Originally I was going to write about the reeling and rockin’ Dark Star that went down at Betty Nelson’s Organic Raspberry Farm on September 2nd, 1968, but there’s not much to tell. The whole show smokes and it’s easily one of my favorites of the year. 1968 is the year of primal Grateful Dead – the juggernaut of a band finding its footing. Those early Stars, replete with Pig’s keys and lots of shaker and guiro, are fantastic and fun. I have to write about Stars that are perhaps off the radar and ones that take chances.

But I decided, at the last minute, since there aren’t many days of September left, to cover this gem of a show from 1991.
Thursday, September 26th was the final night of a spirited run at the Boston Garden, their first trip to the Gah-den in over ten years. The previous night was released as Dick’s Picks #17.
It’s a fine show, but 9/26/91 really outshines it in my opinion.
One of the reasons why I love this show so much is because it was the first tape I ever collected. A friend of mine was there as it happened and she wrote me a long letter, where she described it to me – song by song, note by note. I fired off blanks and postage to a friendly trader in the back of Dupree’s Diamond News and in two weeks, I got a crispy AUD of the second set. READ ON for the rest of this month’s Dark Star Stories…