Tag: boreal ridge

Another pic from the Worst Dead Show EVAR (That’s Actually Just Kinda Flat) at Boreal Ridge in ’85: you can see Bobby being Bobby on the left, and a large crowd of white people on drugs on the right.

To the rear of the panoramic photo is the resort’s ski lift, and if you enhance the picture, you can make out a man on the lift. That is Soup; he cannot remember how he got into the chair, and he cannot figure out how to get off of it.

Boreal Ridge is a ski resort in California, more specifically in Truckee, which might be the crystal methiest name a town could have. This winter wonderland in Northern (or perhaps Southern, or Central) CA suffers from the same seasonal lulls as other weather-reliant business, such as water parks or al fresco prostitution: what to do the other half of the year?

In 1985, at least, Boreal Ridge invited the Dead up in August and Garcia nearly died. He would go on to actually die (for a few minutes) soon after that; this was sort of a dress rehearsal.

The show is known, in the common wisdom at least, as the WORST EVAR, and I’m listening to it now; it sounds like an average to below-average show of the time, and the amps keep popping and humming, but it’s not a complete trainwreck on the tape.

As far as what it was like at the show, well: that’s a different story. This is from the Archive, and can also double as Exhibit 1 in the case of Why TotD Doesn’t Trust Eyewitness Accounts, Especially Of First Shows: