Grateful Dead: The Best of the Grateful Dead Live - Volume 1, 1969-1977 (2LP) [RHINO/WARNER]

Why you'll love it

This 180g 2LP set was mastered from the original analogue tapes by Grammy-winning engineer David Glasser and compiled by the band's archivist David Lemieux. It follows the 2015 studio best-of with the Dead where they lived, on stage, including "Estimated Prophet" from Cornell '77.

This edition

• 2LP set
• 180g vinyl
• Mastered from the original analogue tapes

About the album

The Grateful Dead's studio albums are lovely, but anyone who ever went to a show will tell you the songs really grew up in front of a crowd. This set gathers ten of them from the band's first great decade on the road, 1969 to 1977, with Jerry Garcia, Bob Weir, Phil Lesh, Bill Kreutzmann and company stretching out and leaning in.

"St. Stephen" brings the late 60s psychedelia, "Bertha" and "Wharf Rat" first turned up on record on the 1971 live album fans call Skull and Roses, and "Jack Straw" and "Brown-Eyed Women" show off the band's lean, country-tinged early 70s storytelling. "Truckin'" and "Sugar Magnolia" are the road anthems, "The Music Never Stopped" bounces, and "Morning Dew," written by Toronto-born folk singer Bonnie Dobson, gets the slow, epic treatment it deserves. Mark Pinkus served as executive producer.

It's a tidy front door to a very large house, built for the turntable rather than a week of tape trading, and a handy one for the friend who has heard the name but never the music. Ten songs across four sides, which by Grateful Dead standards counts as travelling light.

Also at Kops: more Grateful Dead on vinyl · browse Rock

Tracklist

Listen

On Rhino / Warner Bros. (cat# R1 565461), the 2018 compilation.