Attention Deadheads: Which is the very BEST Grateful Dead album?

for studio albums i like american beauty and workingmans dead.

like toodemo, i think american beauty is one of the greatest albums recorded.

for officially released albums dick's picks 10, dick's picks 4, and live dead are good.

I have so many recordings, bootlegs & such from over the many years following this band as well as individual works also. There really isn't anything I don't live by the Dead.

For studio, I am partial to American Beauty & Workingman's Dead. Live, I enjoy ***** Picks #4. Cd 2 is an hour long w/only 2 songs on it. Pigpen is awesome on Turn On Your Lovelight. Dozin @ the Knick is a personal fave too (both Stella Blue & Black Peter on cd 3...that combo doesn't happen to often). I also like the 2cd of What a Long Strange Trip It's Been. It combines both studio & live cuts of Dead tunage. Very good. I have a rare recording of the Dead that my brother gave me from the New Haven Coluseum (in CT) which has now been torn down. Great recording esp. for being live and it brings back a lot of fond & "hazy" memories :P

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LDEn6R3H06o

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vSFEomvkAPQ

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6kuaTL7G4B4

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zMyaTJF_pLg

go to: dead.net

Depends what you like, really. If you like studio albums, you can't go wrong with American Beauty. I consider that to be one of the greatest albums ever recorded. Personally, I like the live jam albums. Europe 72, Ice Cream Kid, Grateful Dead...stuff like that. But the best live production album is Live Dead. That is without question the best raw live SF band jam album that was commercially released.

There are also dozens of Dick's Picks albums...soundboard releases from the "vault" as they call them. Those are all great on any given day. Almost impossible to pick one really.

If you like acoustic/unplugged stuff, check out "Reckonings." Lot's of good acoustic live versions of some GD "standards" as well as some traditional stuff.

If you are curious about the Dead, this stuff should get you going.

Terripen Station

As you can see, everyone has a different opinion. What I would do is find a site that streams whole songs and then decide for yourself. Live shows can be streamed over at the Live Music Archive site and Myspace has lots of the released stuff that can be streamed. Personally, my favorite studio album is Blues For Allah.

Terripen Station

Workingman's Dead

Anthem of the sunlight is one my own favorites yet American attractiveness is so undisputably between the main suitable albums ever created. i think of that as a results of fact the ineffective made a 30 year occupation out of traveling, I owe it to them to %. a stay album as one among their maximum suitable, and for me it is : Europe seventy two'

Mars Hotel

Shakedown Street