tickets, passes & laminates
One Jack Straw ; Cold Rain And Snow ; Wang Dang Doodle ; Candyman ; Mexicali Blues > Cumberland Blues ; Picasso Moon ; Box Of Rain
Two Dark Star [16:04] > Saint Of Circumstance > Eyes Of The World > Drums > Space > The Other One > Dark Star [6:40] ; Attics Of My Life > Good Lovin'
Encore Brokedown Palace > And We Bid You Good Night