JERRY’S LAST STAND (2CD) by GRATEFUL DEAD Compact Disc Double LFM2CD647

When Jerry Garcia took to the stage with the Grateful Dead on July 9th 1995, he was very sick indeed. It was easy to tell - his pallid face

and shaky demeanour denoted a man under serious stress. Yet still, he soldiered on and took to the stage at Soldier Field in Chicago for the final time.
The entire tour was a bit of a disaster. Accurately described as an unlucky tour, the Summer East Coast jaunt of 1995 would struggle again on the night of the last performance, as Garcia was struck down by technical issues.

The guitarist had to replace his trusty Rosebud with a tour spare, the old Tiger, not something any guitarist likes to do. Garcia was less than pleased with the situation and for some of the performance he seemed to be distracted by either the state of the set or his health. Of course, as with any Dead gig, there were many sections of pure musical bliss when Garcia was in the zone and carried by his passion for the music he played.

This odd night was concluded with a sad moment as The Grateful Dead performed the all-too-apt ‘Box of Rain’ leaving Phil Lesh to sing “Such a long, long time to be gone,” as the audience left the arena, “and a short time to be there.”

“I had a feeling he was going to swing back out of it, and he was actually trying to do that when his heart quit,” fellow Dead member Bob Weir said in 2014. “He was pressing a bit harder, I think, than his body could keep up with.” Sadly, it would not be the case, Jerry Garcia died in his sleep on August 9th 1995, a week after turning 53.
Now released for the first time on this double CD - despite its noticeable flaws as a concert – the sound remains excellent coming as it does from an FM Radio Broadcast, and the entire proceedings go down in history as an equally important show as the one at which Jerry Garcia first played with the band.