By the spring of 1985, the Grateful Dead were deep into their arena-era stride — a band that had traded the intimate chaos of the early seventies for something more polished, more muscular, and in many ways more reliable. Brent Mydland had been in the fold since 1979, and by this point he was no longer the new guy; he was an essential voice, his Hammond organ and blue-eyed soul vocals giving the band a grittier, more assertive center than the Keith Godchaux years had offered. Jerry Garcia's guitar tone was thick and sustain-heavy, Bobby Weir was locked in as the rhythm anchor, and the Garcia-Hunter catalog was the undisputed core of every night's program. The band had released *In the Dark* two years away — still working through their mid-eighties period of steadily building back a mass audience that would explode by 1987. The Spectrum in Philadelphia was a classic American sports barn — the same kind of cavernous hockey and basketball arena that became the Dead's natural habitat in this era. Philadelphia crowds were reliably passionate, and the Spectrum had hosted the band on numerous occasions by this point, always delivering that charged, slightly rowdy East Coast energy that separates Philly from, say, a polite mid-sized theater in the South.
The room wasn't intimate, but the Dead had long since learned to fill a barn. The song list we have from this show is a rewarding cross-section of the mid-eighties repertoire. *Morning Dew* is always the headline — one of the band's most emotionally devastating vehicles, and any version that opens up deserves close listening. Garcia's voice on "Morning Dew" in this era could cut right through you on a good night, and the song's slow build toward the closing refrain is where the whole room tended to hold its breath. *Mississippi Half Step* is another gem here, a song that invites spacious, exploratory jamming and tends to reward patience. The presence of *Truckin'* appearing to bookend portions of the set suggests some interesting structural moves, and *Dancin' in the Street* gives Brent and the horns-free ensemble a chance to stretch out in a different rhythmic pocket entirely. If you can find a soundboard or matrix source for this one — and many mid-eighties Spectrum shows have circulated in decent quality — the clarity will let you hear exactly what Brent is doing underneath Garcia's leads. Cue up *Morning Dew* and let it run.