April 1987 finds the Grateful Dead in full arena-rock stride, a long way from the Fillmore and closer in spirit to the massive touring machine they'd become by the mid-eighties. Brent Mydland had been in the fold since 1979, and by this point his keyboards were thoroughly woven into the band's identity — his Hammond organ grind and occasionally ferocious vocals lending the ensemble a grittier edge than the Keith Godchaux years. Garcia's playing in this period could swing between the transcendent and the merely serviceable night to night, which is exactly what makes archival digging so rewarding: you never quite know which version of the band is going to show up. Spring '87 came on the heels of *In the Dark*, which wouldn't drop until July but was already in the works, and there was a kind of anticipatory energy in the air around Dead shows that year — they were on the verge of their unlikely commercial renaissance, and the crowds were swelling accordingly. The UIC Pavilion on the University of Illinois at Chicago campus was a reliable Midwest stop during these arena years — not a legendary room on the order of Red Rocks or Madison Square Garden, but a solid mid-size hall that the Dead visited regularly throughout the eighties. Chicago crowds tended to be enthusiastic and well-seasoned, the kind of audience that knew when to let a jam breathe and when to erupt. Playing the Windy City always seemed to bring a certain sharpness out of the band.
The two songs we have confirmed from this date are a fine little window into the show. "Don't Ease Me In" is a jug-band chestnut that the Dead had been playing since the Pigpen days, and by the late eighties it had settled comfortably into its role as a loose, good-natured first-set opener — a warm handshake to get the evening started. "Brown Eyed Women," meanwhile, is one of Garcia and Hunter's great narrative songs, full of Depression-era Americana and a driving, syncopated rhythm that invites the whole band to lean in together. When the Dead were locked in, the interplay between Garcia's lead lines and Mydland's fills on this tune could be genuinely electric. Whether this circulates as a soundboard or audience source will shape how the details land — listen for the mix between Garcia's guitar and Brent's keyboards in the verses of "Brown Eyed Women" as a quick gauge of where the band's energy was sitting that Friday night. It's a solid entry point to a year well worth exploring.