Playing in the Band is one of the Grateful Dead's signature songs, embodying their collective jam ethos. First debuted on February 18, 1971, in Port Chester, New York, at the Capitol Theater, the song originated years earlier in the instrumental Main Ten, which achieved a hypnotic quality through a ten-beats-to-the-measure rhythm.

First tried out in 1968, the jam complemented other jams of the time based on intricate time signatures, including The Seven and The Eleven. By late 1969, The Main Ten would occasionally make appearances during Space sections of live shows to segue between two vocal songs.

Interestingly, Playing in the Band was a straight-ahead Bob Weir rocker for the first performance, lacking the jam section. It only gradually developed one to three-minute jam sections as 1971 wore on. By early 1972, the vocal and ending choruses were just bookends to extended jams given wings by drummer Bill Kreutzmann's fluid jazz capacities. These unpredictable instrumental sections often replaced the Space sections of Dark Star.

Playing in the Band was to see one final metamorphosis: from 1976 to 1995, with the addition of Mickey Hart as a second drummer, the flow took on a more predictable rhythm with the rises and flows tied to a solid dancing groove and sometimes leading into the ultimate percussion section of the concert, Drums.