Welcome back to the Tapers' Section, and welcome to our first full week of March, 2009. For no reason in particular, we're going to check out music mostly from the previous week in the Grateful Dead's recorded history.

It's been a while, so we figured we'd focus this week on some shows that took place at the Oakland Coliseum Arena in February, 1990. These shows were in the middle of a string of concerts recorded to 24 track analog tape by John Cutler and Le Mobile, a recording truck the band used for many recordings, including the bulk of shows that happened May, 1989 through April, 1990. Several commercial releases have been produced from these recordings, including Without A Net, Dozin' At Knick, Nightfall Of Diamonds, Terrapin Limited, as well as some parts of the So Many Roads boxed set. Not only are the recordings phenomenal, but the band was playing particularly well in 1989-1990, so there are hopefully more releases to come from these shows.

Our first jam this week is from the first night in Oakland, 2/25/90, featuring China Cat Sunflower>I Know You Rider, Just A Little Light, Estimated Prophet>Eyes of the World. We don't get to play too many versions of Just A Little Light, and sandwiched between these two classic Grateful Dead jams, we thought now was a good time.

Next up, from the second show, is the soaring Scarlet Begonias>Fire On The Mountain from 2/26/90. This, along with the 7/7/89 and 3/22/90 versions of Scarlet>Fire demonstrate why this is one of my favourite eras for this pairing.

Our last installment of the Oakland February, 1990 run is the post-Drums sequence from 2/27/90, consisting of The Other One>Morning Dew>Throwing Stones>Not Fade Away, We Bid You Goodnight. Simply dynamite. The Spring tour of 1990 would start just over two weeks later on 3/14/90 and would prove to be one of the best tours of the band's final decade.

Lastly this week, just to shake things up and get us out of 1990, we have this terrific set closing sequence from 10/18/78 at Winterland, featuring Mojo Jam>Wharf Rat>Truckin', I Need A Miracle. Another magical jam from the From Egypt With Love concerts.

Be sure to join us next week for some great stuff from 1981 and 1993, a couple of years we don't hit often here at the Tapers' Section.

David Lemieux
vault@dead.net