By the fall of 1984, the Grateful Dead were deep into what longtime fans call the "Touch of Grey" incubation period — the band was writing and road-testing new material that would eventually surface on *In the Dark* in 1987, but in the meantime they were a seasoned arena act running hard on momentum built through the early '80s. Brent Mydland was now firmly established as the band's keyboardist, having replaced Keith Godchaux back in 1979, and his muscular, soulful playing had by this point become essential to the band's identity rather than a novelty. Garcia was in reasonable form across much of 1984, and the fall tour found the Dead doing what they did best: moving through college towns and mid-sized arenas in the Northeast, playing for crowds who treated these shows as genuine events. The Carrier Dome at Syracuse University is a cavernous, multipurpose facility — home to the Orange's football and basketball programs — and the Dead filled it with that particular kind of reverberant arena energy that defined so many mid-'80s recordings. Syracuse sits in the heart of upstate New York, deep in the Northeast corridor that the Dead always worked well, and the college-crowd energy at these shows tended to be electric without tipping over into chaos. Dome acoustics can be a double-edged sword, but the Dead had long since learned how to project into big rooms.
Among the songs we have from this show, "The Wheel" stands out immediately — one of the great Garcia-Hunter meditations on karma and continuity, it had been a setlist staple since the early '70s and in the '80s often served as a vehicle for extended, deeply felt playing. When Garcia locked into "The Wheel" on a good night, the whole band seemed to breathe together. "Black Peter" is another treasure: a slow-burning, emotionally devastating ballad that demands a certain quality of attention from both band and audience, and when it's right, there's nothing like it in the Dead's catalog. "Greatest Story Ever Told" opening the first set would have kicked things off with that strutting, rhythmically aggressive energy that Weir always brought to it, and "Birdsong" — underrated and gorgeous — deserves close listening for the interplay between Garcia's lead and whatever Brent was doing underneath it on any given night. Recordings from mid-'80s Dome and arena shows vary, but if a soundboard source exists for this date, the separation on Brent's keyboards and Garcia's tone will reward the headphone listener. Pull this one up and let "Black Peter" wash over you.