By December 1989, the Grateful Dead were operating at a level of commercial and cultural visibility they hadn't approached since the early 1970s. "In the Dark" had gone platinum, "Touch of Grey" had made them MTV fixtures, and the band was drawing enormous arena crowds across the country. Brent Mydland was firmly established as the group's keyboard player — his bluesy, gospel-inflected playing a world apart from what Keith Godchaux had brought to the band in the previous decade — and the lineup of Garcia, Weir, Lesh, Hart, Kreutzmann, and Mydland had found its footing as a cohesive unit capable of both massive anthemic moments and genuinely exploratory jamming. The late-'89 tour found them wrapping up a year that had seen relentless touring, and the shows from this period have a well-fed, confident quality to them, even if they sometimes lack the loose danger of earlier eras. The Great Western Forum in Inglewood was the home of the Los Angeles Lakers, one of the grand old cathedrals of arena sports, and it carried a certain California glamour even when filled with tie-dye and patchouli. The Dead always had a devoted Southern California following — L.A. crowds could be electric in their own particular way — and the Forum's size meant that when the room locked in, it really locked in. This was big-league arena rock infrastructure being used to house something far stranger and more communal, which was part of what made late-'80s Dead so fascinating as a sociological phenomenon.
The confirmed song from this show in our database is "Uncle John's Band," and it's a choice piece of evidence for any given night. One of the great Garcia-Hunter compositions from the "Workingman's Dead" era, "Uncle John's Band" had by 1989 evolved into something stately and almost devotional in concert performance. The gentle interlocking acoustic feel of the studio recording had long since given way to something fuller and more resonant, with Garcia's lead lines carrying real emotional weight over Weir and Lesh's harmonic foundation. When the crowd finds those vocal harmonies alongside the band — which L.A. crowds in this era were well-practiced at doing — the whole thing lifts. If you can find a soundboard or matrix source for this one, the Forum's relatively controlled acoustics tend to reward the effort. Pull it up, let the room settle in around you, and see where the night takes you.