By the winter of 1981, the Grateful Dead had settled into a mature and powerful version of themselves that often gets overshadowed by the legendary 1977 peak but deserves its own appreciation. Brent Mydland had been in the fold for nearly three years by this point, and his muscular keyboard work and soulful vocals had given the band a harder, more electric edge. Jerry Garcia's guitar tone in this period had a singing, almost vocal quality that could cut through a room, and the rhythm section of Bill Kreutzmann and Mickey Hart — reunited since 1975 — was locked into a rolling thunder that made every second set feel like a force of nature. The Dead were closing out a heavy year of touring, and a late-December homecoming run at Oakland Auditorium Arena was exactly the kind of celebratory, loose-limbed engagement that brought out their best. Oakland Auditorium, known at various points in its life as the Henry J. Kaiser Convention Center, was one of the band's true home courts. The Bay Area faithful packed these shows with a fervor and familiarity that created a feedback loop of energy between crowd and stage — the Dead playing to people who knew every signal, every fake-out, every rare segue. These late-year Oakland runs were homecoming celebrations as much as concerts, and the band typically repaid the loyalty with something special.
The fragments we have from this December 26th show offer three distinct flavors of what the Dead could do. "One More Saturday Night" — though this was a Saturday after Christmas — is Bob Weir's rollicking Chuck Berry-inflected rocker, a reliable set-closer or opener that the crowd always welcomed with pure joy. Then there's the crown jewel: "Scarlet Begonias" flowing into something else (that arrow indicates a segue, the lingua franca of Dead devotion), suggesting the band was in an exploratory mood. Scarlet in this era could stretch in interesting directions, Garcia leaning into the chromatic runs and the whole thing taking on a warmth and confidence that the song wears well in the early '80s. "It's All Over Now," the Bobby Blue Bland and later Rolling Stones number that the Dead claimed as their own rambunctious shuffle, rounds out the known material with swagger. If a soundboard exists for this show, you're in luck — Oakland recordings from this era tend to be clean and present, with the mix capturing Brent's organ fills and Garcia's lead work in fine balance. This is the Dead in their element, playing for their people, right where they belonged. Put it on.