This year’s installment of Grateful Dead’s annual Meet-Up At The Movies features the group’s first-ever concert at Chicago’s Soldier Field on June 22, 1991. Following its debut at theaters on Thursday, it returns tonight, drawing on footage from the original six-camera stadium video feed (with the list of participating theaters available here).

Grateful Dead archivist David Lemieux told Relix in a recent interview, “I think the entire summer 1991 tour is magnificent. There was a connection between Jerry and Bruce Hornsby that to me was very reminiscent of the chemistry between Jerry and Brent in ‘89 going into ‘90. I also think Vince was singing and playing great. He was learning his way into the Grateful Dead and doing some really inventive things. Everybody else’s playing was inspired as well.”

The 6/22/91 show marked the group’s debut at the storied stadium where the band would later deliver its final performance on July 9, 1995.

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This account of a Thursday screening appears courtesy of Kristopher Weiss

What a Long, Strange Celluloid Trip

As I hurtled through time (and “Drums”) and “Space” from a rainy Ohio night in 2023 to a cold and blustery Chicago night in 1991, it struck me that it was – and remains – a long strange trip.

The 11th-annual Grateful Dead Meet-up at the Movies was an acid-free flashback 32 years in the making as the Dead’s June 22, 1991, debut at Soldier Field hit theaters on its anniversary date and I was transported to another life when my biggest worry was whether Jerry Garcia would sing the words to “Dark Star.”

(He did not, which was actually cooler).

Transplanted from the far reachers of Soldier Field on a night when low-hanging clouds made one of the year’s longest days feel like night for the opening “Hell in a Bucket” to a comfy reclining movie house seat, I saw and heard things a little differently this time around.

For one thing, what was state-of-the-art graphic representations of Dead iconography is laughably cornball in 2023 and serves to illustrate just how much time has passed since the Grateful Dead were a going concern. 

More striking, and less depressing, is how much fun the band was still having at this late date. Perhaps the veteran members were inspired by the fresh blood that keyboardists Vince Welnick and Bruce Hornsby represented, but the reason doesn’t matter, it’s just wonderful to see and serves as a reminder of how special these days were. 

There’s a beautiful moment in the front half of the second set when Hornsby teases “Dark Star” heavily and Garcia, Bob Weir and Phil Lesh share bemused smiles before launching into “Playing in the Band.” It’s as if they’re saying, “let’s mess with the new guy.” Likewise, the “Terrapin Station” coda found the band having a high time as percussionist Mickey Hart rose from his seat several times to bash his cymbals unabashedly while Welnick could be heard shouting with glee just off-mic.

I missed that the first time around, so it was exhilarating to witness for the first time at my second 6/23/91 show.

I’d also forgotten that Garcia ceded most of his background-vocal duties to the accordion-squeezing Hornsby on “When I Paint My Masterpiece.” And while I prefer Garcia’s vocals, this was a magnanimous way of integrating him into the band; not that Hornsby needed the help.

This show may be best-known for the monster version of “Shakedown Street” that appeared in the No. 2 slot of set No. 1. And though the second set runs nearly two hours and hits a glorious peak on the post-“Space” run of “Dark Star Jam,” “Playing in the Band Reprise,” “Black Peter,” “One More Saturday Night” and “The Weight,” with verses from Garcia, Hornsby, bassist Phil Lesh and Weir, the Dead’s Solider Field debut is also one of the rare shows that sports a first set that’s even more powerful with new arrangements of “Wang Dang Doodle” and “Friend of the Devil” benefitting two-keyboardist set up and a “Let it Grow” that allows the complexity of one of Weir’s most-intricate compositions to shine.

There was nothing like a Grateful Dead concert.

And there is nothing like a Grateful Dead Meet-up at the Movies.