Shortlist: September 21, 1993 – Madison Square Garden, NYC

Cover by Saul Steinberg.

A lot of The Grateful Dead mixes that get posted here start with some specific curiosity: shows with horn players, the final “Dark Stars,” Keith “Shakedowns,” “Sevens, Main Tens, and Elevens,” a month someone said was hot, etc. 

I’ve been poking around the Welnick years lately, and this mix came out of my interest in the sequence of “Here Comes Sunshine” followed by “Way to Go Home.” I really like “Way to Go Home,” and there’s a natural affinity between the two, given the way The Dead played “Sunshine” in this period. They played the pairing four times (’92, ’93, 2x’95). They never jammed a connection, but the 1992 one has a nice little hinge, and this one has an instrumental noodle in between that serves as both a coda to “Sunshine” and a walk-up to “Long Way.” This is a very good "Long Way," though the mix blunts it somewhat.

Beyond that material, it was the jamming and not the songs/singing that cooked that night. “Terrapin” reverted almost immediately back to a “Playin’” jam after the final vocal section, so this seemed like a good time to try an instrumental “Terrapin.” It’s a tough edit to get from the instrumental break to the final jam, but what the hell. The jamming on both sides of "Terrapin" is superb.

Anyhow, here’s another check-in with 1993 Dead that reassures you that more listening will be rewarded. 

42-minute mp3 mix here

  • Small Improvisation (1:44)
  • Here Comes Sunshine (mostly inst. edit) (4:09)
  • Way to Go Home (6:44)
  • Playin’ > Terrapin > Playin’ (inst. edit) (14:38)
  • The Same Thing (7:17)
  • Drum Space Improvisation (7:47)

9 responses
I would just show up here and genuflect out of gratitude on every post but I'm trying limit myself to every third or forth new write-up / download. Arigato. And fall 94 has some good stuff, as you probably know, that might be worth your wizardry.
Alec, comment as often as you like! It's mostly crickets around here. I will check out Fall '94. Thanks for the tip.
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