Question: What can you do when your one of your main singers loses his voice?
Answer: Make lemonade!
The band is playing good, you can hear that right off the bat. "Iko Iko," the concert opener, already has everybody dancin'. But Jerry's lost his voice. WTF.
So during the set break, the show gets reorganized, and the guests who were scheduled to make brief appearances (and some who weren't) are suddenly pushed to the front.
Mick Taylor, on "Little Red Rooster," and Hall & Oates, on the Marvin Gaye classic "What's Goin' On?" play great. Suzanne Vega, not so much. But what the heck, on this day, they all got to front the Grateful Dead! Also present were Bruce Hornsby, who would later join the band, and Jack Casady, bassist for Hot Tuna and Jefferson Airplane.
In general, 1987-89 were good years for the Dead. Jerry was clean, and the shows were consistently hot. Although this is probably not their best performance of the period, it is a unique one, worth a listen just to hear Hall & Oates front the band.
Some of my deadhead friends are laser focused on the Dead. Seems like that’s all they listen to. I always tell them, you oughta listen to something else.
Of course, I tell my friends who are not deadheads, you oughta listen to the Dead!
I liked the Mick Taylor songs. The others seemed out of place for a Dead concert. Better than canceling I guess.
Dead fans are a DEADicated bunch. Sorry about that. Also, you’ve got to be there and experience a Dead audience.
Funny story about a Dead show at Roosevelt stadium back in the 70s. It got delayed because of rain and finally it got cancelled. Watching a bunch of Dead heads proceed to their cars and then form lines that didn’t go to any exit was hilarious. Probably best they didn’t leave the parking lot right away anyway.
When I was in college, we used to hang out with The Dead at the local bars where they played for free. Nice people, and I also remember checking out Jerry’s car to see what music cassette tapes he had in there.