By the summer of 1987, the Grateful Dead were riding a commercial wave unlike anything they'd experienced since their earliest years. "In the Dark" had just been released in July, bringing "Touch of Grey" to MTV and radio audiences who'd never heard a note of the band, and suddenly the Dead were everywhere. Brent Mydland, now seven years into his tenure as keyboardist, had grown into a full and confident voice within the group — his Hammond and synthesizer textures giving the band a rounder, more arena-ready sound that somehow still retained the psychedelic looseness at its core. Garcia's guitar playing in this period could be uneven from night to night, but when he locked in, he remained one of the most distinctive voices in American music. The Calaveras County Fairgrounds in Angels Camp, California, make for an interesting setting in the Dead's 1987 touring story. Out in the Gold Country foothills, about ninety miles east of the Bay Area, it's the kind of outdoor fairgrounds show that feels deeply rooted in the band's Northern California identity — closer in spirit to the old days than the hockey arenas the band was increasingly filling that same summer. There's something fitting about the Dead playing Calaveras County, the land of Mark Twain's jumping frogs, in the middle of a year when the whole country was suddenly jumping to catch up with them.
The songs in our database from this show offer a nice cross-section of the band's toolkit. "Scarlet Begonias" is always worth tracking — when it's firing, Garcia's lead lines dance around Weir's rhythm work in ways that feel almost conversational, and Mydland's fills give it a brightness the Keith Godchaux-era version never quite had. "Fire on the Mountain" is the natural pairing, and together they form one of the great Dead segue traditions. "I Need a Miracle" is a reliably high-energy Weir vehicle, the kind of number that gets the outdoor crowd moving, while "Iko Iko" brings a loose, percussive playfulness that suits a summer fairgrounds setting perfectly. The Drums section in the middle of the set is worth sitting with — Mickey Hart and Bill Kreutzmann were in a particularly exploratory phase around this time, and even a few minutes of their interplay can be revelatory. Recording information for this show may vary, but if you can find a clean source, settle in and let this afternoon in the California hills wash over you. The Dead at their mid-'80s peak in their home territory — that's a combination worth your time.