Grateful Dead

View From the Vault is a series of multi-media releases featuring the Grateful Dead in concert at various times during their 30-year career. Each volume spotlights a particular show or tour and is available on audio compact disc as well as both the VHS and DVD video formats. This first installment features the penultimate rendering of the band during the East Coast leg of their 1990 summer tour. The band's solid -- if not at times inspired -- performance is presented with visual aids which reveal a considerably road-worn Grateful Dead. Additionally, this was the final tour to feature Brent Mydland, who manned the Dead's revolving-door keyboardist stool from 1979 until his death less than three weeks after these shows. By 1990, the Dead's jaunts through the northeast football stadiums during the late spring/early summer had become seasonal traditions for well over a decade. Coming off an equally strong fall tour, the band continues transforming their unique synergies into one of the most musically consistent summer tours in recent history. What is most immediately striking -- and frankly, at times disconcerting -- is the seemingly random use of stock NASA footage and digitally created visuals. The video used for View From the Vault was shot for the expressed purpose of in-house display on the huge projection screens that the band integrated into their live visual presentation. As such, whatever was displayed on any given evening is what was captured on tape. There are numerous performance highlights throughout. Among these are a rare Phil Lesh (bass) vocal on a cover of Bob Dylan's "Just Like Tom Thumb Blues" from the first set of the July 8th performance at Three Rivers Stadium in Pittsburgh, PA. It's the extended works during the second set(s) that are ironically the most sonically yet least visually fulfilling. [Note: The DVD and CD sets include an additional 30-plus minutes of material taken from July 6th at Cardinal Stadium in Louisville, KY]. For example, no sooner are both the band and viewers intently absorbed in the "Eyes of the World" than the concert footage is hijacked by computer-generated graphics. These may have been acceptable and even welcomed by show attendees; however, in this format it becomes an irritating distraction. Likewise, by choosing to store over three hours of information onto a single-sided/double-layer DVD, there is a jarring layer change between chapters 13 "Terrapin Station" and 14 "Drums." Although Grateful Dead enthusiasts are known for their practically insatiable appetite for any and all media featuring the band, unless other avenues of presentation are explored, View From the Vault may best be experienced on the audio-only three-CD set. ~ Lindsay Planer, All Music Guide