By the fall of 1984, the Grateful Dead had settled into a muscular, keyboard-driven sound anchored by Brent Mydland, who had been in the band since 1979 and was by now fully integrated into the fabric of the group. This was the mid-eighties arena era — Garcia's guitar tone had grown darker and more distorted, the tempos sometimes leaned heavier, and the band was playing to increasingly large crowds across the country. The October 1984 tour found them working through the Northeast, a region where the Dead always drew passionate, boisterous audiences. Augusta, Maine is a small state capital, and the Civic Center there is a modest mid-sized arena — not a legendary room by any stretch, but the kind of working-class New England hall where the Dead could generate real heat in a more intimate setting than the hockey barns they'd fill in bigger markets. The fragments we have from this show tell an interesting story. The Space segment is quintessential mid-eighties Dead — Garcia, Weir, and Mydland weaving textures through the void while Hart and Kreutzmann hold down something that barely qualifies as rhythm. What emerges from that Space on this night is a Dear Mr. Fantasy, the Traffic cover the Dead had been playing since the early seventies and which had become one of the more reliable vehicles for Mydland's soulful voice and Garcia's lyrical lead work.
When the band locks into that song with real conviction, it can feel genuinely transcendent, and it's worth paying close attention to how they navigate the transition out of the cosmic murk of Space into its rolling groove. From there into Looks Like Rain — one of Weir's finest ballads, always a moment of tenderness in the second set — and then Black Peter, Garcia's mortality meditation that tends to hit differently as the night wears on and everyone in the room is deep in the experience. Shakedown Street closes things with a dose of funk, Mydland's presence particularly felt in that song's Stax-influenced pocket. The recording circulating for this show is an audience tape, which means the sound quality will reflect the room and the taper's position, but seasoned collectors know that Maine audiences from this period were often well-behaved enough to let the music breathe on tape. Don't let the modest source deter you — this is a genuinely interesting second-set sequence that rewards close listening. Queue up that Space-to-Dear Mr. Fantasy transition and see where the night takes you.