By the spring of 1987, the Grateful Dead were operating as one of the biggest touring acts in America, a status that might have seemed unlikely for a band entering its third decade. Brent Mydland had been in the keyboard chair since 1979 and was fully settled into the fabric of the band by this point — his Hammond B3 and gospel-inflected vocals giving the mid-to-late '80s Dead a muscular, arena-ready warmth that stood apart from the Keith Godchaux years. The band had released *In the Dark* later that summer, the album that would eventually crack the mainstream with "Touch of Grey," but in March of '87 they were still just the Dead doing what they always did — grinding through winter and spring tours, finding their nightly shape in front of crowds that had grown enormous. Philadelphia was always a strong market for the band, and The Spectrum, the old Broad Street barn that hosted everything from Flyers hockey to massive rock shows, had the kind of cavernous, hard-surfaced energy that could either work against a band or, on the right night, amplify every peak into something close to religious. The three songs represented in our database from this show span a quietly beautiful corner of the Dead's repertoire. "Candyman," drawn from *American Beauty*, is one of Garcia's most affecting character studies — a slow-burning, morally ambiguous portrait that rewards a patient, nuanced vocal performance, and by 1987 Garcia could still deliver it with genuine feeling when the night was right.
"Ramble On Rose," another *Europe '72*-era gem, is the kind of sprightly mid-set number that separates the loose, rolling performances from the tighter ones — when the band locks into that rolling two-beat and Garcia's phrasing opens up, it's irresistible. The wildcard here is "Desolation Row," the eleven-minute Dylan epic that the Dead only rarely pulled out. Any time this one surfaces in a setlist it demands attention — it's a litmus test for how adventurous the band was feeling, and finding it in a 1987 setlist is genuinely exciting. As with many shows from this era, recording quality from The Spectrum varies considerably depending on the source — a good matrix or soundboard capture from this period brings out Brent's keyboards and Weir's chop with real clarity, while audience recordings can get lost in that reverberant room. Whatever the source, a setlist containing "Desolation Row" is reason enough to sit down and let this one play through from the start.