By September 1983, the Grateful Dead were well into what longtime fans sometimes call the "Brent era" — a leaner, harder-rocking version of the band that had shed some of the cosmic drift of the late-'70s runs and replaced it with a tighter, more muscular ensemble feel. Brent Mydland had been in the fold since 1979, and by this point his organ and synth work had fully integrated into the band's sound, adding a bluesy intensity that complemented Garcia's still-fluid guitar playing. The Dead were road-hardened pros in the early '80s, working through a period of disciplined professionalism that sometimes gets undersold relative to the more celebrated '72 or '77 peaks. The fall '83 tour brought them through smaller and mid-sized markets, and the Boise Pavilion at Boise State University was exactly that kind of stop — a college-town room that would have held a few thousand fans in what you'd imagine was an energized, close-quarters atmosphere. Boise isn't a city the Dead played frequently, which makes any surviving recording from this venue a genuine rarity in the archive. The partial setlist we have from this night gives a nice cross-section of the band's range in this era. "It's All Over Now, Baby Blue" is one of the most elegant Dylan covers in the Dead's repertoire — a song that rewards a band willing to let Garcia's voice and guitar breathe together, and in the early '80s Garcia could still find a lot of emotional depth in that melody.
"Mama Tried > Big River" is a reliable country-flavored pairing, a nod to the band's roots in Bakersfield and rockabilly that always got the floor moving. When the segue is tight and Weir is locked in, "Big River" in particular can stretch into something unexpectedly ferocious. "Black Peter," the fragment we have listed, is worth the price of admission on its own — one of the band's most tender and unhurried songs, a meditation on dying that somehow never feels morbid, only honest. A strong "Black Peter" in this era often hinged on Garcia's vocal control and the band's patience, their willingness to sit inside the quiet. The recording quality for this show is unconfirmed from the available data, but audience tapes from smaller BSU-style venues in '83 can vary widely — if you find a crisp source, the intimacy of the room is likely to come through. Worth digging out the full tape to hear what else happened on this Idaho night.