I was reading in THIS IS ALL A DREAM WE DREAMED: Oral History of the Grateful Dead that this show sucked largley due to jet lag and too many pot brownies. Supposedly Jerry was clean of heroin on the 1990 tour.

If NYC was the highpoint of the Grateful Dead's return to the road after the hard to stomach death of Keyboardist Brent Mydland then the Ice Palace was the rock bottom of being a Deadhead.
I had sold everything pretty much i owned to go to Europe. Hopeful of going with a tour , that went bust, hopeful of hanging with a sister, she had other friends with other plans.
So it was me again, the lone wolf, out in the middle of Europe, In freakin Sweden, Sleeping in a train station lobby following the GD.
Anyway 10 years since I said i would listen to this show. And now i am ready to roll. Rain & Snow extremely Sluggish like all the U.S. jet lagged heads were at that point. Stranger does kick it up a notch, Jam is hot and credit to Vince.
Candyman-Good chance to build slowly on the previous tune.
I vaguely remember wandering this venue. Kinda curious to see what Sweden's hippies were thinking about the GD experience.
Oh, Yeah. This place did NOT have any ice, anywhere so I guess I would have needed to check it out in the winter--- ICE STADIUM
Jerry's guitar stands out but his vocals are rough. We used to call it the 'Constipated Panda' but heck why didn't the band hire some backing vocalists for Garcia.
Big Oversight.
Walkin Blues-In the spirit of Rooster. Weir could bring this tune. Not sure I always wanted to hear it but I heard it plenty. A good song to sing on the road.
Bobby sometimes 'cheese' the vocals on this with 'whine' Dylan type vocals but the jam within is pretty hot.Between the slide and Vince it provides a calliope of seal like horn sounds,
Teasing LOSER great. I vibe the Sailor /Saint but didn't Saint until Paris
Loser-Trippy tune always left me crispy, One of Jerry's tragedy songs.
This is pretty low energy. There is no way around it. But has already been mentioned there were many forces at work to make this so subdued. In many ways this is one of the first shows in a long time without a majority of the audience being onboard for every single note the way shows are in the States.
Queen Jane Dylan -overplayed by the GD but still a pretty tune.Garcia's playing stands out. Already getting agitated by the Keys. More dissonance then the GD needed.
Funny that I dropped the comment about foreign policy in the 07 review. In 1990 I was pretty far left at the time and the Iraq War- (IRAQ Invasion of Kuwait) was unfolding. Imagine being left of Sweden?
Bird Song-This set needed an extended jam.
Jam about 5 minutes in salvages the set.

I did the entire tour 100% sober and squeaky clean.
So I really had to focus on the music.
I couldn't rely on any outside stimulus to provide illumination or hallucination or rocket fuel my imagination.

Well seriously that First set is a two but in my mind.
I remember being encouraged by the Second Set.
So my thinking is that Set 2 is a FoUR which would make the entire show a Three which is what i had it pegged at back in the day,

Another thing I would say is this is a no hype show. No cheering crowds, Beach balls, Overdone Shakedown Street. Just the Band Playin

Promised Land-Damn if there was ever a place for this tune , right here right now before everyone nods off.

Vice is hitting this just right. pounding the keys. ON A JET TO THE PROMISED LAND!

Lars, YAH
SVEN-What here song does this band have
Lars-Touch the Grey
SVEn-Yah

Touch Of Gray, Estimated Prophet-> Crazy Fingers-> Playin' In The Band-> Drums-> Jam-> All Along The Watchtower-> Stella Blue-> Throwing Stones-> Not Fade Away, E: One More Saturday Night

I believe I can shed a little light as to why Phil yelled "thanks mom" at the conclusion of this show. I attended this show, and when my friends and I arrived at the train station in Stockholm we came across a little old lady with a thick Czech accent who was trying to find her way to the Ice Stadium. Being helpful deadheads we told her that's where we were heading too, and we would gladly accompany her. Well, long story short, on the way over through her broken English she explained that her son wrote most of the Grateful Dead's songs and she was headed to the show. We then realized that we were helping ROBERT HUNTER'S mother to the show! A friend traveling with us was friends with someone working security for the GD at the time so we made sure she found the right people to talk to and last we saw her she was being escorted in by the Dead's security. I am sure she had a great show. I never thought much of this show maybe it was the long train ride getting there or that Hornsby did not play, but the recording sounds much better than I remember the show to have been.

This was a very long road trip. truthfully I was not all there for this show. I do remember apologizing to some Swedes for my countries foreign policy at the time.

It will be good to listen to this show with fresh ears!

Some major flubs and some tired playing but they rally for a dazzling second set. I really love this sleeper. I rate it high because I perceive that midway through the first set they finally landed. Back from the throes of Necromancia. I would rate it higher, but, lo, for its deadpan, goin' thru the motions aplomb.

Even better than I thought.

You guys are nuts if you can't hear the intensity on this one. Sure Garcia flubs a few things(Crazy and the Playin refrain), but generally sounds soulful...Stella is real nice. Touch> Estimated is downright awesome. Bobby says "Ice Rink" during OMSN. At the end, for some reason, Phil blurts out "Thanks Mom" after the encore.

Sound quality is superb.

Give it another listen. 2nd set is awesome.

had to check this show out because I remember Bob Weir commenting on the horrible performance by saying, "The grateful dead were actually replaced with a Swedish group called jetlag."

Not the worst of the band's career by any means, but check out the MSG run and the Paris gigs to hear the boys at top level.

This is the weakest of the European 1990 tour. This sbd is very clean, but the show lacks in intensity.

This was my first show, and I was totally blown away. It resulted in me going back to Oslo (Norway), quitting school, getting an Interrail-ticket, and of I went to Berlin, Frankfurt, Hamburg, Paris and London. No need to say my life was changed...

The band did not play even close to what they did later on the tour, but the show have enormous sentimental value for me. I can remember strange stuff from Stockholm, like being busted (but not fined or arrested) by Swedish police for smoking a joint outside the venue, not to mention all the wonderful people I met, and later got to know a bit better. Anyway, I try not to overrate this show, so people don't get the wrong idea musically. But it truly changed my lifeÂ

I flew over with a plane full of heads, funnest flight I've ever had....partied the whole way. I remember it being cold in the venue due to it being an ice-hockey arena where they inadvertantly threw an indoor/outdoor type carpet over the ice. So there was ice showing in spots, your feet were very cold and you couldn't keep your deck on the floor in the pit because your batteries would freeze up. So the show was only fair at best but the excitment of being in Sweden and the anticipation of the rest of the tour let alone there only being like 3-4000 people there made up for the lack of spark the boys showed this night.

First night of the European tour, but unfortunately an off-night for the band. Without Hornsby, the band sound particularly flat, though you can tell they are buzzed to be playing in Europe, Jerry in particular sounding to be in good spirits. Rumor has it they only flew in from the West Coast a few days before and had 36 hours to deal with a 12 hour time difference, jetlag playing a significant part in this un-together show.