By the fall of 1991, the Grateful Dead were deep into what would prove to be their final full decade of touring, and the weight of that marathon was beginning to show in complicated ways. Jerry Garcia had narrowly survived a diabetic coma in 1986, come roaring back, and now found himself in the midst of yet another grueling touring schedule with a band that had been together in its current configuration — Garcia, Weir, Lesh, Hart, Kreutzmann, and Brent Mydland's replacement Vince Welnick — for only a little over a year. Welnick had stepped in after Brent's tragic death in July of 1990, and by the fall '91 run the band was still finding its footing with the new keyboardist, occasionally flashing real chemistry but still working through the adjustment. This was also the era of "Infrared Roses," the ambient studio document born from their Drums/Space segments, a reminder that the Dead were still thinking creatively even as the arena-rock machinery churned around them. Boston Garden was a storied old barn — cramped, loud, and beloved by New England Deadheads who had made it a reliable stop on the touring circuit for decades. The building had its acoustic quirks and its capacity crowd energy, and Boston audiences were famously loyal and vocal, the kind of room where the band could feel the love pressing back at them from the floor. The songs we have from this date make for an intriguing window into the show.
"Attics of My Life" is one of the band's most ethereal a cappella-adjacent moments, a Hunter-Garcia gem from "American Beauty" that requires near-perfect vocal blend to truly land — worth seeking out to hear how the voices were holding up in this period. "Saint of Circumstance" is a classic Weir rocker that always carried a kind of compressed, churning energy live, and getting it twice in a single show suggests the band may have had an incomplete performance earlier in the evening, an interesting anomaly worth investigating. "Good Lovin'" was a reliable crowd-pleaser and energy release, a vehicle for the band to stretch out and play to the room. The Drums/Space sequence sits at the heart of every Dead show, and in '91 Hart and Kreutzmann were as locked in rhythmically as ever. "Mexicali Blues" offered Weir's dry, saloon-bar charm as a kind of palette cleanser. Pull this one up for the "Attics" opener and the twin "Saint of Circumstance" mystery, and let the whole arc of a night at the Garden wash over you.