Halloween 1985 finds the Grateful Dead in Columbia, South Carolina, catching the tail end of their fall tour with Brent Mydland now thoroughly embedded as the band's keyboardist — a role he'd been growing into since 1979 but that by the mid-eighties had taken on a harder, more muscular character. The Dead of this era were a different animal than the transcendent 1977 or Europe '72 outfits: the sound was bigger, the arenas larger, the production more polished, and Garcia's playing had taken on a warmer, slightly bluesier tone that suited the rooms they were filling. The In the Dark album was still two years away, meaning this is the pre-arena-rock-crossover Dead — a band that still belonged primarily to its devoted road family, playing college towns and regional venues without quite the circus that would come after "Touch of Grey." Carolina Coliseum was a standard-issue college arena of the era, the kind of mid-capacity room the Dead could fill with their own ecosystem of fans traveling up and down the Eastern Seaboard. Playing Halloween at a university gave the night its own natural energy — students in costume mixing with veteran tapers and tour-heads who had followed the band down from the Northeast. Columbia is deep enough in the South to carry a particular warmth to the crowd, and Halloween shows from this period have a reputation for loose, celebratory performances where the band seemed to feel the permission the holiday granted. The fragments in the database offer some interesting snapshots.
The pairing of "Funiculi Funicula" sliding into Space is quintessential mid-eighties Dead weirdness — the band's fondness for novelty interjections into the second set's more exploratory passages giving way to the kind of open-ended drift that Space could become in this era. "The Music Never Stopped" is a perennial crowd igniter, a song that rewards a tight, locked-in rhythm section, and hearing whether Garcia and Brent are trading licks cleanly is always the thing to listen for. "Not Fade Away" as a set closer or late-show anchor gives the crowd something primal and communal to hold onto, its Bo Diddley groove something the band could ride for minutes or snap off in a few charged bars depending on the night's mood. Recording quality from mid-eighties Columbia Coliseum shows tends to depend heavily on source, but if you're lucky enough to find a decent board or matrix here, the clarity of Brent's keyboards alone makes it worth seeking out. Press play and let Halloween 1985 do its thing.