By January 1987, the Grateful Dead were riding a remarkable second wind. Brent Mydland had by this point been the band's keyboardist for nearly eight years, his soulful voice and muscular playing thoroughly woven into the fabric of what the Dead had become — a tighter, more arena-ready unit than the loose and exploratory outfit of the early seventies, but still capable of genuine magic when the nights lined up right. The band was a year removed from *In the Dark*, the album that would arrive later that summer and bring them their most mainstream commercial success in decades. There was a palpable momentum building in the Dead world heading into 1987, a sense that the machine was humming, drawing bigger crowds and generating real excitement even as longtime devotees debated whether the fire burned as brightly as it once had. The San Francisco Civic Auditorium — known to locals simply as "The Civic" — was a home game in the fullest sense. Built in 1915 and steeped in the history of the city the Dead had always called their own, the cavernous hall on Grove Street had hosted everything from political conventions to Bill Graham productions. Playing here, the Dead were never far from their roots, and hometown crowds at The Civic had a way of pushing the band with a familiar, affectionate intensity.
These weren't the sprawling festival masses or the echoing arenas — this was San Francisco, the audience full of people who had been following Garcia and company for decades. The two songs we have documented from this show are a lovely cross-section of what the Dead were doing in this period. "Fire on the Mountain" had by the late eighties become one of the band's most reliable and beloved centerpieces — that hypnotic, rhythmically locked groove between Garcia's melody and Mickey Hart's percussion always had the potential to lift a room into something transcendent. Brent's keyboard textures added warmth and dimension that distinguished late-eighties versions from the leaner, Knopfler-influenced originals. "El Paso," the old Marty Robbins country number the Dead had been covering since 1970, was always a moment of levity and charm in a set — Garcia's delivery of that dusty cowboy narrative never failed to delight, and by 1987 the band played it with a kind of easy, lived-in confidence. If a recording from this show crosses your path, give it your full attention — a Dead hometown show in early '87 is precisely the kind of night where the band plays loose and comfortable, and the crowd gives it right back to them.