The "So What tease" actually occurs out of the Other One, before Terrapin. First RD versions of Stranger (with authentic botched vocals) and Mission. Love that odd transition out of Terrapin into Sugar Magnolia. When they went into Sugar Magnolia for good, Weir grinned and said "just like a Swiss watch!" I'm not sure if he was being sarcastic or genuinely impressed with the transition, but I'm going with the latter. I still listen to this one on its anniversary every year.

what a way to open a tour. This show was great! and bob busted out the old songs (some for the first time since GD chicago 95') it was a new ratdog! very different and mature......This is not a blues show. This was like a GD show. 3 star for sound quality.although in that bar......all audience get 3/ so check it out!!

Sound quality here is iffy, recommended only for posterity's sake, and that's what the 3-star rating refers to. The highlight of the show was Mission In The Rain. The highlight of the night, and one of the highlights of my life, though, was getting to meet Mr. Bob Weir. Through a surprisingly uncomplicated process, Dennis McNally had a couple of after-show passes waiting for us at the the box office, and my wife, Tina, and I waited patiently for him to appear from behind the speakers at the back of the stage following a somewhat brief cooldown he took at the end of a typically strong, fully committed performance.
My experience is that you will never meet more of a gentleman. I would have loved to have been able to speak with him at length about . . . well, ANYTHING, but I was extremely nervous and jittery at the notion of being face to face with one of my-dare I say it-idols (even though I recognize the fact that the Grateful Dead were always notoriously iconoclastic), and was barely able to manage a hello. He was extremely polite and subtly insisted that I take a moment away from fawning to introduce him to Tina, who was taking the whole thing in stride so much better than I. The two of them shared a good-natured laugh at how silly I was behaving. I got a couple of autographs, was able to actually extend a compliment to him regarding the recently-released Evening Moods CD, for which he graciously thanked me, and I started gathering up our stuff to make our exit when one of the guys in the crew said, "Don't you want a picture? You did bring a camera, didn't you?" Well, we had brought one, and I was even able to get Bob to laugh when the quippy who was taking the picture of the three of us made a comment to the effect that the camera seemed to be shaking and I said, "No, actually that would be me." A few years later, we were able to join Bob and the rest of Ratdog following another St. Louis show, but that would be a different long, strange trip, and I'll see if I can find that show elsewhere in this archive so I can tell that tale. This night, though, was very special to me and ranks as one of my favorite memories, Grateful Dead-related or not.