By the summer of 1987, the Grateful Dead had completed their remarkable commercial and cultural resurgence. "Touch of Grey," released that July, was climbing the charts and bringing a whole new generation of fans through the doors — and sometimes overwhelming the old faithful at venues across the country. The band performing that August was the long-running lineup of Garcia, Weir, Lesh, Hart, Kreutzmann, and Brent Mydland, who by this point had fully shed his "new guy" status and was pushing the band into warmer, more keyboard-driven territory. It was a complicated moment: the Dead were bigger than they'd ever been, playing to enormous crowds, but there were nights that summer when that energy translated into something genuinely transcendent. Town Park in Telluride, Colorado sits at roughly 9,000 feet elevation in one of the most strikingly beautiful mountain settings the band ever played. The high-altitude outdoor amphitheater setting gave Dead shows there a particular character — the thin air, the mountains pressing in from all sides, and an audience that had often traveled considerable distances to be there. Telluride shows tend to have a devoted, intimate feel even when the crowds were large, and the Dead responded to that environment with some loose, exploratory playing over the years. The lone confirmed song from our database for this show is Space, and while that might seem like a modest fragment, it's actually a fascinating window into the band.
By 1987, Space — the improvisational interlude typically launched from the Drums segment in the second set — had become a laboratory for whatever Garcia, Lesh, and Mydland wanted to explore in real time. Brent's synthesizer textures added an almost cinematic quality to these journeys during the late '80s, and Garcia's lead guitar in this zone could range from hovering ambiguity to slashing intensity without warning. A great 1987 Space can feel like the band dissolving the edges of what they're supposed to be. If you're coming to this recording, tune your ears to the interplay between Garcia and Brent during the quieter passages — that push and pull between guitar and keys is the emotional center of the late-'80s Dead. The recording quality and sourcing details for this show are worth investigating in the community before committing to a listen, as Telluride sources vary. But the altitude, the mountains, and the high summer of a very unusual year in the band's life make this one worth tracking down. Press play and let the thin Colorado air carry it.