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Set 1:
Shakedown Street
Walkin' Blues
Bertha
Greatest Story Ever Told
Candyman
Queen Jane Approximately
Deal

Set 2:
Picasso Moon
Foolish Heart
Playin' In The Band
Uncle John's Band
Drums
Space
I Need A Miracle
Black Peter
Throwin' Stones
Not Fade Away

Encore:
One More Saturday Night

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Comments:

I can't say enough above average things about this 6-1-91 extravaganza...it just goes to show how a venue can fuck up a show. Aside from riots, mediocre Hollywood stars, and a painful experience involving a pair of binoculars, all I really remember is a deep and abiding feeling of....detachment.

Maybe it was just the "Picasso Moon" to start the second set, but I never quite got with the program. And much to my surprise and chagrin, the band actually did seem to have something of a program that day. You may dismiss it as slop, but I find most of the show much, much better than I remembered, and even, dare I say...decent. It's much more akin to the good Shoreline run of the previous May than the half-hearted dog and pony show I thought I had witnessed. The only real screw-ups are Jerry's forgetfulness on "Uncle John's Band" and the opening to "Throwing Stones" where Bob starts with the wrong lyrics, and makes a sloppy recovery. But the "Playin' in the Band" is fairly long and interesting, and UJB, aside from the aforementioned trifecta of blunders, is a quite peppy version. And Hornsby adds many very nice touches throughout the show. The "Shakedown Street" opener is amazing, if for nothing else, the band never really lets on that the second Watts riots were threatening to erupt. At least that's how Bill Graham saw it. And the audacity of "Bertha" and "Greatest Story Ever Told" translates well...you can hear a certain edge to the band that is almost funny, if you didn't know that good almost-honest hippies were at the same time bleeding in the back of police vans in the parking lot.

But that's just another show in LA, I guess....

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This was the worst deadshow I ever saw
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I will always remember this show... not for the musical quality (which was hard to attend to in the middle of the "riots"), but because it symbolized the clash between deadheads and the government at the height of the drug war. The LAPD stood by as security guards checked EVERYTHING at the door looking for L in any form... paper between bills, hidden in hats, at the bottom of cigarette packs, cubes hidden in pockets and bras, liquid in any unmarked container. Lots of people were arrested at the door, lots of people were scared. Inside we were greeted with high metal fences separating the seats from the floor and the LAPD in full uniform guarding the fences. At the first note of Jerry's solo in Shakedown... heads poured out of the upper halls, down the stairs and over the fences and the cops. Heads were hitting cops, crushing them under the fences, the cops reacted in crisis and grabbed for anybody they could reach. Hundreds of people poured over the fences, and not without harm. Once the fences were down, half of the people in the seats followed. The police were going crazy. I saw a young girl grabbed by the hair and beaten by a cop as people rushed by, the cop targeting her for the general loss of control. The boys seemed to be encouraging it all ("test me test me, why don't you arrest me?"). By Bertha, it seemed as if we had won. Bill came out at the set break and scolded us, but we had made our point... we'll only take so much repression. Yet, at the end, we lost another venue, one of the last in LA, and LOTS of people to long prison terms. A sad day overall.
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I remember the fences coming down and people dancin on the tunnels. but most of all i remember how much magic surrounds the desire for a show. I was living in a rehab house in santa ana and I had talked these people from the house to take us there and how much fun we could have. So we drive all the way up there and after walking around the lot for like a half hour I traded a t shirt for a ticket :) told my freinds I would figure out a way back. In the show I bumbed into a freind from elementary school. after the show i was starting to get scared that I would be stuck in L A with all these cops then I bumbed into some kids I went to the vegas shows with who happened to be going my way. so it all worked out well for me. when I was late coming back to the program house I was able to get away with it through sweet talking. I mostly remeber getting into the queen jane that day along with the not fade away
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"By Bertha, it seemed as if we had won."

Tell me friend, what exactly did "we" win? Loss of a venue; people thrown in jail; people hurt...all needlessly.

They put up fences and the fans respond by knocking them down? WTF?

Do your homework. The Dead didn't thumb their noses at the police with Bertha. They played it as a reminder to the heads to be subtle and remain in control. Stop deconstructing lyrics to fit your recollections.

Riots at a Grateful Dead show? You've got to f*cking kidding me. Test me test me..."we" seem to have failed this one miserably.

jds
-Anonymous (06/15/2007)

My least favorite show of 30+ 1985-1993
and it had nothing to do with the music, which to my recollection was a good showing. Basically it boiled down to lots of clueless "fans" (Hey the Dead are in town! Let's go find some drugs we can't handle and get blazed and see what its all about!) and a security staff that was more typically used to working Raider games. Not knowing how to deal with hippies, who just wanted to get to the wide open space at the back of the field so they could have room to dance, and overreacting.
- (11/27/2007)

bad show. No creativity. The NFA is very good however with jerry and hornsby playing catch me if you can but other than that it's a bad night
-dave (05/13/2008)

These comments sound much more like the 4/30/89 Irvine Meadows show than the L.A. Coliseum show that was my daughter's first post-utero show. I remember it was hot -- we tied a crib sheet around her head and kept it soaked -- but we had a thoroughly enjoyable show.
- (07/06/2011)

This was my last Dead show, and I believe my 125th. It was the official end for me. Just watching the detached haze they were all in. It was just sad. I vowed to never see another show, and stuck to it. Saw Jerry one or two more times, and that was equally sad. Im sure some kids had some fantastic experiences from 90-95, and I don't meant to take away from that, but this was just so disheartening.
- (01/27/2012)

Yeah hard to believe it was 24 years ago.
- (04/04/2015)

This was my 18th of 82 shows. I remember it was a glorious sunny Southern California day, but the show lacked magic. Somehow I got backstage, so that makes it a treasure in the attics of my mind.
- (07/05/2015)

Hey, jds, unfortunately, good intentions don't translate into peaceful actions all the time. When a Gestapo force of Police come to disrupt and arrest peaceful fans of a peaceful band (drug seekers aside) a violent reaction is guaranteed, that's just life. You can only push people so far before they loudly and violently say NO!

The LAPD is the only police force in the history of America to be KNOWN for how corrupt, racist and brutal they were... not to mention the fact that the video of Rodney King getting his ass beat by LA's finest came out shortly before this show (March '91). The LAPD had an unwritten policy in the 80's and early days of the 90's that if you weren't obviously middle or upper class, you were free to be target practice for their batons. Rodney King was just the first documented case of the LAPD taking things too far, but everyone who knew what was good was aware long before the video came out, if you get stopped by LAPD, you were gonna get bloody and bruised, not even a question.

So in saying that, i'd like stand up for turtle, because his "By bertha, it seemed as if we had won" comment is more profound then i think he is getting credit for. The only reason the police are being put on notice now and are finally being called out for their behavior is because people got together and said enough is enough, that's democracy. I wasn't even born when this show happened, but i can say for sure that the only way to get the cops off your back is to outnumber them.

When you stand united against a force of mindless soldiers for the governments drug war, you have a chance to change things. But if you allow the police and the government to instill fear of them into you, then there is no freedom. The Dead may not have advocated that kind of reaction, but since when were they "in charge" of anybody in the audience. Last i checked, the Dead was not a cult and Jerry wasn't supreme leader, so people acted on free will and chose to say "NO, I will not submit, i will not stand by quietly as innocent people have their lives pointlessly ruined by a corrupt power hungry government force. I will not be a sheep!" Who are any of us to say that their free will is less "right" then our own. So turtle was more right then i think he knows. The LAPD got what is had coming to it in the end, if you look at what happened in LA from '91 to '96, all those problems find some root in the corruption of the LAPD, so this show can only be seen as a footnote in the ongoing battle of the citizens Vs. the LAPD.

And in the end, the Citizens won... if only for a brief moment.
-Murphy (06/01/2016)

Go back and listen to this show people. It is very good. Good set list and lots of stellar Jerry. I was there and saw the police. saw lots of people arrested in Denver a few weeks later by police accompanied by Grateful Dead security for bootlegging T shirts. Taken away in handcuffs. So cry me a river about cop screwing up your show. Your bad vibe was all you. If the Dead chose to play in a place with a heavy police presence then get over it. This show was close to excellent.
- (03/27/2020)

My least favorite show. Folding chairs on the field and fences to separate the stands, lots of police action. Was a disaster waiting to happen, and it did happen. The Dead picked up on the vibe. My seat was in a dead spot for sound, so had to cruise the aisles.
- (03/20/2022)

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