December 1981 finds the Grateful Dead in a quietly productive stretch of the early arena era. Brent Mydland had been in the fold for over two years by this point, having joined in 1979 after Keith and Donna Godchaux's departure, and the band was settling into a sound that blended the warmth of the classic lineup with Brent's harder-edged Hammond B3 and gospel-inflected vocals. Jerry Garcia's guitar work in this period carries a certain focused intensity — less exploratory than the sprawling peaks of '72 or '77, but still capable of stunning moments of clarity and grit. The band was touring steadily through the fall and winter, the kind of workmanlike run that built their reputation town by town across middle America. The Des Moines Civic Center is exactly that kind of stop — not a legendary room like the Fillmore or Cornell's Barton Hall, but a clean, mid-sized arena in the heartland that the Dead visited periodically throughout the early '80s. Iowa audiences tended to be enthusiastic and deeply committed, folks who didn't always have the luxury of catching a Bay Area run and knew this might be their one shot for the year. That kind of crowd energy tends to push a band, and it's worth listening to see whether that electricity comes through here.
The three songs we have confirmed from this show are a nice cross-section of what the Dead were doing in this era. "Don't Ease Me In" is a rollicking opener — a jug band stomper that goes all the way back to the very beginning, and when the band digs into it with genuine gusto it functions as a perfect how-do-you-do to the room. "Greatest Story Ever Told" is another first-set workhorse that lives and dies on the rhythm section's momentum; Bill Kreutzmann and Mickey Hart locking in behind it can make the whole thing feel like a freight train. And "Sugar Magnolia" — the grand, sprawling set-closer that Robert Hunter and Bob Weir built to be nothing less than a celebration — remains one of those songs that, in the right hands, turns an arena into a moment of collective joy. The recording available for this date is worth checking into for source details, but even an audience tape from a well-run civic center tends to capture the room nicely. Settle in, let "Don't Ease Me In" get your feet moving, and follow the band out into whatever this December night in Des Moines had to offer.