Grateful Dead — Live at the World Music Theatre, Tinley Park, 1990

This live concert captures the Grateful Dead at the World Music Theatre in Tinley Park, outside Chicago, Illinois, on July 21, 1990. It was the first of three consecutive nights at the venue and, more poignantly, one of the very last shows featuring keyboardist Brent Mydland, who died five days later — a fact that lends the recording a particular weight. True to form, the band builds a two-set show that never repeats from night to night. The tighter first set runs through “Touch of Grey,” “Greatest Story Ever Told,” “Friend of the Devil” and “Bird Song.” The second set is the usual proving ground for improvisation: the “Scarlet Begonias → Fire on the Mountain” pairing launches long jams, followed by “Playing in the Band,” the “Drums → Space” segment, then “I Need a Miracle,” “Dear Mr. Fantasy” and “One More Saturday Night,” before “The Mighty Quinn” as the encore. This full concert showcases the Dead’s art of collective improvisation at the dawn of the 1990s, driven by Jerry Garcia’s playing and the chemistry of a band at the height of its onstage cohesion, just before a lineup change forced by tragedy.