Grateful Dead with Sting at Rich Stadium — June 13, 1993

The Grateful Dead and Sting on a stadium co-bill at Rich Stadium in Orchard Park — June 13, 1993 — sounds like a fever dream now, but it happened, and Jerry Garcia walked out during Sting’s set and sat in on ‘Tea in the Sahara.’ This is the last era of Dead stadium shows. Jerry would be dead in just over two years. The Western New York crowd got both a Police-era stadium spectacle and the loose, drifting Dead, and the cross-pollination moment — Jerry’s guitar bending against Sting’s clean lines — is the kind of thing that doesn’t happen anymore.