TIGDH: 3-16-92 (Philly & Dew)

(TIGDH = Today in Grateful Dead History)

This post first appeared on the Phish.net forum on March 16, 2018.

Spring of 1992 was a bit rough for me. It wasn’t the job or the girlfriend trouble. It wasn’t the weather or the fact that I’d somehow ended up on the East Coast again. It wasn’t even the fact that we were entering another Presidential election year.

Spring of 1992 was tough for me because I was watching my beloved Grateful Dead fall to pieces. My first shows of the year were in Hampton. I had never stood stock still and felt “bored” during a Slipknot!, but I also couldn’t deny the truth. Something was missing. Yeah, there are some good tunes, I was excited for The Same Thing, and the Estimated-> He’s Gone, Space-> Wheel and So Many Roads touched me, but. . . . The second night didn’t really do much for me, either.

Hampton, aka "The Mothership"

My next stop was Landover. Ouch. The longest song of night one was Wave to the Wind. I was actually embarrassed (sorry, Phil, I still love ya!), and my girlfriend was like, “You’ve actually seen 100 of these shows?” Night two, while it had moments of transcendence, had moments of terror. Victim, Iko, Corinna and Jerry’s leaving the stage? WTF? That low energy I felt in Hampton portended some disastrous goings on with my beloved fat man. Of course, Jerry pulled out the Dark Star, but it wasn’t the same band as I had toured with in the late-80s and 1990.

The "Crap Center," which I used to call "Big Pringle"

We had a fun run up to Canada later in the tour, catching another Dark Star and two passable shows, but where was the ole magic? It was the beginning of a new era for the Dead (for me) in that shows merely had highlights, and the days of wall to wall slack jawed amazingness seemed to have gone the way of my favorite wingman, Brent Mydland. It was weird. It was so disappointing, that I didn’t even want to go whole hog on summer tour. (I ended up seeing Sonic Youth, Luna and Uncle Tupelo, combined, as many times as the Dead that year.)

I may never have returned to seeing Dead shows as regularly as I did had I not attended the Arizona shows in December. However, it remained a new era, one where a few songs (or shows) rose like a Phoenix from the stumbling ashes. All of which is to say, Philly. What the heck is it about the Spectrum? Why would everything come together there? Why was the Spectrum synonymous with Shakedown and Morning Dew? I think that the April 6, 1982 show had something to do with setting that precedent, but the Spectrum had a longer history than that (think 53 times from 1968-1995). Then, there was 3/24/86 of Persian Gulf USS New Jersey shelling fame.

The "Filthy Rectum" (Philly Spectrum) as Heads called it.

Well, as luck would have it, on this day in 1992, the Grateful Dead scraped their disintegrating selves together and pulled off a standard-good Dead show in a tour fraught with disappointment and fear (the end is near type fear). In 1992, the police were horrible, the lot scene was coming under major fire, the law was trying to smash our state. Jerry was dragging down their ship, but the one place of redemption was that dump of an arena in Philly! It boggles the imagination and pissed off West Coast heads! Philly? What in tarnation?

So, if you’re a history person, listen to Jerry pick up some bright light in the Corinna-> Scarlet-> Fire (in parts). Then, hear him anoint Philly (once again) with the best Dew of the tour. Sure, MSG may have gotten 9-16-87, but the Dead didn’t visit Manhattan on the Spring, Summer and Fall tour (they did the Spectrum) that year! There was something about the Dead in Philly, and if there’s one show to redeem the 1992 Spring Tour, this day in history’s show is it.

Enjoy it with a large grain of salt. If nothing else, listen to the Morning Dew.

https://archive.org/details/gd92-03-16.sbd.13571.sbefail.shnf/gd92-03-16d3t03.shn