Dead in a Row

For those unindoctrinated to the obsessive world of Grateful Dead culture that goes past fandom into a somewhat disconcerting preoccupation, the Deadhead's need for rampant collection and cataloging of live recordings of the band's jammy shows may seem completely insane. Ranging from the many, many live albums officially released when the band was still active to countless bootlegs and even more low-quality audience-recorded tapes, almost every minute of the group's over 2,000 concerts have been documented in some form, with newly refurbished or remixed gigs coming out from the vaults every year. To untrained ears, these shows could sound like interchangeable noodly nonsense, but even the most reluctant listener would be struck by what the initiated already hold dear from a recording like Sunshine Daydream: Veneta, OR, August 27th, 1972…

The primary impetus behind this ambitious 12-disc box set is to gather all nine of the Grateful Dead's Warner Brothers titles. However, the staggeringly high quotient of previously unissued bonus material rivals - and at times exceeds - the content of those original albums. The Golden Road (1965-1973) truly has something - and usually a lot of it - for every degree of Deadhead. Working chronologically, the bonus material begins before the beginning so to speak, with the two-disc sub-compilation aptly titled "Birth of the Dead," a project actually green-lighted by Jerry Garcia in the mid-'80s. Disc one features studio recordings by a primordial incarnation of the band known as the Warlocks and later the Emergency Crew. Disc two contrasts their studio efforts with some of the earliest surviving live Grateful Dead recordings from July of 1966…

The Grateful Dead‘s September 8, 1973 concert at Nassau Coliseum in Uniondale, New York will be featured on Dave’s Picks Volume 38, which is due in the second quarter of 2021. Dave’s Picks 2021 subscribers will receive a bonus disc containing highlights from the previous night’s show at the same venue.

It's natural to suspect that In Concert is simply the hastily constructed live album cash-in that comes after the long-awaited reunion (2012's Anastasis was the group's first studio album in 16 years), but it's actually a sweet souvenir of the world fusion duo's return to the stage, tastefully presented and impeccably recorded. Rarely do live albums sound so luxurious and warm, but besides being a fine demo disc for high-end speakers, this chamber concert on wax offers some more comfortable, more alive versions of Anastasis' studio material, along with a quick stroll through the group's early work…

Long Strange Trip is a documentary film about the rock band the Grateful Dead. It premiered on January 23, 2017, at the Sundance Film Festival. It had a one-night only nationwide screening on May 25, 2017, and a week-long limited theatrical release in New York and Los Angeles starting on May 26. The film was split into a six-part miniseries, which became available on Amazon Video on June 2, 2017…

3-LP on 180-gram vinyl, housed in a two-piece box. Limited-Edition of 9,000 (WW). Liner Notes By Jesse Jarnow & Michael Parrish. Audio timing and speed correction by Plangent Processes and newly mastered by Jeffrey Norman. Available for the first time on Vinyl. Not available in other official physical or digital formats. Produced for release by David Lemieux.

Only the second major career-spanning retrospective of the Dead, The Best of the Grateful Dead - released in the spring of 2015, just before a series of farewell shows in the summer - takes advantage of the extra disc 2003's The Very Best of Grateful Dead lacked. Weighing in at 32 tracks - a full 16 cuts longer than Very Best - The Best of the Grateful Dead also follows a strict chronological sequence, so it takes a little while for the psychedelic haze to lift and the Dead to settle into the rangy, rootsy groove that characterized so much of their existence - right around "St. Stephen" and "China Cat Sunflower," both from 1969's Aoxomoxoa. From there, many - but by no means all - of the group's warhorses are marched out, all in their studio incarnations…