By October 1979, the Grateful Dead were deep into what longtime fans sometimes call the Brent era's opening chapter. Brent Mydland had joined earlier that year, replacing Keith Godchaux after a difficult stretch, and the band was still finding its footing with the new keyboard voice — Brent's Hammond B-3 and piano work brought a rawer, bluesier edge than Keith's more classical touch, and you can hear the chemistry either clicking or still coalescing depending on which show you land on. Jerry Garcia and Bob Weir were in solid form through this fall run, and Phil Lesh was reliably anchoring the bottom with the kind of melodic bass playing that set the Dead apart from any other rock band working at the time. Mickey Hart and Bill Kreutzmann had long since locked into a two-drummer telepathy that gave these shows a rhythmic depth that still rewards close listening. The Cape Cod Coliseum, sitting out in South Yarmouth on the Massachusetts elbow, was a hockey arena pressed into concert service — not the most acoustically forgiving room in the world, but the Dead played it periodically through the late seventies, and there's something about a regional coliseum show in New England in late October that carries its own particular energy. The crowd on Cape Cod tended toward the devoted rather than the casual; getting out there required a real commitment, and you feel that in the room.
The songs we have confirmed from this show offer a compelling cross-section of the band's depth. "Candyman" is one of those Garcia vocal showcases that reminds you how much of his genius lived in restraint — that weary, compassionate delivery over a country-tinged shuffle is something he inhabited completely, and a strong version hits like a short story. "Black Peter" performs a similar emotional function, though in darker territory: the slow build of that song, when the band is patient with it, becomes genuinely devastating. "Easy To Love You" was a newer addition to the rotation by this point, one of Brent's contributions to the songbook, and it's worth hearing how the band was integrating his voice and sensibility into the mix this early in his tenure. Listeners should pay particular attention to how the ensemble breathes around Garcia's solos and to Brent's comping as the band stretches out. If you're drawn to the transitional textures of the Dead's sound — one era closing, another opening — this is exactly the kind of show worth settling into.