By the summer of 1985, the Grateful Dead had settled into their long-running mid-decade configuration: Garcia, Weir, Lesh, Kreutzmann, Mickey Hart back in the fold since 1975, and Brent Mydland anchoring the keys with a muscular, blues-soaked intensity that was entirely his own. This was the arena-rock Dead, playing to bigger crowds than ever, riding the wave of renewed mainstream interest that had followed "Touch of Grey" and the band's growing festival presence. The sound was heavier and more keyboard-driven than the floating, jazz-inflected weirdness of the late '70s peak, but when the band locked in — and they still could, regularly — the results were formidable. Merriweather Post Pavilion, nestled in the wooded hills of Columbia, Maryland, was already becoming one of the Dead's preferred Mid-Atlantic stops. The shed's natural amphitheater setting — part covered pavilion, part open lawn — gave it an outdoor energy that suited the band well, and the Washington-Baltimore corridor always delivered a passionate, knowledgeable crowd. The Dead played Merriweather regularly throughout the '80s and early '90s, and the room has a warm reputation among tapers for decent acoustics and a crowd that came to listen as much as dance. The fragments we have from this show offer a tantalizing cross-section of the night.
"Mississippi Half-Step Uptown Toodeloo" opening a set — or bridging into whatever came next — is always a good sign; it's a song that rewards a relaxed, unhurried treatment, and when Garcia's vocals were on, those final verses could hit with real emotional weight. "Samson and Delilah," Weir's Old Testament bulldozer, is pure second-set muscle — the kind of number that wakes the lawn up and reminds you the Dead could rock with genuine menace when they wanted to. Then there's "The Other One," the band's great psychedelic warhorse, a piece of music that by 1985 had been road-tested for nearly two decades and could still open into genuinely strange and beautiful territory in the right hands. Brent's organ work in the "The Other One" is worth paying close attention to here — by mid-decade he had found ways to push into the jams rather than merely support them, and the interplay with Garcia's leads often crackled with an edge you don't hear in earlier eras. Whether you're coming to this one from a soundboard or an audience source, the music itself makes the case. Hit play and let Merriweather do the rest.