By March of 1987, the Grateful Dead were in the thick of one of the most commercially successful stretches of their career — and one of the more complicated ones to assess. Brent Mydland had been in the band for nearly eight years at this point, his keyboards and vocals now a fully integrated part of the sound, bringing a bluesy, sometimes gospel-inflected warmth that complemented Garcia's guitar in ways that were their own and no one else's. The In the Dark album was still months away from release (it would arrive that summer and send "Touch of Grey" into actual Top 40 territory), but the buzz around the band was building. They were playing big rooms, drawing new fans who'd discover the archive later, and the core Deadhead community was swelling. Spring tours in the late '80s had a particular electricity — the band was tight from years of road work, and the New England dates in this period tended to draw enthusiastic, loud crowds. The Hartford Civic Center had become a reliable stop on the Dead's Northeast circuit by this era, the kind of mid-size arena that held somewhere around fifteen thousand people and had solid acoustics for a big rock band. Hartford was fertile Deadhead territory — close enough to Boston and New York to draw from both those scenes, with a regional fanbase that had been following the band since the '70s.
The Civic Center shows could be rowdy and focused at once, the crowd knowing exactly when to let go and when to lean in. While our song database for this date is listed collectively rather than song-by-song, a spring '87 show would typically draw from the repertoire the band had been honing through the mid-decade years — expect the possibility of "Estimated Prophet" threading into "Eyes of the World," the kind of second-set constructions that rewarded patience, along with first-set workhorses like "Althea" or "Tennessee Jed" that Garcia played with genuine affection in this period. Brent's featured spots gave the band a different color than the Keith-era shows, his Rhodes and organ lending a grittier texture to ballads and jams alike. Recordings from Hartford in this era tend to circulate in decent shape, with a number of soundboard or matrix sources available through the archive — worth checking before you listen what you've got, since the difference between a flat audience tape and a clean board from this period is considerable. Either way, this is a snapshot of the Dead in full late-period stride. Press play and let it breathe.