Grateful Dead Beauty

The Grateful Dead's second live release was an eponymously titled double LP whose cover bears the striking skull-and-roses visual motif that would become instantly recognizable and an indelibly linked trademark of the band. As opposed to their debut concert recording, Live/Dead (1969), this hour and ten minutes concentrates on newer material, which consisted of shorter self-contained originals and covers. Coming off of the quantum-leap success of the studio country-rock efforts Workingman's Dead (1969) and American Beauty, Grateful Dead offers up a pair of new Jerry Garcia/Robert Hunter compositions – "Bertha" and "Wharf Rat" – both of which garnered a permanent place within the band's live catalog.

The Grateful Dead's second live release was an eponymously titled double LP whose cover bears the striking skull-and-roses visual motif that would become instantly recognizable and an indelibly linked trademark of the band. As opposed to their debut concert recording, Live/Dead (1969), this hour and ten minutes concentrates on newer material, which consisted of shorter self-contained originals and covers. Coming off of the quantum-leap success of the studio country-rock efforts Workingman's Dead (1969) and American Beauty, Grateful Dead offers up a pair of new Jerry Garcia/Robert Hunter compositions – "Bertha" and "Wharf Rat" – both of which garnered a permanent place within the band's live catalog.

The Grateful Dead made their reputation on the road with their live shows, and they always struggled to capture that magic in the studio. From the Mars Hotel, while not a classic, represents one of their better studio albums. Jerry Garcia sounds engaged throughout and takes the vocal reigns for most of the songs on the album – although he's not the most gifted vocalist, he proves himself able and versatile…

It only seems like there has been an endless stream of Grateful Dead compilations. In reality, there has only been a handful, and the most notable of those were released while the band was still an active recording and touring unit in the '70s – and before they had belated chart success in the late '80s, 20 years after their debut album. So, Warner/Rhino's 2003 collection The Very Best of Grateful Dead marks the first attempt to do a thorough single-disc overview of the group's career, encompassing not just their classic Warner albums but also the records they cut for their own Grateful Dead/UA and Arista.

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 Grateful Dead's first true archival album, Bear's Choice, was lovingly produced as a tribute to Pigpen shortly after he passed by none other that the Dead's original soundman and benefactor, Owsley Stanley, aka Bear. Drawing from live shows recorded three years earlier by Bear at the Fillmore East in New York City, Bear's Choice captures the Dead at an essential moment of their history, as they were about to record Workingman's Dead (and shortly thereafter, American Beauty), and were transitioning into becoming Americana pioneers, while never losing touch with their psychedelic improvisational roots. Three of the eight songs on the album are sung by Pigpen, with Side 1 being the definitive example of early acoustic Dead, and Side 2 being electric blues and rock & roll, with Pigpen leading the charge on both tracks on the second side. This has been remastered by David Glasser using Plangent Processes from the original analog 2-track tapes recorded live by Bear and has never sounded better.