A question for all the DEAD HEADS out there?

Start with these Stu

Live Dead is how I started.  Anything live imho, never really got the studio albums. 

Where is the best place to start?

The best album by the Grateful Dead in my opinion is Anthem of the Sun,  a work of sheer genius that has been matched by few. It isn't song based, but a continuous piece of music edited expertly at the mixing desk by Phil Lesh and crew. Jerry's guitar was as hood as I have ever heard from the instrument. 

Mr Blueknowz has come up with some good ones too. If want a very polished album then From A Mars Hotel is full of wonderful songs that are expertly played. 

A live set that I love is Two From The Vault,  which captures the tracks that became the Anthem of the Sun. 

If you buy Anthem of the Sun or Aoxomoxoa then go for the Remix versions that were done not long after the originals appeared. The CDs are almost always the remix, but vinyl can be either. 

American Beauty and Workingman's Dead are both nice albums, but again beware of the quality of early pressings - the HDCDs are superb as the is DVD-A of American Beauty. 

There is so much good stuff by them. 

Agree with the above suggestions though one other studio album worth checking out is Workingman's Dead

If I had to pick only one live dead album, and there are so many excellent ones, I would go for: 'Ladies and Gentlemen' which is a 4 disc set capturing their 1971 Aril 25 - 29 gigs at the Fillmore East, New York. IMHO it manages to best represent the multi faceted Dead during their prime. One minute you are listening to a country dirge 'El Paso' followed by 'I'm A King Bee' only to be followed by the beautiful 'Ripple'. Talk about a band being able to weave in and out of various genes. I find with the Dead you have to take the rough with the smooth, example I hate 'El Paso' though love most of the album. On disc 3 they perform a killer 'Hard To Handle' followed by Dark Star / St Stephen / Not Fade Away.....it does not get much better than that.

Live/Dead, pictured above, really is where to start. If you don't like that, you won't like what else they did (and there's a heck of a lot of it out there!).

I agree with a lot of what has been posted above  I basically never listen to the studio stuff even though I have it all on disc. I'm not really qualified to comment on the sound quality of many of the commercially released live shows, though the Dick's Picks series has seldom disappointed. Instead I'd look for shows of particular interest. The 1971 Fillmore East shows are splendid; maybe "Ladies and Gentlemen: The Grateful Dead" is the way to pick those up, though I haven't heard that particular issue. Don't overlook 1969: for example, the second and third disks of Dick's Picks 16 are exceptional. Inspired by this thread I'm listening to those now. I'm partial to 1977 as well, though of course it's a quite different sound.

There are many great Dick's Picks though if I had to chose one I would go for Dick's Picks 4. What a great line up at the Fillmore for those three nights ! 

On February 11, 13, and 14, 1970, the Grateful Dead — along with the Allman Brothers Band and Love — performed at Bill Graham's Fillmore East auditorium in New York City. The February 13 and February 14 Dead shows were widely regarded as among the band's best concerts, even before the release of Dick's Picks Volume 4. In addition to the evidence offered by Bear's Choice, high quality soundboard bootlegs of the concerts had been in circulation for quite some time. In a 1993 poll of Grateful Dead tape traders, the 2/13/70 show was ranked #2 on the list of all-time favorite Dead tapes, and 2/14/70 was #17. (The May 8, 1977 concert at Cornell University's Barton Hall received the top ranking.) The same poll rated the 2/13/70 versions of "Dark Star", "The Other One", and "Turn On Your Love Light" as the best ever. (The "Dark Star" played on August 27, 1972, in Veneta, Oregon, was ranked #2. The February 27, 1969 version from the Fillmore West, included in Live/Dead, was #9.)^[2]

Selections from the Allman Brothers Band's performances at this set of concerts were released as the album Fillmore East, February 1970.

A "soft" intro to the Dead can be had through Workingman's Dead.  The hi-res DVD-A is one of the best, if not the best DVD-As released.  The Rhino HDCD issue is good too.

Stu, I can't argue with the previous posts here, but if I could add another - you might find Terrapin Station to your liking.

Hi Stu -

My recommendation would be to watch a DVD or two rather than listen to any CD.

I "came of age" going to Dead shows.  First one was 1973, age 16, not too long after getting my driver's license.   Before going to their concerts (something like 80 of them -- last one was 1986-ish), I had listened to a few of their records, but didn't really get them.   The live experience was a much different story.  And I am not just talking about the the carnival/festival atmosphere.  At their heart and soul, the Dead were a jam band who never played the same song the same way twice. 

Also, the Dead had the most amazing sound system (based on a large number of McIntosh amps).   It is kind of fun just to read about the technology:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/W..._%28Grateful_Dead%29

But with even listening to the best sound boards, it is hard to appreciate just how good they could make an average venue sound.  And when they made it to a great venue like the Uptown Theater in Chicago, they sounded absolutely sublime.   They put a ton of effort into making sure the sound was right.

Back to DVD's....the "Grateful Dead Movie" was a pretty good, as was "Rocking the Cradle:  Egypt '78".

There are endless concert CD's.   "Live Dead" mentioned above was iconic, as it was the first of dozens and dozens of concert albums they would go on to produce.  There's a more recent, and IMO, better sounding version of that same gig called "Fillmore West 1969":

http://www.amazon.com/Fillmore...315826295&sr=1-1

Also hard to go wrong with "Europe '72" (as mentioned in the other thread).   Lastly, one of my favorite live albums is "Reckoning" -- an all acoustic set recorded in 1980 (but featuring mostly songs from early on in the band's history).

As far as studio albums go, it is pretty hard for me to pick among them.  If pressed, I guess I would start with "American Beauty" or "Wake of the Flood", but there are things I like about all of them.

Good luck -- hope you enjoy the Dead the second time around (wasn't that a Sinatra song?).

Hook

Probably "immature" would be a better word . Judging by the video in the thread, it sounds like plain old teenager's music from the 70's.

There are 2 VERY different Grateful Deads.

Studio and Live.

The studio works are absolute gems.  Not that the live works aren't, but they are more tied into the actual experience.

"Mars Hotel" and "Wake of the Flood" get my nod.

-Patrick

Well those of us who were teenagers in the 70's are alive and well and purchasing Naim gear, apparently.

Cheers!

One has to be more discriminating with the live recordings.  Now with the "Vault" and "Dick's Picks" releases, there are hundreds of hours of live shows available on cd.  Quality of performance varies widely, and frankly I don't often have the patience to listen to an entire 2.5 - 3.5 hour show now-a-days.  The two selections I mentioned above, imho, are gems as well

Hi Stu,

        "What is the best place to start with the Dead?"

         Once you find a time machine, I would aim for the tiny Carousel Ballroom on the night of 2/14/68.    Find some nice hippie on the street to give you a ticket, and perhaps some of Owsley's finest, and you stand a good chance of becoming one of those raving Deadheads that most music lovers know- someone who is convinced beyond a shadow of a doubt that the Dead ARE the finest band in the world....

          Good suggestions above.   If your taste in music doesn't run to the more elongated instrumental interplay the Dead were famous for, particularly in their early years of 1965 until their "retirement" in 1974, I would try "Reckoning" from 1980, which was really their best acoustic record, and is particularly great sounding if you can find it on LP (assuming you listen to the large black discs), but was nicely reissued on HDCD a few years ago.    

           Good luck,

           Bruce

Check this out.  Most of their concerts over the years.  

Paradise of tapers and much of it is awesome.

http://www.archive.org/details/GratefulDead

Well I think you could make a good case for the recently released 73CD Europe 72 trunk as the best place to start... there is enough brilliance here to last a lifetime! 

On a more practical note I started with Workingman and American Beauty - I think these showcase how great the dead's songs were (something often overlooked) - as already, eloquently, stated Anthem of the Sun would be the other great starting point... 

I am not sure if you start with Live/Dead you get the best representation despite the great Dark Star, marvellous the eleven and haunting Death Don't Have No Mercy..the 15 minutes of Lovelight is an awful lot of Pigpen which isn't always to people's tastes (in the same way I would be cautious about stuff from the 80s with Brent's awfully dated keyboard sounds and strained vocals)

In the end live is what they are about and rather than listing from the hundreds of CDs available in the various Dicks Pick's/Road Trip/Download series/Boxsets etc. releases the best bet is to go the archive and stream or something like DimeADozen for audience recording and sample a few gigs from 1969 through to 1978 - then rather than try listening to the whole 3 or 4 hours per gig try a random selection of shorter standalone songs (usually first set material from 1971 onward when the set patterns began to coalesce) with one or two of the longer improvised numbers (Dark Star, The Other One, Playing In the Band - not forgetting Eyes of World in 73 and 74, Scarlet Bergonias>Fire On The Mountain in 77 and 78, etc.)

If you do end up buying any of the releases most are HDCD encoded and sound marvellous on NAIM CD players which have decoders for HDCD - in fact the Dead seem to be the only people still using HDCD which is a shame because it seems to make a worthwhile difference