Grateful Dead

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This seemed like a poor show to me. I brought a friend to turn him on. Oh well....

bad sound happening during this show at one point Jerry chucked his guitar on the stand and left the stage. i sold a ton of Fat Tire in the lots though!

...and it was. I should have known then, all the signs were there. I kind of did know when the encore was Baby Blue. We were seated by the side of the stage, and endured sound problems most of the night. I guess the sound must have been bad on stage, as well, since Jerry threw up his hands walked off stage halfway through Easy Answers. There was another prophetic moment: the Dead without Jerry. The show seemed uneven to me, and it sounded as if the band was struggling. High points were So Many Roads, with such impassioned vocals it kind of took me by surprise -- you could really hear the pain in Jerry's voice, and Baba O'Reilly>Tomorrow Never Knows. Baba O'Reilly kicked ass. The cover of the Last Time was dismal, and in retrospect a cry for help. But help was not to be on the way this time. I was accompanied to this show by my 15 year old son, who left home that night and never returned. In many ways this show was a turning point for me. Although I was still in for a shock on 8/9/95, I knew at the time I had seen the end on this night, and was not surprised. Still, one clunker out of 19 shows isn't bad, and knowing now the battles the Dead were fighting then I'm just amazed they showed up at all on this night. And I'm grateful they did. In spite of its unevenness I wouldn't have missed that performance of So Many Roads for anything. Anyway, as Oat Willie once said, "Onwards into the fog!"

There was something not right about this entire 3 day McNichols run. And it was too bad because it was the last time I ever saw Jerry. "Half of my life I spent doing time for some other f#cker's crime. The other half found me stumblin around drunk on burgundy wine"

Jackstraw - there were a lot of blown lyrics and somewhat uninspired moments. But, Baba O'Reilly>TNK was the best they ever played these 2 songs. And from the last night check out Bird Song, the jam in Throwing Stones, and Brokedown. I had audiance tapes of these shows back in the day and I was at the first and last night... Some of it is very inspired.

I went back and listened to the audience recording on archive.org. It was a much better show than I remember. Our seats at the side of the stage were not very good, and the side-fill speakers were intermittant. Hearing this recording the band actually sounds very tight and engaged. Vince really shines on this one. The drums were awesome, too. The Last Time is actually not dismal at all, but inspired. Yes, there are blown lyrics, but who hasn't blown a lyric now and then? I wish now we'd had better seats. Thank god for Archive. Memory is imperfect, and tape never lies. Give it a listen some time. This show actually rocks.