By the close of 1981, the Grateful Dead were deep into one of their most underappreciated stretches — a leaner, tighter band than the sprawling, exploratory unit of the mid-seventies, but one that had found a renewed confidence in the arena circuit. Brent Mydland, now three years into the keyboard chair, had fully settled into the band's fabric, his muscular Hammond work and soulful voice giving the group a harder, bluesier edge than the Keith Godchaux years. Jerry Garcia's guitar remained the center of gravity, but the whole ensemble — Bobby Weir, Phil Lesh, Bill Kreutzmann, and Mickey Hart locking in with Brent — had a cohesion that rewarded patient listening. The Dead were playing arenas regularly by this point, touring steadily without a new studio album to push, which meant the sets were built purely around the music. Market Square Arena in Indianapolis was a classic mid-sized American arena of the era — the kind of concrete bowl that the Dead had come to inhabit with casual authority. Indianapolis may not carry the mythology of a Red Rocks or a Winterland, but the Midwest crowds were reliably warm, and the Dead responded in kind to rooms where fans showed up ready to commit to the night. The arena, which had opened in 1974 and would serve the city for another two decades, seated around seventeen thousand and had a live feel that translated well on tape.
From what survives in the database here, the second set gives you a good cross-section of what the Dead were doing in this period. "Shakedown Street" — Garcia and Hunter's funky 1978 number — had become a reliable set opener with real groove potential, and in the early eighties the band sometimes took it to surprisingly elastic places. "Saint of Circumstance," one of Weir's better contributions from Go to Heaven, is a song that rewards a great performance: its building structure gives the band room to push, and Brent's voice alongside Bobby's creates a layered urgency. Rounding out the evening's fragments is "El Paso," the Marty Robbins country standard that the Dead made their own — a brief, faithful, utterly charming cowboy palate cleanser that never failed to draw a smile. Recordings from this era and venue are typically circulating-grade audience tapes, though some Midwest shows from this run have clean sources — worth checking the notes on whatever version you pull. Either way, dial in and let that second set wash over you. Indianapolis in December of '81 was no slouch.