As a listening experience, this show is much better than many reviewers give it credit for.
I never saw Jerry. I was born after he passed. One thing I’ve noticed while trekking through
archive.org is that oftentimes, especially with 80’s and 90’s shows, people are reviewing their impressions of the scene as much as, if not more than, the recording itself.
Jerry was sick and clammy. People didn’t like the Rubber Bowl as much as they liked Alpine. It was too hot. Fair enough, but do those memories really make 7/2/86 any worse of a listen today?
This show has some smoking moments.
Alabama, GSET, and TLEO have the sauce, with Mickey rattling out the carpet bombing effect and Phil mashing the rhythm into a gummy pulp for Jerry and Brent to solo on. Greatest Story is especially groovy. Don’t Think Twice is really poignant. Jerry lays on the lonesome country twang in his guitar solo, and Dylan and the Dead really run wild with it. Baby Blue is a Garcia / Dylan duet. Dylan is frantic, Garcia is somber. Whether it works is up to you. It sure does for me. Candyman through Don’t Ease Me In is all characterized by the mid ‘80’s sound. Bouncy, loose to the point of brushing the border of sloppiness, with interesting tones from Brent and more than a pinch of bass from Phil. I could go for more volume from Weir’s guitar, but otherwise it’s a very unique and enjoyable first set.
China > Rider cooks. Jerry’s vocals in China Cat have some sort of trippy effect, like the words are rolling around the inside of a balloon, and Rider must’ve had the place hopping. They make the most out of a brief Playin’ jam. It really tangles itself into quite a frenzy, then drifts beautifully into Weir’s own respectful nod to Dylan; a foggy, slow, Jerryless Desolation Row that’s much more peaceful then the versions of a couple years later. The first half of Drums is deliberate and searching, and then in the second half it turns itself into a race between Bill and Mickey. Space is quarterbacked by a fuzz-addled Tiger. Post-Space, it’s all 1970 originals. At first they’re thinking The Other One, then they neatly pivot into a short Truckin’ instead. At about the
5:00 mark, they start building it up, then collectively jump off the top turnbuckle for the knockout blow! Black Peter, Sugar Mag, and Box of Rain wrap things up nicely.
There’s a lot of mid ‘80’s shows like this one that are a bit too thrown together and a bit too haphazard to ever be considered for official release, but they still have a good handful of moments that really impress. 7/2/86 gets a bad wrap, but I found this to be a very pleasant listen, and an interesting nugget of Ohio Dead history.