By the spring of 1986, the Grateful Dead were well into one of the more underappreciated stretches of their long career. Brent Mydland had been in the band for seven years at this point, long enough that his muscular Hammond organ and soulful vocals had become essential to the band's identity rather than a novelty. Jerry Garcia had cleaned up after a difficult period and was playing with renewed focus, and the band's live performances were showing a looseness and confidence that rewarded patient listeners. This was the era of arena rock and big production, but the Dead were still finding pockets of intimacy wherever they could. The Berkeley Community Theater was exactly that kind of pocket. A gorgeous art deco hall seating around three thousand, the BCT sits in the heart of the East Bay — practically the Dead's backyard, given their deep roots in the Bay Area music scene. Playing a room this size in Berkeley meant the band was essentially playing for their people, and that familiarity tends to bring out something unguarded in their performances. The acoustics in the BCT are warm and precise, a far cry from the cavernous arenas they'd been filling, and the audience — local, knowledgeable, and ready — had a way of feeding that energy right back.
From what we have in the database, the Drums segment and a closing Around and Around offer a revealing window into the night. Drums, of course, was where Billy Kreutzmann and Mickey Hart could stretch into pure rhythm and texture, a ritual centerpiece of every second set, and in 1986 the two-drummer interplay was reaching some genuinely adventurous places. Around and Around — Chuck Berry's rollicking chestnut that the Dead had been covering since their earliest days — is one of those joyful closers that can either feel perfunctory or absolutely incandescent depending on the band's mood. A great Around and Around is a celebration, with Garcia's guitar cutting sharp lines over a rhythm section that sounds like it's been waiting all night to cut loose. The recording quality for BCT shows from this era can vary, but Berkeley audiences were among the most conscientious tapers in the scene, and the intimate size of the room tends to produce recordings where you can hear every detail of what Brent is doing underneath Garcia's leads. If you have any affection for the mid-'80s incarnation of this band, this is the kind of hometown show worth settling in with. Press play.