By September 1990, the Grateful Dead were navigating one of the more complicated stretches of their later career. Brent Mydland had died tragically that July, just weeks before the summer tour was set to resume, leaving the band scrambling and grieving in equal measure. They brought in Vince Welnick on keys and, remarkably, kept playing — Bruce Hornsby also joined the fold as a second keyboardist during this period, lending the band an unusual and genuinely interesting two-keyboard texture that wouldn't last forever. The fall 1990 run was the band's first sustained attempt to find their footing in the post-Brent world, and there's a palpable searching quality to these shows — sometimes ragged, sometimes transcendent, almost always emotionally charged. Richfield Coliseum, the big shed sitting just south of Cleveland in the Ohio flatlands, was a reliable stop on the Dead's arena circuit through the late '80s and into the '90s. It wasn't a legendary room like Cornell's Barton Hall or the intimate magic of the Fillmore, but it held a devoted regional crowd that could push a show into genuinely electric territory. The Midwest Dead scene had a fervent loyalty to it, and fall shows in Ohio often carried a focused intensity that rewarded the band right back.
The songs represented from this night offer a compelling cross-section of what made the Dead worth chasing in any era. "Terrapin Station" is always an event — that slow, ceremonial build toward the suite's opening movement demands a band that's fully present, and hearing how Welnick and Hornsby navigated its majestic architecture in their earliest weeks together is worth the price of admission alone. "Not Fade Away" in this era could range from a perfunctory set-closer to a genuine tribal stomp, and the fall '90 versions lean toward the latter, the band playing it with an almost defiant energy. "Stella Blue" is one of Garcia's most heartbreaking vehicles, and given the emotional weight of the fall 1990 tour — the loss of Brent still raw — any version of that song from this period carries an extra layer of meaning. "Queen Jane Approximately" as a Dylan cover was a genuine rarity in the rotation, which makes its appearance here a treat for set-list obsessives. If you can get your hands on a clean source from this night, settle in and pay close attention to the keyboard interplay — that dual-piano sound was a genuinely strange and beautiful thing while it lasted. This one deserves a listen.