Taking place over two nights, 2023’s Grateful Dead Meet Up At The Movies rendered it difficult if not impossible to note the significance of the offering. Devoted to the iconic band’s June 22, 1991 performance at Solider Field in Chicago, this first concert at that venue was also the site of the group’s very last show with the late Jerry Garcia.
And, in another fitting (but less morbid) bit of continuity, this concert took place just five days after the one proffered for 2019’s installment of the annual event, at Giants Stadium in East Rutherford, New Jersey. On the first night at the Palace 9 Cinema in South Burlington Vermont, the sequence of events didn’t quite pick right up where it left off a few years ago, but that was a good thing.
In contrast to the strain imposed on the theater’s sound system in prior years (due to the source recording?), even before the volume went up about a half-hour in, the stereo separation was quite well-defined, as was the depth and expanse of the audio.
Fully comparable to the mix on any other Dan Healy recording for the group, so too was the video direction in keeping with previous work by Len Dell’Amico, the overseer of multiple such films devoted including Truckin’ Up to Buffalo and Dead Ahead. With the exception of some gratuitous zooming late in the three hours, the video was as well-paced as the setlist itself.
Over a wide range of originals interspersed with a Bob Dylan tune and a blues came colorful image overlays to the actual footage of “When I Paint My Masterpiece,” Willie Dixon’s “Wang Dang Doodle”. But such scattered insertions from Candace Brightman’s lighting at the show were only somewhat intrusive; on the contrary, the emergence of marching bears drew a good laugh from the audience and there was an equitable proportion of screen time for everyone in the band.
Naturally, the late guitarist and titular leader of the group commanded the most attention, and rightly so. Garcia’s shoulder-length shock of gray-white hair gave him a leonine appearance and his burly build rendered his presence all the more imposing, even if it did hearken to the physical downturn of his later years (an apt comparison: 1989’s Crimson White & Indigo).
In another marked difference from the aforementioned companion piece video of this same year, Garcia sang and played with more than just a modicum of vigor throughout. He broke his stoic, nay somber, expression only a couple of times to smile, but his beaming visage was all the more striking when it did appear, even if when soloing, his fixed concentration on what he was doing went uninterrupted.
Jerry was, in fact, enjoying himself quite a bit, as was keyboardist/accordionist/vocalist Bruce Hornsby. The pair exchanged a couple of knowing grins, sadly recalling the former’s lost repartee with the deceased Brent Mydland, but more importantly, even as the guitarist ever-so-carefully and precisely picked his way through “Crazy Fingers,” his kindred spirit’s piano playing actually gained some positive spontaneity by navigating material with which he wasn’t wholly familiar.
In keeping with the Grateful Dead’s customary approach to performing at this stage of their three-decade history, the first set allowed the group–seven in number with both Vince Welnick and Hornsby in tow–to flex its muscles and warm up. Noticeably digging into the groove of “Shakedown Street,” the unit’s more intricate, extended improv on “Let It Grow” foreshadowed the braver segues from “Playin in the Band” to a genuinely majestic “Terrapin Station:” the ensemble purposefully lingered on those changes to prolong the rare sensation for themselves and the audience.
Were it not for Bob Weir’s frenzied take on “One More Saturday Night” (befitting the date and day of the week), the slow but steady “Black Peter” might then have derailed the septet’s momentum and the denouement of the second set (its commencement mercifully not delayed with an intermission at the movie house).
But as Garcia sang the song, in much the same doleful tone he would often apply to “Wharf Rat” at such junctures, the number he composed with Robert Hunter for Workingman’s Dead echoed as something of a hurtful harbinger of things to come for himself in just a few short years.
More tangible in the Green Mountain movie house than it might well have been in the Chicago stadium some thirty-two years prior, the drama was palpable, but not overly so during the course of this entire ‘Meet Up At The Movies.’ Any implicit suspense went uninterrupted by ‘short subjects’ consisting of chief archivist David Lemieux’s overly-effusive intro on film and the short interval publicizing the release of the mammoth 1973 box Here Comes Sunshine.
With attendance somewhat sparse in this South Burlington multiplex–a fair estimate is between thirty and forty devoted souls, a number surely exceeded at the Saturday screening–the attendees were surprisingly reserved as well. A smattering of applause arose after the high-spirited opening of “Hell In A Bucket,” but the response was minimal from that point on, relegated to only a muted recognition for the “Dark Star” jam and the encore of The Band’s “The Weight.”
It’s hard to know then, what those present took away from the experience of this early summer evening. But that’s only a direct reflection of the generally impassive demeanor of the Grateful Dead themselves while on stage on film: compared to Phil Lesh and Bob Weir, drummers Bill Kreutzmann and (especially) Mickey Hart were positively animated.
At this juncture of their career, however, the logistical challenges of touring, especially in the immediate wake of the mainstream popularity of “Touch of Grey,” reportedly evoked some rightful ambivalence in certain quarters of the Dead organization. Still, observing these weathered psychedelic warriors during most of the moments they played and sang, even during “Drums” and “Space,” such a sensation instantly dissipated, as did any thoughts along the lines of ‘What if…?’
