https://twitter.com/ikimlowe/status/615003180204593154
For fans waiting 20 years to see a Grateful Dead reunion, Saturday night’s show, which ended with a rainbow cresting over the stage, made it all worth it.
But was the rainbow too perfect an ending? The Dead’s opening night on the Fare Thee Well reunion tour was held in Santa Clara, Calif., just a few miles from Silicon Valley. That, coupled with exorbitant ticket prices, had many fans questioning whether the or not the rainbow was too good to be true.
Shortly after it appeared, Billboard reported that the man-made rainbow cost the band $50,000. They later retracted the report, but that didn’t stop other news outlets and fans from questioning the rainbow’s legitimacy.
One fan on Reddit wrote: “Who’s to say they made it, silicon valley is full of dead heads with more money than they know what to do with could have been done for the show. The clouds were low in an otherwise clear sky, not to mention the drought California is experiencing. The best conspiracies are the ones you can’t prove.”
Another fan argued that there was a logical explanation for the rainbow, citing the stormy weather: “It didn’t just turn on. It was gradual and surrounded by dark rain clouds in the sky. It rained on the crowd after they set ended. If we can literally make it rain I can think of a couple uses for the cloud/rain generator in CA.”
Though the band did post a shot of the rainbow on Twitter, they did not comment on whether or not it was a planned part of the show.
https://twitter.com/GratefulDead/status/615001555796799488/photo/1
The Dead’s lighting director, Paul Hoffman, weighed in. Cryptically.
(Via Consequence of Sound)
