Song Review: Grateful Dead - “Brokedown Palace” (Live, July 10, 1990)
Thirty-one years ago today, on Aug. 9, 1995, “Brokedown Palace” took on a new meaning for Dead Heads as they learned Jerry Garcia had died at 53:
Fare you well/fare you well/I love you more than words can tell/listen to the river sing sweet songs to rock my soul, goes the chorus.
GDHQ issued a video of the band’s July 10, 1990, version of “Brokedown” to mark the occasion and like so many Dead performances, it is not just exactly perfect. Played beautifully and mostly sung exquisitely, this one finds Garcia botching the second verse over Bob Weir and Brent Mydland’s sympathetic, wordless backgrounds.
For many of us, including Sound Bites, this song - and, indeed, Grateful Dead music in general - was unlistenable for a while after Garcia’s death. For his disappearance also meant the disappearance of a significant chunk of what made our young lives so wild, vivid and fun.
It was just too sad.
Thankfully, those days are over and today, the memories are sweet, though the passage of so much time is strange. And it seems appropriate the keepers of the vault would pick a warts-and-all version to mark the end of the Days Between (from Garcia’s Aug. 1 birthday to Aug. 9) because Garcia didn’t aspire to perfection. He aspired to being in the moment.
Sound Bites, for one, is grateful for every moment he spent in the same room with the Dead.
Grade card: Grateful Dead - “Brokedown Palace” (Live - 7/10/90) - A-
8/9/26
