By the spring of 1987, the Grateful Dead had fully settled into their arena-rock second act. Brent Mydland, now eight years into his tenure as keyboardist, had long since shed any awkwardness as the new guy and was playing with real confidence and fire. Jerry Garcia, Bob Weir, Phil Lesh, and the two Drummers — Mickey Hart and Bill Kreutzmann — were a seasoned, tight unit, and while some purists missed the looseness of earlier decades, the band could still open up and surprise you on the right night. This was the In the Dark era, with the album dropping later that summer and bringing the Dead their unlikely commercial peak. There was a palpable electricity around the band in 1987 — bigger crowds, more intensity, a fanbase that had grown well beyond the faithful into something approaching a mainstream phenomenon. The Meadowlands Arena in East Rutherford, New Jersey was about as emblematic of that arena era as any room could be. A cavernous, hockey-rink-style venue just across the Hudson from Manhattan, it held upwards of 20,000 people and brought out the Jersey and New York faithful in force. The Dead played the Meadowlands regularly throughout the eighties and into the nineties, and the New York metro area crowds were famously loud and devoted — a hometown energy that could push the band to elevated performances.
The room wasn't intimate, but when things caught fire, the noise off those concrete walls was something to hear. The song we have in our database from this night is "Dancin' in the Streets," the old Martha and the Vandellas classic that had been a Dead staple since the early days of the band. What makes a great Dead version of "Dancin'" is the way it transforms from a straightforward R&B stomp into something more exploratory — the arrows pointing where the notation tails off into that open bracket suggest this version moved into a jam or segue, which is exactly where the magic tends to live. A good "Dancin'" in 1987 means Brent punching in the chords with authority, Jerry finding those upper-register melodic runs, and the rhythm section locking into something infectious. When it opens up, it really opens up. Recording information for this show can vary — the Meadowlands was a well-circulated taping venue, so there's a decent chance a listenable source exists somewhere in the archive. Whether you're coming to this show for the era, the venue, or just to hear the Dead do what they do with a dance-floor classic, it's worth a spin.