By the spring of 1993, the Grateful Dead were deep into what would prove to be their final full years of touring, and the band's identity was being carried in no small part by Vince Welnick, who had stepped into the keyboard chair following Brent Mydland's death in 1990. Welnick brought a warmer, more classically melodic sensibility to the role, and by this point he had settled into the ensemble with genuine comfort. Jerry Garcia, despite the health concerns that had shadowed his 1992, was playing regularly and with moments of real inspiration. The early 1993 touring saw the Dead working through the Midwest in their familiar arena mode — professional, well-rehearsed, and still capable of transcendent stretches when the music locked in. The Rosemont Horizon, sitting just outside Chicago near O'Hare Airport, was a massive suburban arena that the Dead had visited repeatedly through the late '80s and into the '90s. It wasn't an intimate or legendary room by any stretch — no one is writing poems about the Horizon's acoustics — but the Chicago-area Dead crowd was always reliably passionate, and the band knew they were playing to a faithful audience that came to listen. The sheer density of Deadheads in the Midwest by this era meant shows here tended to have an electric, expectant quality even in a characterless concrete bowl.
From this particular night, we have two songs that tell an interesting story about where the Dead were: Black Peter and Loose Lucy. Black Peter, that gorgeous, slow-burning meditation on mortality from Workingman's Dead, was a centerpiece of countless first sets throughout the band's career, and by 1993 Garcia could deliver its mournful verses with an almost weathered depth — the lyric "all of my friends come to see me last" hits differently when the man singing it is clearly feeling the weight of years. Listen for how Garcia inhabits the long instrumental passages, letting notes hang and decay. Loose Lucy, on the other hand, is pure good-time music — a jaunty, underappreciated shuffle from Mars Hotel that never failed to generate warm energy in the room. It's the kind of song that makes you remember the Dead were, at their core, a band that loved to play. The recording circulating from this date is worth seeking out if you're in the mood for a solid mid-era document. Cue it up and let the Horizon do its thing.