Although Jerry Garcia often visited the Hawaiian Islands to scuba dive later in life, he rarely performed there. GarciaLive Volume Ten: May 20th, 1990 Hilo Civic Auditorium, presents him in Hilo, Hawaii for a rare date in the locale. As longtime Grateful Dead publicist and author Dennis McNally writes in his accompanying liner notes:

Hawai’i’s pristine underwater world, to which Bill Kreutzmann had recently introduced Jerry, was Garcia’s healing sanctuary. Twenty or thirty feet down, the only attention he attracted was from the fish, and that was pretty easy to take. Hawai’i soothed his soul.

It’s no wonder that this show is so good. To start with, Hilo and the Big Island are a long way from the glitz of Waikiki Beach or the fancy hotels on Maui. Much of the island is small-town, rural and agricultural. Hilo is the biggest city on the island, and with a population then below 40,000, few would call it urban. The Civic Auditorium was unpretentious and relatively small, about high school gym size. In other words, it was Jerry’s kind of place.

Today we premiere the version of “Deal” that closed out the first set of the show. GarciaLive Volume Ten: May 20th, 1990 Hilo Civic Auditorium, which is now available for pre-order.