There’s a spiritual sustenance of sorts in Garcia’s music that can be hard to put a finger on per se, but the continuing demand and praise for these celestial harmonics is empirical evidence of its existence.
The '90s may not have marked the Grateful Dead's creative peak, but these two DVDs, from 1990 and 1991, show that the group's continued popularity was justified.
With improved sound and a clearer image in Blu-Ray format, the viewer gets a stronger sense of the full majesty of musicians staring into the face of fear in an hour of darkness.
These Friends comprise a band intimately aware of its greatest strengths; a command of the early ‘70s folk, country, and roots aspects of the Grateful Dead catalog as well as the R&B, the rollicking rock 'n' roll, and occasionally, the harder blues.
Ultimately, what I am trying to say is this: The Dead can be appreciated -- indeed, probably must be appreciated -- as a kind of continuing, evolving, shifty performance of “The Grateful Dead”.
From the idealistic Heaven of that three-day music festival to the chaotic inferno created at the hands of some of Hell's own 'Angels', these sequences literally vibrate off the page.
