… and neglected to perform their staple cover of Promised Land, with its opening and closing lines name-dropping the city du jour. Perhaps they simply didn’t enjoy the vibes—after all, they never came back.

The show is notable to me for its Scarlet>Fire>Estimated>Eyes combo. The elusive “quadfecta” was at its biggest in 1981 with 6 instances; this was the 2nd of 3 for 1982 and it would wane to a rate of once or twice a year until being put to rest in 1989.

More than just a sequencing gimmick, though, the Norfolk quad strikes gold in all four directions. Scarlet Begonias gets weirdly intense and intimate just when you think they’re about to segue into Fire on the Mountain. It’s ambiguous: are they stalling (Mickey had already broken a bass drum head in set one) or is this a bit of that old ‘77-78 magic where Jerry would keep soloing into infinity long after the rest of the band had tapped out? Tonight, as he often would in ‘77-78, he blesses us with a run of hypnotizing arpeggios into which Weir and Mydland quickly lock themselves too. This is high drama! Plus, the delayed gratification of hearing the opening riff to Fire is all the more satisfying for it.

The next big surprise arrives with Eyes of the World, which emerges in the guise of a midtempo pop shuffle. We’ve heard it in many genres: jazz, prog, funk, disco, coked-up psychedelia, and now this. I liken the rhythm here to Bowie’s Modern Love, if you can believe it. Jerry gets thrown off in verse two, but it’s back on track by the second chorus. It’s ear-catching at the very least, especially considering how speedy this number tended to be in the 80s!

The rest of the show is hit-or-miss—quite the comedown from the previous night in Durham. The opening Alabama Getaway gets off on the wrong foot with the absence of Jerry’s vocal mic for the first verse. Some have cited tonite’s CC Rider, but I have to pass on Bobby’s wretched slide solo in this one. More effective are Peggy-O, Bird Song, and the Althea> Let It Grow set one closer, all of which are solid readings, arguably great ones (especially the former, which is bouncy and soulful tonite). The band seems ready to bail from D/S onwards. Space in particular is conspicuously brief, instead moving hastily into a slinky extended intro to Not Fade Away that is another brief highlight of the show. Again, perhaps they were cold or merely going easy on the Norfolk crowd—things round out in a hurry with a serviceable Stella>Saturday Night>U.S. Blues sequence. Onwards to the Philadelphia Spectrum!

Three stars for the show; five stars for the sound on this matrix!