By December 1979, the Grateful Dead were well into what many fans consider one of their most underappreciated periods — the late Brent Mydland transition era, just months after the keyboardist had joined following Keith Godchaux's departure earlier that year. Brent brought an R&B muscularity and a big, gospel-inflected voice that pushed the band in new directions, and by the fall and winter of 1979 they were still finding the chemistry, working out how his Hammond organ and vocal power fit into a sound that had been shaped for years around Keith's more impressionistic piano work. It's a fascinating moment to catch them in — looser in some ways, hungrier in others, with Garcia and Weir still very much leading the charge and the rhythm section of Lesh and Hart and Kreutzmann locking in hard. Soldiers' and Sailors' Memorial Hall in Pittsburgh is a striking, somewhat atypical room for a Dead show — a grand civic auditorium built to honor veterans, with high ceilings and that particular resonance that old stone-and-plaster halls tend to carry. Pittsburgh has always been good Dead territory, and smaller or more unusual venues like this one often produced some of the band's more focused and intimate performances, where the audience felt close and the band seemed to respond accordingly. There's something about a room with actual history in its walls that tends to pull a little extra out of Garcia's fingers.
The songs documented from this show offer a nice cross-section of where the Dead were living in 1979. "Ship of Fools" is one of Garcia's most searching ballads, a song that rewards a patient, emotionally engaged performance — when Garcia is really inside it, the loneliness of the lyric comes through like a light through fog. "Sugar Magnolia" was reliably a crowd igniter by this point, Weir's ebullient romp that never failed to get a room moving, and hearing how Brent fills out that familiar arrangement is part of the listening pleasure. Then there's "Saint of Circumstance," a newer Weir tune from the Go to Heaven sessions that was still fairly fresh in the repertoire — catching it in this early incarnation is a real treat for anyone who loves watching songs find their legs in real time. If you can find a clean source for this one, sit with the transitions and the way Brent's organ sits under Garcia's leads. There's a band in the middle of becoming something new here, and that energy is worth your time.