Recently I've been using YouTube search to find Grateful Dead shows to listen to whilst driving alone, or working, or some other stretch of time. I just type "Grateful Dead [current month and day]" and it will show results from different years that were played on that date. I don't look at the setlist ahead of time—I just experience it as it comes.
So yesterday when I needed to drive to Middle Tennessee, I searched for "9-15" and there were two choices: "-82" and "-90." I opted for the latter.
What I didn't know until I read about it this morning is that it was Bruce Hornsby's first show with the Dead. Brent Mydland had sadly passed away not two months before; the band had shows lined-up at Madison Square Garden, and they had enlisted Vince Welnick on keyboards. But they also got Bruce to play with them for a while.
I didn't get through the whole show (having picked up a passenger who dismisses the band's entire oeuvre with a curt "sounds like drugs"), but made it through a version of "Crazy Fingers" that showed off Bruce's piano chops, and an "Uncle John's Band" that had him volleying with Jerry, both rapidly imitating and riffing off each other.
I got to see Bruce with the Dead one time, in '93 at RFK Stadium, and he played accordion during the show. (It was also the one where Sting, who had opened, joined for an encore of "The Weight.")
23 years later, I saw Bruce with Ricky Skaggs & Kentucky Thunder, and was again amazed at not only his incredible virtuosity, but his listening ability. It's one thing to be able to play really well, really fast, etc. But there is a humility in playing to serve the song and the ensemble's current rendition of it. Sure, he took his moments to shine, but used most of his light in interplay with shadows and colors coming from the rest of the band.
But back to the 9-15-90 show: "Candyman" was another gem I thoroughly enjoyed, and I had a hair-raising moment or two remembering what it was like to be in the crowd when certain lyrics would come from the stage: "hand me my old guitar, pass the whiskey 'round … tell everybody you meet that the Candyman's in town" was one, and the involuntary roar at "love will see you through" in "Box of Rain" was another.
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