A User's Guide to the Grateful Dead
By Jesse Jarnow
As avatars of San Francisco'south '60s-born counterculture, the Grateful Dead take served as an alternative to American reality for more than a half-century. Performing from 1965 to 1995 with guitarist and songwriter Jerry Garcia, the Dead survive through a vast trunk of live recordings, originally traded by obsessive fans and at present preserved on a long string of official releases. Though the ring has an epic narrative (told in Amir Bar-Lev'due south rapturous four-hour Long, Strange Trip documentary ), much of the Expressionless'due south story and significance remains purely musical. Part of the group's staying power is due to the mysterious vastness that exists outside the bounds of their official studio recordings, a alive catechism shaped by generations of the still-active Deadhead music trading network.
Flourishing in an extralegal sharing economic system built effectually the commutation of concert tapes and psychedelics (the tapes were never to be sold), almost of the Expressionless's live recordings could but be accessed through greatly anti-corporate ways. Rather than killing music, equally an infamous British music industry entrada claimed in '80s, dwelling house taping actually propelled the Grateful Expressionless to stadiums, as the Dead themselves best-selling.
Profoundly unslick, the Grateful Dead's anti-authoritarian creative tendencies remain palpable in the electric current era. Self-consciously apolitical and populist to a fault, the Dead built a diverse audience across the political spectrum while continuing to act as a catalyst for immature and erstwhile seekers, music heads, counterculturalists, and psychonauts. Simultaneously, the Expressionless produced dancing music, sociology, and lyrics to nourish an extended community that continues to thrive at shows by the band'south surviving members and a national scene of cover bands.
Navigating the Grateful Dead'southward shadow discography can be daunting, a tangle of different periods and idiosyncrasies. This list of recommended song versions—chronological, not ranked—serves as an introductory survey of the band's unlike periods. Loosely, the 37 entries here chart a path from garage-prog (1966) to lysergic jam suites (1967-1969), alt-Americana (1970), barroom country & western (1971), space-jazz (1972-1975), and epic hippie disco (1976-1978), somewhen arriving at the more than slowly evolving band of the '80s and '90s, whose driving artistic forcefulness sometimes seemed to exist their ain inertia.
It's the latter era that is most prone to cleave even Dead enthusiasts. It represents a divide between the tighter, more than critically accustomed earlier band and the honey-by-Deadheads '80s and '90s incarnations, when they were beset by addiction, the technologies of the era, questionable artful choices, and an evolving clandestine musical language that sometimes made more sense in sold-out stadiums of dancing fans. While the Dead got more popular every year in their later decades—and continued to generate jam surprises and bold performances aplenty—new listeners will likely desire to start with the band'south earlier epochs. One tin see long-running debates even amidst our contributors encapsulated in entries for beloved songs similar "Jack Straw" and the "Scarlet Begonias"/"Fire on the Mountain" combo, with a contingent of heads here deeply digging the chaotic stadium psychedelia of the after band.
The majority of the main song choices presented beneath come from the archetype years of the '60s and '70s; for many songs, Fundamental Later Versions from the '80s or '90s highlight further developments for the discerning Dead freak. In that location, i tin hear the ring finding new places subconscious in the old, mining the mountain range of cloth they'd generated earlier in their career.
Though the band's proper albums take earned an undeserved bad reputation, American Beauty and Workingman's Dead (both released in 1970) particularly contain a modest handful of songs for which the studio versions remain almost undisputedly definitive. While songs like "Ripple," "Attics of My Life," "Box of Pelting," and several others belong on any list of the band's campfire standards, they're left off here in the interest of songs that varied more greatly in live performance. As well, Europe '72, which features elements re-touched in the studio, generated a number of great alive tunes served perfectly well the version found on that album, including "Ramble on Rose" and "Brownish-Eyed Women." Though the Expressionless continued introducing new originals upward through their last tours, this list focuses on something like a cadre curriculum of alive Expressionless.
Nearly every pick on this listing can and should be argued by anyone with an stance about alive Dead recordings. But these picks are intended to be gateways into dissimilar scenic and well-manicured corners of Grateful Dead land for those who haven't spent much time in that location, places that might feel welcoming earlier drumz/space kicks in. From in that location, the paths are nearly space: an enormous live itemize splattered unceremoniously across streaming services (simply helpfully listed chronologically at DeadDiscs ), the complete fan-curated collection at archive.org (navigable via DeadLists or Relisten.net ), a riot of Grateful Expressionless historical and ahistorical blogs, academic conferences, a nightly slate of #couchtour webcasts, or a live music venue near you lot.
Listen to The Grateful Dead: A Guide to Their Essential Alive Songs on Spotify and Apple tree Music.
"You Don't Have To Inquire"
July sixteen, 1966
Fillmore Auditorium, San Francisco, Calif.
Written past : Grateful Dead
Overly complicated original is highlight of album's worth of songs scrapped before debut LP. Played in 1966 just.
"You Don't Accept to Ask" has all the elements of a corking garage band vocal. It'southward got a groovy bass line, excellent reverby guitar solos, neat group harmony vocals, and Ron "Pigpen" McKernan's combo organ cuts right through everything. Information technology's a zippy little number, guaranteed to fulfill the Dead's dance-ring obligations. Simply while it's catchy, it'due south as well totally fucking bananas. There are several verses, choruses, parts, sections, a bridge or perhaps 3, chords you don't expect (maybe they were surprised too), modulation up, (spoiler warning) modulation back down, then something else entirely, all at a breakneck speed for them and wrapped up in under iv minutes. Information technology kinda sounds similar they (Bob) were still learning the song, but they're all really going for information technology, even if it was destined to be one of approximately an album's worth of originals dropped from the repertoire before the band signed to Warner Bros. in 1967. If at that place was a version of the Nuggets compilations that consisted entirely of songs written and played by lunatics totally zonked on acrid, this would definitely make the cutting. –James McNew
Lore: Deadhead forensics has determined that "You Don't Have to Ask" was too known every bit "Otis on a Shakedown Cruise," an early song title remembered past band members that seemingly didn't survive on tape; at least until an attentive listener noticed that—seconds before this version starts—a band member can be heard off-mic asking, "Otis?"
Listen: Spotify | Apple Music
"Cream Puff State of war"
December 1, 1966
The Matrix, San Francisco, Calif.
Written past: Jerry Garcia
Included on the group's debut LP, a rare original with both words and music past Jerry Garcia and early vehicle for exploratory modal jams.
It's okay if you don't similar the Grateful Dead—fifty-fifty the Greatest American Ring Ever isn't for everybody. Only if you're an ardent Dead hater, I'd urge you to endeavor only this 1 track. In a dimension where the Expressionless flamed out in obscurity, "Cream Puff War" would've justified their inevitable rediscovery past proto-punk collectors. Attacked with an urgency they'd never once again employ, the vocal is on the garage-ier end of the psych spectrum, with a delinquent Farfisa and uncharacteristically fierce Garcia vocals. Of course, information technology's still the Expressionless, and so information technology's a little too fussy for true garage-fuzz, with a pile of chords and sudden swerves into waltz time. Played only during the little-documented fall of 1966 and spring 1967, only a single extended version survives, the band consciously searching for new territory and exploring the modal improv mode they would soon make their ain. Shelved presently thereafter, "Foam Puff War" remains an interesting thought experiment in Grateful Dead alternate history. –Rob Mitchum
Venue : The Matrix was a tiny San Francisco lodge co-endemic past Jefferson Aeroplane's Marty Balin, where the Dead played early on shows and later on experimented with side projects similar Mickey and the Hartbeats. In some circles, it's more famous for live recordings of the Dead's fellow former Warlocks, the Velvet Underground.
Heed: Archive.org
"Viola Lee Blues"
February 2, 1968
Crystal Ballroom, Portland, Ore.
Written by: Noah Lewis (arr. the Grateful Expressionless)
The Expressionless'south offset massive jam, a hopped-up jug band rearrangement built on 3 volcanic improv sections. A dependable mindbender and set centerpiece, whether as an opener or closer, "Viola Lee Blues" outlasted almost everything else from the band'southward 1966 playbook, but disappeared from live shows later on 1970.
Legendary Expressionless tape collector and vault-principal Dick Latvala coined the term "primal Dead" to describe the blustery psychedelia at the cadre of the band'southward legend. And few early performances reveal the group's unhinged nature as openly equally this prison-blues chugger, written by Memphis singer/harmonica histrion Noah Lewis and originally recorded in 1928 by his trio, Gus Cannon'southward Jug Stompers. Most Dead versions of "Viola Lee Blues" are a variant on its noisy appeal, including the rare excellent studio jam on the band's 1967 Warner Bros. debut, yet what makes this show-opener special is power, precision, and firmness. The stand-alone opening chord is a universe. The audio of multiple vocalists screaming out the words betrays an on-stage good fourth dimension rolling. Garcia's mountainous arpeggios—using a deeply metallic guitar tone—are a study in Sturm und Drang naturalism; while the hanging intermission on which the players reunite is big-band tightness exemplified. A perfect vehicle when secondary drummer Mickey Hart joined in 1967, hither the closing jam's spring into Kreutzmann/Hart-driven hyperspace is a premonition of future Rhys Chatham/Glenn Branca/Sonic Youth punk-jazz explosions. Strap the fuck in! –Piotr Orlov
Listen:Annal.org
Key Before Version: September 3, 1967, Rio Nido Dance Hall, Rio Nido, Calif. Recorded merely earlier Mickey Hart joined the ring, the Rio Nido "Viola Lee" is perhaps the best certificate of the early single-drummer Expressionless in total flight, with Garcia spinning out endless hypnotic turns.
The Grateful Dead performing circa 1967. Photo via Leni Sinclair/Getty Images.
"Alligator"
February xiv, 1968
Carousel Ballroom, San Francisco, Calif.
Written by: Ron "Pigpen" McKernan, Phil Lesh, Robert Hunter
Non-performing lyricist Robert Hunter's beginning contribution to a Expressionless song became a playful springboard. "Alligator" most often segued into "Circumspection (Do Not Terminate on the Tracks)," a locomotive blues-fuzz groove almost wholly borrowed from Them'southward "Mystic Eyes," and in this infamous sequence into a blistering half dozen minutes of guitar feedback.
Just before what sounds like a drum circle busts out, Bob Weir leans into the mic and says, "C'mon everybody! Get upward and dance, it won't ruin ya!" That bit of tape lifted afterwards that yr for the band'due south pioneering studio/live hybrid,Anthem of the Sunday. Weir'south got the earnestness of a prom chaperon gently chiding a wallflower. And why shouldn't he? This was an era of raw fun for the Dead, prime Pigpen time, who hoots and hollers through his lead vocal, while Weir implores listeners to "burn down the Fillmore, gas the Avalon," the two venues competing with the band-run Carousel Ballroom. Heavy contest. After the song relaxes from an early Kreutzmann/Hart drum sesh and the guitar finally returns, it's sour but funky . Too good for even the shyest of the shy to not move their butts. –Matthew Schnipper
Listen:Spotify | Apple Music
Cardinal Afterward Version : Apr 29, 1971, Fillmore Eastward, New York Metropolis, Due north.Y. The final version of the song is a leaner reptile but with perhaps even more seize with teeth, the now-solo Kreutzmann drum segment chomping into a thrilling Lesh/Garcia jam.
"St. Stephen"
Baronial 21, 1968
Fillmore West, San Francisco, Calif.
Written by: Jerry Garcia, Phil Lesh, and Robert Hunter
Ambiguous lyrics, an elliptical psychedelic bounce, scorching guitar, occasionally a live cannon onstage, and always a Deadhead favorite.
For a few years in the late '60s, "St. Stephen" anchored a suite that besides included "Dark Star" and "The Eleven," together taking upwardly the kickoff two sides of the pivotal Alive/Expressionless double LP. Building sets around the rolling peaks of the suite, individually and together the songs showcased the band'south latest compositional ideas and quickly developing musical interplay. At the heart was "St. Stephen." Featuring some of Robert Hunter's most lava-lamp-ready turns of phrase ("lady finger dipped in moonlight," anyone?), "St. Stephen" is alluringly simple: a bouncy psychedelic standby that may or may not have anything to exercise with the Christian martyr in its title.
At early performances, similar this August take at the Fillmore Due west, it carries the energy of a ring falling in honey with their own sound, navigating the song'due south left turns with ataraxy. Bob and Jerry sing the verses together with childlike joy, before things slow down and become foggier, buoyed by spacey glockenspiel. Merely a minute later, the whole ring bounciness back into activity with a devilish energy, propelled past one of Jerry's gnarliest riffs. The darkness shrugs, and the Dead ride on. –Sam Sodomsky
What To Listen For: The Live/Dead -era versions of the song end with several verses of a lysergic Irish-sounding jig, both a musical bridge and dramatic energy build before springing into "The Xi" (with which it'southward often erroneously tracked, as here).
Listen: Annal.org
Key Later Version: May five, 1977 New Haven Coliseum, New Oasis, Conn. Revived in slower, elegant form later the band's 1976 return, "St. Stephen" attained a unlike kind of grace, sometimes still finding ecstasy (if non quite psychedelic fury) in the eye jam, as on standalone versions like this ane, though more often segueing into Buddy Holly's "Not Fade Away".
"New Murphy Caboose"
Feb 13, 1968
Carousel Ballroom, San Francisco, Calif.
Written by: Phil Lesh and Bobby Petersen
One of the band's most structurally experimental songs sets a verse form past band friend Bobby Petersen to music.
"It'south a very long matter and it doesn't take a form," Jerry Garcia told an interviewer about the Dead's "New Potato Caboose" around the time the ring started performing it in the late '60s. The band had been writing original material since soon later their 1965 formation, but "New Tater" was an indication of their rapidly expanding ambitions. Written by bassist Phil Lesh from a poem by Bobby Petersen, it highlights the old composition prodigy's studied chops. What Garcia heard as formlessness, Lesh virtually certainly designed—in his own hallucinogenic mode—as specific movements, interconnected with an elusive dream logic.
Sung by Bob Weir with Lesh and Garcia joining for the cascading chorus, Weir sells its mystical (and mayhap even proto-Sonic Youth) atmosphere with a stoney, detached edge during this Carousel Ballroom performance. Though they would never write another song remotely like it, "New Potato Caboose" foreshadows the territory they were well-nigh to conquer. –Sam Sodomsky
What To Listen For : On this classic early homemade, a Deadhead staple sourced from an experimental radio broadcast on and then-freeform KMPX, Garcia'southward wild outro solo dissolves into Weir's "Built-in Cross-Eyed" and a powerful articulated have of the piece of music Deadheads would label "Castilian Jam."
Venue: Operated by a consortium of bands including the Dead, Jefferson Airplane, and Quicksilver Messenger Service, the Carousel Ballroom failed as a concern, and was reopened as the Fillmore Due west past promoter Bill Graham.
Mind: Spotify | Apple Music
"The Xi"
February 28, 1969
Fillmore West, San Francisco, Calf.
Written by: Phil Lesh and Robert Hunter
The band'due south endlessly rehearsed double-drummer mindbender primal to Live/Dead.
"The Xi" is the Grateful Expressionless at their almost joyous, all ascending scales, bursts of melody, shouted lyrics, and tricky meters designed to audio as if everything is on the verge of falling apart. Its essence is right at that place in the title: the song is in 11/8 time, meaning that iii bars of 3/4 are punctuated with a quick 2/4 bash before the cycle starts over again. The eleven/eight frame turns out to be ideal for Garcia and Lesh, who solo in tandem on the best versions of the song. "The Eleven" was shorter, faster, and gnarlier in 1968, and the soloing—the best of which always happens before the brief verses begin—was more than clipped. By the week in tardily February where they recorded the material that wound upwardly on the epochal Alive/Dead , Garcia and Lesh were working like two halves of the same musical mind. A Wednesday prove at the Avalon Ballroom produced the Live/Expressionless version, but the Friday night prove of that aforementioned week, one of iv in a row at the Fillmore Westward, turned out to be the finest unmarried moment for "The Eleven." Garcia and Lesh are like two dogs barking and nipping at each other while running full-speed across a field, never breaking pace, taking turns being in front. Eventually, the tight three-chord structure would bore Garcia, who felt he'd wrung every idea he could out of the song. The Dead dropped it from setlists forever in 1970. But during this precise moment in February 1969 there are more ideas than they know what to do with. –Marking Richardson
What to Listen For: The overlapping three-part song is hard-to-sing overload, featuring some of Robert Hunter'south finest lysergic playfulness in Garcia's trippy countdown function: "Viii-sided whispering hallelujah hatrack, 7-faced marble eye transitory dream doll…"
What Else to Listen For : The drums, homo! Ideally on headphones.
Listen: Spotify | Apple tree Music
The Grateful Dead circa 1968. Photo via Malcolm Lubliner/Michael Ochs Archives/Getty Images.
"Mountains of the Moon"
March ane, 1969
Fillmore Due west, San Francisco, Calif.
Written past: Jerry Garcia and Robert Hunter
The Dead'due south first and near psychedelic folk song has more in mutual with the Incredible Cord Band than Phish, used as a prelude to the jam centerpiece, "Night Star."
The pinnacle old-folkie days of the Expressionless wouldn't come until the early '70s, just "Mountains of the Moon" was foreshadowed that era. Debuted in late '68, the minimal ballad spent the first half of '69 every bit the gentle prelude to its deeper astronomical partner, "Dark Star"; the final few notes of the February 27, 1969 version can be heard during the introductory fade-in to Live/Dead . On Aoxomoxoa , some heavy-handed harpsichord emphasizes the faux-Elizabethan melody and faerie-land lyrics, but live, a stripped-downwards lineup of Bobby on a 12-string, Garcia finger-picking, Lesh burbling, and Tom "T.C." Constanten on organ made for a haunting lull in their key phase. –Rob Mitchum
What to Listen For: Serving every bit a spell to put the band and audition in the ruminative frame of heed for the journey to come, Garcia substantially continues his closing "Mountains of the Moon" solo into the "Dark Star" intro, fifty-fifty while switching from acoustic to electric guitar.
Heed: Spotify | Apple Music
Watch: Jan 18, 1969 Playboy Later on Nighttime, Los Angeles, Calif. To see a possibly-dosed Hugh Hefner swaying forth to "Mountains of the Moon" with his arm around a Bunny, check out the Dead's surreal appearance on Playboy After Dark .
"Friend of the Devil"
May 2, 1970
Harpur College, Binghamton, N.Y.
Written by: Jerry Garcia, John Dawson, and Robert Hunter
Hail Satan!
1970 was a championship season for the devil. The Beatles bankrupt up. Jimi Hendrix and Janis Joplin raised the curtains in the 27 Order. The Kent State massacres compounded the half dozen,173 body bags airlifted back from Vietnam. And the Grateful Expressionless unshackled "Friend of the Devil," the best song ever written about a cuckolded bigamist fleeing from a sheriff's posse and 20 hellhounds, merely to get stuck up by Satan for his final $20.
Apologies to 'Pac and Snoop, but this is the most immortal outlaw anthem nigh attempting to render to your business firm out in the hills right side by side to Chino. Written by Robert Hunter with John Dawson of stoner C&Due west Dead spin-off New Riders of the Purple Sage with Garcia adding the span, the acoustic riffs ramble like an undiscovered escape route. Robert Hunter'due south lyrics shine a searchlight on a Western anti-hero—Butch Cassidy bargaining with Lucifer—sleepless, ragged, and fatal. Only Garcia sings with a weary sweetness on this staple acoustic set. A bouquet in hand, six-shooter backside his back; the poetic conman with insidious alliances, he seduces with his wounded decency, at least until he disappears into a cloud of sulfur. –Jeff Weiss
Mind: Spotify | Apple Music
Fundamental Afterwards Version: June 27, 1976 Auditorium Theater, Chicago, Sick. Following the band's touring hiatus, Garcia was inspired to revive the song in a slower arrangement after hearing a recording of a live Loggins & Messina encompass.
"Brokedown Palace"
August xxx, 1970
KQED Studios, San Francisco, Calif.
Written by: Jerry Garcia and Robert Hunter
Garcia and Hunter's immortal farewell ballad and cosmic love song with Crosby, Stills & Nash-inspired harmonies.
T he massive amount of loftier quality archival audio makes the Grateful Dead'south video output seem minuscule by comparison. Add crummy camerawork and dated psychedelic FX, and you often don't accept too much to expect at. Non so for this uncomplicated and beautiful take of "Brokedown Palace" on local California Goggle box, which keeps the fancy tech to a minimum. But on the chorus, marked by some of the Dead's most beautiful earthy three-function harmonizing, Weir and Garcia's profiles overlap on screen. Information technology's their ain Mamas and Papas or Fleetwood Mac moment: two crooners, a heartthrob and a scruff, in total rhapsody. Sometimes, there seemed to be a disconnect between the band'southward solemn audio and the way they made the audience feel. In 1970, the twelvemonth Garcia and Hunter churned out ii albums of instant hippie standards, it paid off, with the Dead in perfect harmony, both creatively and vocally. Anybody onstage and off is blissed out. How prissy it is to share. –Matthew Schnipper
What to Listen For: Non shown on camera, the high role of the band's three-part harmony is bassist Phil Lesh.
Heed: Archive.org
Key Later Version: May 11, 1977 St. Paul Civic Eye, St. Paul, Minn. Like most everything else in May 1977, "Brokedown Palace" sounded perfect, Donna Jean Godchaux's harmony replacing Lesh's, who mostly stopped singing in the late '70s after straining his song cords.
"Plow On Your Love Light"
September xix, 1970
Fillmore Eastward, New York City, N.Y.
Written past: Joseph Scott and Deadric Malone
A frequent bear witness closer from 1969-1972 and a showcase for Pigpen'due south greasy raps and unfurling blues-psych boogies. From 1969-1971, especially, the Dead spent more time jamming "Love Light" than even "Dark Star," playing information technology more oftentimes and usually for a longer duration equally a populist get-the-heads-dancing rave-up to conclude their most far-out sets.
Defying the summit of primal Expressionless, the gutbucket blues of "Turn on Your Love Light" dominated set lists during the Expressionless's nigh psychedelic era. Usually upwards of xx minutes (and sometimes over 40), the band vamped betwixt allusion-filled raps by frontman Pigpen aimed at pairing off members of the audience. While conducting the ring's deft on-the-fly arrangements, Grunter would spike the Bobby "Blue" Bland original's sweetness into something more libidinal and fetishistic. "Well she'southward got box dorsum nitties/Great big noble thighs/Working hugger-mugger with her boar hog eye," Squealer sang, a bit of mojo jive that one scholar has spent ample fourth dimension decoding .
By September 1970, the Summer of Love had given mode to the Autumn of Fuck. Doing some crowd work, Pig whips the audience into a frenzy, perhaps creating the sort of "weird temper" that led ane feminist reviewer to feel alienated by the "hippie stag political party" afterward that fall. After the band strikes the final beat, Pigpen screams "Fuck!"—issued as both punctuation and control. This "Honey Light" scores 5 fucks—one for each fourth dimension the word is uttered by the band. –Ariella Stok
Heed:Annal.org
Picket: August 16, 1969 Max Yasgur's Farm, Bethel, N.Y. At Woodstock, as the Dead begin a 36 minute "Honey Light", a still-unidentified rando takes over the mic, soon led away when Merry Prankster Ken Babbs distracts him with a joint.
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