By the summer of 1992, the Grateful Dead were deep into the final chapter of their long strange trip — a band that had outlasted every trend, every era, and most of their own earlier incarnations. Brent Mydland had been gone for two years, and Vince Welnick, the former Tubes keyboardist who stepped in under the most difficult circumstances imaginable, was now settling into his role with growing comfort. Bruce Hornsby was still floating in and out of the touring lineup at this point, lending occasional gravitas to the keyboards chair, but the Dead were fundamentally Vince's band now, finding their footing in what would prove to be the final stretch of the Garcia years. The sound in this era could be uneven — the arena bookings were enormous, the crowds had swelled considerably since the Touch of Grey boom of the late '80s — but on the right night, the old magic was still very much present. Richfield Coliseum, situated in the suburban sprawl between Cleveland and Akron in northeast Ohio, was a workhorse venue that the Dead returned to reliably through the arena era. It wasn't a room with the mythic gravity of Red Rocks or the intimacy of the Fillmore, but it seated a serious crowd and the Midwest faithful showed up ready. Ohio Dead audiences had always been passionate, and Richfield shows from the late-period era carry that regional intensity.
From what we have in the archive, this show features some classic setlist workhorses that reward close listening. "Lovelight" — the old Pigpen stomper that had been revived as a crowd-pleasing closer and an arena-rattler — was still a vehicle for genuine energy in 1992, even if it couldn't touch the ten-minute fire-breathing versions of '69 and '70. The pairing of "Me & My Uncle" into "Big River" is one of the Dead's great country one-two punches, the kind of segue that felt inevitable the moment it started — Bob Weir's cowboy swagger on the former giving way to the rolling momentum of the latter with practiced ease. And of course, no Dead show is complete without the Drums passage, which in the '90s remained a wild card — sometimes transcendent, sometimes indulgent, always a moment to surrender the analytical brain and just listen. The recording available here will tell you a lot about the night's energy even before the notes do. Press play and let the Richfield crowd carry you back to a summer evening when the Dead were still out there, still searching, still finding it.