The Best Grateful Dead Concert of All Time

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Today the New York Times wants to know which was the best Grateful Dead concert of all time. There seems to be a lot of discussion about lineups and play lists.

I have to tell you that for me that was not what a Dead concert was about. When I close my eyes and cast my mind backward a scene appears that looks something like this.

The Uintah Mountains tower in the distance, steel gray under a mass of clouds. The sun sets over Salt Lake behind us, and the stage, and the park, and the lower mountains of the Wasatch close by, glow shining gold in the light. The Dead comes on the stage. The light shows the lines in their faces, lines of pain, lines of pleasure, lines of the struggle of my generation to overcome war and hate and to find a new way to live.

As the band begins to play the bands of clouds separate from the storm and begin to come over us, wave after wave of thin cold rain, wave after wave of clear bright music, wave after wave of that which should be legal sweeping through my body. Wave after wave of realization sweeping through my mind timed to the rain and the music and the rush.

I’m pretty sure this was the best Dead concert ever. But then again I was stoned.