Don’s Pick • Halloween Special, Week 3 of 5

Seven Years Buried, One Werewolf Howl, and the Only Dead Show South Carolina Ever Got

Grateful Dead • October 31, 1985 • Carolina Coliseum, Columbia, SC

South Carolina got exactly one shot at the Grateful Dead, and the band made it count. This Halloween night at the Carolina Coliseum remains the only time the Dead ever played in the state, and a crowd heavy with University of South Carolina students, most of them in costume, packed a room the band fully decked out for the occasion, carved pumpkins included.

The night’s defining moment landed right at the top of the first set. After a quick tuning doodle of the traditional Italian song “Funiculì, Funiculà,” the band drifted into a brief, eerie space jam before resolving into Warren Zevon’s “Werewolves of London,” a song they hadn’t played live in seven years, not since the summer of 1978. The crowd reaction was immediate and enormous. Sound engineer Dan Healy made the moment even more theatrical, running Bob Weir and Jerry Garcia’s microphones through a vocal harmonizer delay effect during the track, turning their howls into something that genuinely sounded like a full pack of wolves echoing through the coliseum.

The band kept leaning into the holiday throughout the rest of set one, teasing a few bars of the children’s classic “Teddy Bear’s Picnic” right before dropping into a gritty, slow-churning “West L.A. Fadeaway.” The set closed on a high-speed, charging “Might As Well,” sending the crowd into intermission already fully spent and ready for more.

Set two carries the kind of seamless, continuous jamming that defines the mid-1980s era of the band at its best. A heavy, funk-driven “Shakedown Street” opens the half and stretches out before melting into the spacey rhythm of “Playing In The Band” and a genuinely beautiful “Ship Of Fools.” Coming out of Drums and Space, keyboardist Brent Mydland takes the spotlight for a roaring, emotionally raw lead vocal on Traffic’s “Dear Mr. Fantasy,” his gritty delivery matching the dark, spooky energy of the whole night perfectly before the set closes with a thunderous “Not Fade Away.”

One state, one show, one werewolf howl seven years in the making. Columbia never got a second chance, and it didn’t need one. Week three of five.