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[SD-Ness]

I've listened to only two songs by them. Tell me the good stuff.

 

[MetatronM]

To be honest, it has been a while since I really listened to any Dead stuff, but I'll do my best. With the Dead, live performance is almost ALWAYS >>>>>>>> studio.

As for albums to start with...

American Beauty (just about this whole album is gold)

Workingman's Dead (see above)

Terrapin Station (mainly for Estimated Prophet and the Terrapin suite)

There are plenty of others, of course, but these three are sort of the base essentials, at least as an intro to the band.

Also, everybody knows Jerry Garcia, but the man to listen for in the Dead is Bob Weir. Jerry was always the icon, but Bob Weir is the rock of the band and is certainly, by far, the superior vocalist.

As for live stuff, any of the dozens of volumes of Dick's Picks is good, as is Without a Net (especially if yu want to hear an extraordinarily long but very good 16 minute version of Eyes of the World featuring Branford Marsalis on sax).

And whatever you do, for the love of god, stay far far away from Dark Star. It goes on forever (longest version I've ever seen listed was about 45 minutes o_0....and that's just one song), and it's not very good.

 

[Ferd]

Metatron gives bad advice. Dark Star is one of the best songs ever. The first two albums he listed are great though.

Weir is a superior vocalist, but Garcia is a better singer. Examples: 6/28/88 Believe It Or Not, 7/9/95 So Many Roads, 5/8/77 Morning Dew. Any Morning Dew for that matter. Or Stella Blue. Garcia's soul is deeper than any spit spewing scream that Weir ever "sung". Although he is an extremely unique rhythm guitar player, if you want to call what he did "rhythm", and an accomplished songwriter. The perfect foil for Garcia.

Start with Live/Dead. And then buy any Dick's Picks. Or just go here: http://www.archive.org/audio/etreelisting-browse.php?cat=Grateful Dead

You can get almost any circulating show there, aside from the ones that are released commercially.

Recommendations -
11/11/1973
11/17/1973
10/25/1973
2/28/1969
3/1/1969
Anything from May 1977
5/11/1972
4/8/1972
9/21/1972
9/24/1972
10/18/1974
7/19/1974
10/21/1971
12/31/1976
9/2/1978
10/21/1978 (Stella Blue)
11/20/1978
10/16/1981
10/8-9/1989
3/29/1990 (The first Branford Marsalis show)
Anything from Summer '90
9/10/1991 (Branford)
9/4/1991
10/1/1994
10/14/1994 (Scarlet>Fire)

That should be enough for now.

 

[SD-Ness]

WOW. Thanks. What is this site? Awesome!

 

[ikalugar]

I agree with ferd on Garcia and that site, both awesome. And you may wanna check out some Jerry Garcia Band stuff and Garcia/David Grisman. Jerry>*

 

[SD-Ness]

My interesst in Grateful Dead has once again returned. I just went to that site to download a couple of songs again and remembered that there are a bunch of file types for each song. Which is the best to get out of 64Kbps MP3, Ogg Vorbis, Flac, VBR MP3? Quality-wise, yes, it's probably the largest sized file, but is there a point to where the quality difference is indistinguishable and that the extra file size is just taking up space?

 

[brooklyngooner]

Ferd's recs are much better. Unofrtunately he left of the Ithaca '77 shows which is unforgivable. I saw a lot of those 90's shows and I'd stay away from a lot of them. Stream them at www.deadshow.org.

 

[Ferd]

I prefer other shows from '77. 2/26, 5/3, 5/9, 5/18, 5/19, 5/21, 5/22, 5/28, 10/29, 11/4, 11/6. The Cornell show is definitely worth hearing though, many times. A sublime Scarlet-> Fire and the best Morning Dew. Oh, and 9/3.

 

[JoshuaJSlone]

My interesst in Grateful Dead has once again returned. I just went to that site to download a couple of songs again and remembered that there are a bunch of file types for each song. Which is the best to get out of 64Kbps MP3, Ogg Vorbis, Flac, VBR MP3? Quality-wise, yes, it's probably the largest sized file, but is there a point to where the quality difference is indistinguishable and that the extra file size is just taking up space?

FLAC would be the best by far... but also oh so large. It's lossless compression, so it's maybe 1/3-1/2 smaller than uncompressed. 64kbps would easily be the worst. Vorbis and VBR MP3 tend to sound fairly similar at similar bitrates, but it appears archive.org has their VBR MP3s set to about 192kbps compared to ~128kbps for the Vorbis, so I'd go witht he VBR MP3.

 

[PotatoeMasher]

I agree with ferd on Garcia and that site, both awesome. And you may wanna check out some Jerry Garcia Band stuff and Garcia/David Grisman. Jerry>*

Shady Grove > *

you can dl garcia/grisman stuff at audiolunchbox.com for 9.99 an album...

 

[hooded pitohui]

My favorite Dead album is easily Reckoning, which I wholeheartedly endorse if you can't get enough live acoustic lovin'.