The latest installment in the Grateful Dead‘s All The Years Live archival video series is available now on the band’s YouTube page. This entry highlights the Dead’s performance of “When Push Comes To Shove” at Oakland-Alameda County Coliseum on July 24th, 1987.
The clip comes from the Dead’s 1987 tour alongside Bob Dylan, selections of which would eventually be released on the live album Dylan & the Dead. While summer 1987 may not have caught the Dead at their finest moment, what with Jerry Garcia having slipped from a diabetic coma the year prior, there were still diamonds in the ruff. Before long, the band would hit a late-career peak in the late 1980’s and early 1990’s with the success of In The Dark as well as a renewed vigor onstage. These rough 1987 shows undoubtedly laid the groundwork for that resurgence, as Grateful Dead archivist David Lemiex notes,
When the Grateful Dead returned to performing on December 15, 1986, after taking six months off after Jerry’s diabetic coma, they had two new Hunter-Garcia dogs along for the ride, Black Muddy River and When Push Comes To Shove. Both of these songs would appear on In The Dark in 1987, with Black Muddy River sticking around until the very end, while this punchy first set song left the live repertoire in July 1989.
Watch the Grateful Dead perform “When Push Comes To Shove” at Oakland Coliseum on July 24th, 1987.
Grateful Dead — “When Push Comes To Shove” — 7/24/87
[Video: Grateful Dead]
Previous installments of the Dead’s ongoing All The Years Live series have included: