Thread by @chillwig, ok let's do this. requires a thread. this was the last one. [...]

ok let's do this. requires a thread. this was the last one. we just didn't know it yet.

unsurprisingly, the mix of feelings at the end of dead tour is just like how it feels at the end of phish tour. spent, but full. part of you is relieved to get off the grind of the road. 1/n

part of you is anxious about returning to the grind that you paused for tour. you're tired, your stores are depleted, and your car's interior needs to be sandblasted. you want to hold onto these memories forever, but you're also sick of dealing with the same crew every day 2/n

7/23/90 was all of this for me and more. i'd just graduated from college (where i had a LOT of fun) and was starting "real school" (where i would get serious) in the fall. Sure, I was planning on hitting Philly in the Fall, but Europe was definitely out and 3/n

i knew that touring would need be tightly curtailed for the next few years, because I'd be poor & have no time. so this Deer Creek > Tinley Park run to end the tour was in many ways a planned self-send off for me. As previously mentioned, Tinley Park was a disappointing venue 4/n

to begin with, and the shows were not great. We took our time packing up the camp site after night 3, listening to our cassette masters and dreading the long drive on I-80. we took our time on the way back. it was a quiet drive, with not a lot of talking and lots of time 5/n

to contemplate the next stage of my life. we got back to state college and unpacked, had a day of chill rest and copying of said masters and reliving the highlights. 2 more sleeps, then comes the phone call. brent was gone. but we just saw him? we sifted through our memories 6/n

of the past week, looking for clues. i flashed back to the n2, with brent's weak, tired performance in Far From Me, when i thought "LOL a hot day in July and garcia is in shorts while Brent is in jeans and long sleeves?" of course, it didn't take long before we all realized 7/n

that Brent's last song ever was The Weight and ... oh my god his last verse ... was he saying goodbye to us? then the grief just came in waves and waves. i coped by trying to embrace it ... as if the universe was trying to clear the decks for me to focus on my future. 8/n

i dont really think the universe works that way, but it's hard not to ponder the coincidences that seem pivotal in hindsight. i still miss brent and listen to him with the GD almost every day. GD was never as good for me afterwards, and except for some Fall 90 unicorns 9/n

the peaks of 89-90 would be the last ones for me. I still can't listen to the Tinley Park shows (OTOH, the two Deer Creek shows that preceded Tinley were among the best i ever saw and I listen to them all the time). Anyway about the show ... 10/n

Better than n2, not as good as n1. My biggest memory is that this was my night to sit on the lawn and babysit the crew cassette deck. This was a first for me, as I had no prior live taping experience. i was the noob, at the end of a long chain of decks. one dude told me 11/n

not to worry, just hit record and get out of the way of the big boys. lol. so we are going through the first set and it's after Cassidy and I hear Jerry tease some Truckin notes. a first set Truckin meant good chance of a > into Spooful/Smokestack, so I told the lead deck 12/n

that I thought we should flip NOW before truckin or we'd get stuck flipping during the transition. SIT DOWN NOOB. so of course truckin starts, then the Nobody's Fault teases start during the outro jam and people start getting nervous and there's not much tape left on Side A 13/n

sure enough, jam transforms into Smokestack & lead deck bro signals for the flip. we all got cuts in our masters. i was right. from then on i was committed to getting my own mics once i could afford them so i would never be in that situation again. nudges from the universe? 14/15

here's the show

Grateful Dead • 1990-07-23 (02:39:38) • World Music Theater, Tinley Park, IL, IL, USA https://relisten.net/grateful-dead/1990/07/23?source=98128

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