By the summer of 1989, the Grateful Dead had arrived at an unlikely cultural apex. "Touch of Grey" had cracked the mainstream three years earlier, and the band was now drawing enormous crowds to arenas and sheds across the country — a far cry from the intimate ballrooms of their early years. Brent Mydland was well into his decade-long tenure on keys, bringing a bluesy muscularity to the sound that pushed the band into harder-edged territory than the Keith Godchaux years. Jerry Garcia's voice had deepened with time, and while the nineties would bring difficult seasons, in the late summer of '89 the band was still largely in command of its powers. This was a band playing for tens of thousands every week, and somehow still finding moments of genuine discovery. The Greek Theatre at UC Berkeley is one of the most beloved rooms in the Dead's entire West Coast geography. Nestled in the Eucalyptus groves of the Berkeley Hills with the bay shimmering in the distance on a clear day, it holds roughly eight thousand people in a natural amphitheater setting that rewards both the musicians and the audience. The Dead played the Greek with regularity throughout the decade, and the setting always seemed to bring out something a little more relaxed and exploratory in them — a hometown feel, even if the band had scattered to Marin County long before.
The songs we have from this show offer a compelling cross-section of what the Dead could do in the acoustic-tinged first set mode of this era. "Walkin' Blues" was a Robert Johnson staple that Garcia wore with real authority, a reminder that the Dead's blues roots ran deeper than their psychedelic reputation often suggested. "Jack-A-Roe" was a traditional folk piece that Garcia sang with a gentle troubadour quality — a song that could easily be overlooked but repaid close listening. "The Music Never Stopped" was reliable first-set fuel, a Barlow-Weir propulsive rocker capable of lifting a crowd's energy in a hurry. "Sugaree" is one of the great Hunter-Garcia collaborations, a song that allows Garcia to breathe and expand — any version worth its salt will find him bending notes in that unmistakable way he had of making the guitar sound like it was sighing. And "The Wheel," listed here with that telltale ">" notation, suggests the band was threading songs together, letting momentum carry them forward. If you love Garcia in his element — warm, unhurried, deeply musical — and want to feel the summer air of the Berkeley Hills coming through the speakers, queue this one up.