By the spring of 1991, the Grateful Dead were deep into what would prove to be the final sustained stretch of their long run together. Brent Mydland had died the previous July, and the band had brought in two keyboardists to fill the void — Vince Welnick as the full-time replacement and Bruce Hornsby riding alongside for much of 1990 and into 1991. That dual-keyboard configuration gave the band a richer, more layered palette than they'd had since the Godchaux years, and there's a warmth and depth to shows from this period that rewards careful listening. The world around the Dead in early '91 was complicated: the Gulf War had just concluded, and the band's audience had swelled enormously through the late '80s on the back of "In the Dark," bringing a new generation of fans into arenas that were straining at the seams with energy. Nassau Veterans Memorial Coliseum, out on Long Island, was a reliable stop on the Dead's annual East Coast swing, and it held a special place in the band's geography. The New York metropolitan area had always been fertile Deadhead territory, and Nassau crowds were famously passionate — you can often hear it in recordings from this room, a density of noise and recognition that feels different from a Midwest arena. It's not a legendary room in the way that, say, the Capital Centre or Madison Square Garden were, but it was a dependable house, and the band played it well.
The songs we have from this date give a nice cross-section of the night. "Sugaree" is one of Garcia's most beloved vehicles — a slow, searching tune built around regret and yearning, and when Garcia is locked in, the guitar work in the verses and the long instrumental passages can be absolutely devastating. "Truckin'" is a first-set warhorse that, when the band commits to it, can turn into something unpredictable depending on what they choose to do at the end. "Me and My Uncle" is the reliable cowboy shuffle that appeared in hundreds of setlists and rarely failed to get a room moving. And "Touch of Grey," by this point a crowd ritual, closing the show with its bittersweet anthem quality — by 1991 the band had been playing it for years since its chart success, and how Garcia delivered it on any given night tells you something about where the show had been. If a good soundboard source circulates from this date, the dual-keyboard blend is worth hearing on its own terms. Pull this one up and let the Sugaree do its work on you.