By December 1992, the Grateful Dead were deep into what fans sometimes call the Vince era — Vince Welnick having stepped in on keyboards following Brent Mydland's devastating death in July 1990. The band had spent the better part of two years finding their footing with the new lineup, and by late '92 they were settling into a sound that blended Welnick's bright, sometimes churchy organ tones with the still-vital interplay of Garcia, Weir, Lesh, and the two-drummer engine of Hart and Kreutzmann. It wasn't the telepathic peak of '77 or the exploratory sprawl of '72, but there were nights when the machine locked in and reminded you why people had been following this band for a quarter century. The fall '92 tour found them working through a repertoire that leaned heavily on the reliable mid-era catalog, with occasional flashes of the old transcendence waiting around any given corner. McNichols Sports Arena in Denver was a big, concrete bowl of a room — the kind of NBA arena that the Dead had been filling since the mid-'80s made them a genuine stadium act. Denver crowds were famously enthusiastic, the altitude adding a certain edge to the room's energy, and McNichols had hosted the band across multiple tours. It wasn't an intimate listening room, but the Dead had long since learned how to play to the back rows without losing the nuance that their most devoted fans craved.
The one song we have confirmed from this date is "They Love Each Other," one of Garcia's warmest and most beloved offerings from the mid-'70s forward. Written with Robert Hunter and first appearing on *Wake of the Flood* in 1973, TLEO is a gentle, rolling love song that Garcia seemed to inhabit with genuine tenderness every time he sang it. It typically appeared in the first set as a comfortable mid-tempo piece, a moment for the room to breathe and for Garcia's voice and lead work to take center stage in the most unguarded way. The best versions have a loose, unhurried quality — Garcia bending notes around the melody like he's in no hurry to be anywhere else. Even in the later years, when his playing could be inconsistent, TLEO had a way of drawing out the warmth that made him irreplaceable. If you can track down a full recording of this night — soundboard sources from this era are reasonably common in the archive — cue up "They Love Each Other" and let Garcia remind you what made this band worth chasing in the first place.