By the spring of 1982, the Grateful Dead had settled into the muscular, keyboard-driven sound that defined their early-to-mid eighties work. Brent Mydland, now three years into his tenure as the band's keyboardist, had fully shed any newcomer awkwardness and was pushing the music with a fierce, bluesy urgency that gave this era its own distinct personality. Jerry Garcia's playing remained searingly inventive, and the rhythm section of Bill Kreutzmann and Mickey Hart locked together with a power that filled arenas effortlessly. The band was deep into a busy touring cycle, crisscrossing the country in the way they had done for over a decade, and the spring '82 dates show them in comfortable, confident form — not the transcendent peak of '77, but a band that knew exactly what it was doing on any given night. The Scope — formally the Norfolk Scope — sits in Norfolk, Virginia, a mid-sized arena that the Dead visited periodically as part of their East Coast sweeps. Norfolk occupies an interesting geographic and cultural position, a Navy town with a scrappy, passionate fanbase that tended to greet the Dead with outsized enthusiasm. The room itself is a workmanlike arena, not the storied mythology of Cornell's Barton Hall or the amphitheater magic of Red Rocks, but the kind of honest mid-size venue where the Dead often found their footing on a tour leg and played with focused, no-frills intensity.
What we have documented from this night is Althea, and that alone is worth your attention. One of the genuine gems of the Garcia-Hunter songbook, Althea arrived on Go to Heaven in 1980 and quickly became a setlist staple that rewarded patience — its unhurried verses and wise, elliptical lyrics opening up into extended instrumental passages where Garcia could stretch out and the whole band could breathe together. A great Althea is a conversation, a slow unfolding, and in the early eighties Garcia was delivering some beautifully sustained readings of it. The segue notation (>) suggests this version flowed into something else, which hints at a set with some genuine connective tissue worth exploring. Recording quality for Dead shows from this period varies considerably — Norfolk wasn't always a prime taping location — but even a decent audience tape of a well-played Althea from '82 is a pleasure worth seeking out. Settle in, let the song take its time, and hear a band that had nothing left to prove doing exactly what they loved.