The uninitiated looking for an entry point to this bewildering catalogue should seek out What a Long, Strange Trip It’s Been, a good one-volume retrospective, or So Many Roads, a box set that gives a solid overview of the Dead’s many incarnations as a touring band. 

 The early albums, particularly Anthem of the Sun, are ambitious but awkward, as the Dead experiments with everything from finger cymbals to crotales and extended song suites.  

 Workingman’s Dead, in part inspired by the rustic soul of the Band, ranks as the Dead’s studio masterpiece, followed closely by American Beauty. The focus is on the songs, rather than the jams, and these would provide the focal point of an era, spanning 1969–74, when the Dead played some of... 

 Live Dead is where the band finds its voice, particularly on a 24-minute "Dark Star" that is closer in feel to Miles Davis' jazz-fusion than rock. The song is the acid test, if you will, of Dead-dom, both the defining work in the canon and the most demanding. It was among the first Hunter ly... 

 Workingman’s Dead, in part inspired by the rustic soul of the Band, ranks as the Dead’s studio masterpiece, followed closely by American Beauty. The focus is on the songs, rather than the jams, and these would provide the focal point of an era, spanning 1969–74, when the Dead played some of... 

 The Dead’s last major statement as a studio band would be Terrapin Station, the epic title track ranking with the finest of the Hunter-Garcia collaborations.  

 The uninitiated looking for an entry point to this bewildering catalogue should seek out What a Long, Strange Trip It's Been, a good one-volume retrospective, or So Many Roads, a box set that gives a solid overview of the Dead's many incarnations as a touring band. 

 The late Seventies and Eighties saw the Dead struggling to remain relevant amid unfriendly commercial trends, hitting its nadir in disco experiments such as Shakedown Street, but improbably scoring a major hit with the wryly touching “Touch of Grey” from In the Dark. 

 The late Seventies and Eighties saw the Dead struggling to remain relevant amid unfriendly commercial trends, hitting its nadir in disco experiments such as Shakedown Street, but improbably scoring a major hit with the wryly touching “Touch of Grey” from In the Dark. 

 Among Dead arcana, Grayfolded stands apart: a two-CD deconstruction of “Dark Star.” Sound engineer John Oswald, who coined the term “Plunderphonics” to describe how he manipulates and layers or “folds” recorded music, compresses 25 years of “Dark Star” performances into two epic t... 

 Garcia’s death in 1995 effectively ended the band, but not the flood of recordings. Particularly remarkable is the ongoing Dick’s Picks series, named after the late Dead tape archivist Dick Latvala, which cherry-picks some of the band’s finest concert recordings. Best of the bunch is Volume... 

 A few months later, the Dead nearly topped that performance; their Harpur College concert in Binghamton, NY (Vol. 8), should give pause to anyone who buys into the Dead’s reputation as mellow. Fresh off recording Workingman’s Dead, the band opens in acoustic mode, which brings a more melodic ... 

 The Dead began as the house band for the acid tests in mid-Sixties San Francisco, making the transition from a jug band to garage-blues rockers documented on the Birth of the Dead album, and eventually to something far more difficult to categorize. 

 After the Dick’s Picks series came to a close in 2005, it was succeeded by Road Trips, which – unlike Dick’s Picks – often focus on material from multiple concerts on a given tour rather than one single show. Vol. 1 No. 1 (from an East Coast tour in 1979) and Vol. 3 No. 1 (from Oakland, 1... 

 After the Dick’s Picks series came to a close in 2005, it was succeeded by Road Trips, which – unlike Dick’s Picks – often focus on material from multiple concerts on a given tour rather than one single show. Vol. 1 No. 1 (from an East Coast tour in 1979) and Vol. 3 No. 1 (from Oakland, 1...