Grateful Dead
Date 1986-03-20
Hampton Coliseum
Hampton VA

set I
d1t01 - tuning
d1t02 - Touch Of Gray
d1t03 - Little Red Rooster
d1t04 - Friend Of The Devil
d1t05 - It's All Over Now
d1t06 - Row Jimmy
d1t07 - Me & My Uncle >
d1t08 - Mexicali Blues
d1t09 - Althea
d1t10 - Box Of Rain

set II
d2t01 - tuning
d2t02 - Iko Iko >
d2t03 - Estimated Prophet >
d2t04 - Eyes Of The World >
d2t05 - Drums >
d2t06 - Space >
d2t07 - Wharf Rat >
d2t08 - Throwing Stones >
d2t09 - Not Fade Away
d2t10 - Encore U.S. Blues


NOTE:
There is a grinding sound from the PA, thought to be Weir's rig distorting, throughout this entire spring tour. It is present only when they are playing, not during breaks. I listened to several FOB audience sources from this tour and they all have this "noise".

Recording Information:
Source: MAUD CA
Microphones:
Beyer M201 XY head level
Recorder: Sony TC-D5M| Maxell MX 90's no Dolby (2nd D5M in line)
Location: approximately 40 feet from stage; DFC
Transfer:  Nakamichi LX5 > Sonic AD2k @24/48 > Marantz PMD661|24/48 SD
Processing: SD| Audacity | cdwav editor | TLH | FLAC| foobar 2000 tagger
Recorded by: Executive Crew; Sean Murtha, Gary Steel?, Mike Davis, Kenny Davis, Kyle Holbrook?, Tom Pinney, John Hance
Transferred: Kyle Holbrook
=========================================================================
the tour story:
After doing these stories since summer 1982 tour, I am going to shift directions a bit. I am going to discuss the Grateful Dead scene overall in 1986, rather than focusing on the personal travel tales. In a large way Jerry's "health issues" were front and center to all of us "tourheads", having had a Mikel and several other flyers going around the parking lot discussing Jerry's "failing health". I am hoping to attach some of those if I can locate them in time. I would also like to dispel the notion seen so often in print about the band and the quality of their performances being terrible during this timeframe. This was simply untrue. Some nights Jerry or Bob were off and not fully there, but plenty of nights when they would just wail and put out some fine sets. Yes, most of 1986 has short sets, some first sets are barely one hour long. My premise here is that if you listen carefully enough to the entire seven months before Jerry's coma you will hear some of the weirdest, worst, and best the Grateful Dead had to offer.

In the "best" category might be the new song selections. On this recording the Bob Dylan cover, "Visions of Johanna" stands out. Of course, we know now, but did not in March 1986 that the band would announce the summer tour with Bob Dylan and Tom Petty as his backup band. That hindsight goes a long way toward understanding the emergence of so many Dylan tunes during this year. And back to the earlier point, how in the hell could Bob and Jerry recite the lengthy lyrics to those songs but forget the words to Truckin'? Amazing and puzzling at the same time. Put the flubbed lyrics and short first sets in the worst category. Then there was the weird. They ended Philadelphia The Spectrum 3-24-1986 with one song, Morning Dew, out of space. The reason, confirmed after all these years with video evidence, was "sometime late in the show, Bill was hit by a bottle and was totally angry and flipped off the crowd and that was why they left the stage". ##

For this specific spring tour show the opening set featured some lengthy individual readings of "Friend of the Devil", "It's All Over Now" and "Row Jimmy" with the set closer, "Box of Rain" being the cherry on top of the ice cream sundae. Brent did his vocal vamping on "Little Red Rooster" which got the crowd excited. Then of course came the Box of Rain. The total game changer as many claim regarding the quality of this performance. They did play it well, and so this moment would be included in "the Best" category for the year. "Iko-Iko" was always welcomed for a set opener getting the crowd dancing inside the old round arena for the opening of the second set. The "Estimated Prophet" started to slow down near the midle but had Bobby screeching to a certain amount of applause. A very brief and too quickly played "Eyes of the World" followed. Jerry's vocal was bright with undertones of laughter but the end jam into drums was short as would be (most of) the rest of 1986. The rest of the show was typical post drums with maybe a bit of pizazz with the "Wharf Rat" when Jerry's vocals get the Healy reverb treatment.

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