By the spring of 1981, the Grateful Dead had settled into a configuration that would define much of the decade to come. Brent Mydland, now firmly in his third year as keyboardist following Keith Godchaux's departure, had shed any trace of the newcomer and was starting to carve out his own voice within the band's telepathic weave. Jerry Garcia, Phil Lesh, Bob Weir, Bill Kreutzmann, and Mickey Hart rounded out the lineup, and the band was touring relentlessly, road-testing material and leaning into the kind of extended improvisation that had always been their calling card. The early '80s weren't yet the arena-rock period people sometimes caricature — the band still played with real hunger and looseness, and this March run through the Northeast caught them in that fertile middle ground. Boston Garden was a legendary barn of a room, the kind of old-school hockey and basketball arena that swallowed sound and crowds in equal measure. The building had its quirks — the acoustics could be unforgiving, and the concrete cavern didn't always flatter the more delicate passages — but Dead crowds in Boston were reliably rabid, and the Garden shows often carried an electric, almost confrontational energy that pushed the band to dig in. New England Deadheads were loyal and loud, and there's something about playing Boston that always seemed to raise the stakes a little.
From this show, we have a fragment of Black Peter, which is reason enough to pay attention. One of Garcia's most heartfelt vehicles, the Hunter-penned death ballad from Workingman's Dead gave Garcia ample room to deliver the kind of aching, conversational vocal that he did better than almost anyone alive. A great Black Peter is a meditation on mortality that never tips into melodrama — it breathes, it lingers, and in the hands of a locked-in band, the outro jam can drift into some genuinely transcendent territory. The arrow following the song title suggests this version led somewhere else, which is always a promising sign, hinting that the band used the song as a launching pad rather than a full stop. Recording quality for early '80s Garden shows varies considerably depending on the source, so it's worth checking the lineage before settling in — a good soundboard from this period rewards close listening, while a strong audience tape can capture the room's roar in ways that remind you just how physical a Dead show really was. Either way, that Black Peter is worth seeking out.