POLL: Best Grateful Dead release

OTOH, I think it was Dave Marsh that wrote The Dead should never be allowed near a Chuck Berry song ever again.

so so otm

i'm in a rental car w/ satellite radio for the next month. quality-wise, the dead station is just the most wildy, exasperatingly vacillating listening experience going.

Only two votes for Blues For Allah? That album rules. Dead studio albums, while not as good as the live stuff obviously, are typically underrated imo. I jam Wake Of The Flood, Shakedown Street, Terrapin Station, Mars Hotel and especially Blues For Allah on a regular basis. In The Dark is surprisingly good too.

We should have a poll with just studio albums (though it's hard to believe studio albums won this poll - maybe we should limit the poll to people who, you know, actually listen to the Grateful Dead?).

Was looking at the Jays schedule for a game in July, and there's an Angels date where it's "Grateful Dead Day." Jerry Garcia bobblehead, tie-dyed T-shirt, dosed as you enter? I don't know, but I'm intrigued.

So many teams are doing this, the Islanders just did one:

Grab your tie-dye t-shirts and aviator shades and join us on 4/8 for Jerry Garcia Night. 🐻

Purchase a special ticket and receive a one-of-a-kind Jerry Garcia bobblehead. With every ticket purchased, $10 will be donated to the Rex Foundation.

— x - New York Islanders (@NYIslanders) March 12, 2023

Yankees did one last year:

Join us at Yankee Stadium on Sept. 5 for Jerry Garcia Bobblehead Day! A portion of every ticket sold will support the @RexFoundation.

Tickets 🎟️: https://t.co/bwTnZk154d pic.twitter.com/MyC3V2QITq

— New York Yankees (@Yankees) August 24, 2022

If I could vote over, it would be Aoxomoxoa. I wonder to what extent people shy away from talking about it because they don't know how to pronounce it. A record store owner I knew in the 90s pronounced it "ahhg-ZON-dra" and pretty soon he had several of his hangers-on doing it too.

Ah, didn't realize it was a new thing--maybe my bobblehead guess is right. (Maybe the Jays will mix things up and make it a Pigpen bobblehead.)

I can't pronounce Aoxomoxoa either, but I do like it.

Lol I might have to start saying "ahhg-ZON-dra".

If I could only pick one release I'd probably go for Steppin' Out, the comp of UK material from the Europe 72 tour. Studio, either American Beauty or Anthem of the Sun.

Agree that Steppin' Out is very fine - beautiful version of Comes a Time, red hot Greatest Story Ever Told etc. I also really like the 71 Fillmore East comp, Ladies and Gentleman ... the Grateful Dead, especially the whole of disc three.

Years ago, Dave Gibbons told me he referenced Aoxomoxoa in issue five of Watchmen because the whole comic is filled with palindromes, doubles, mirror images etc. You can just about make it out on the first and last panel of this page:

https://preview.redd.it/e5bq0fgzpqsa1.jpg?width=1066&format=pjpg&auto=webp&v=enabled&s=052ea61be0b58228bd8843bd4a3c16ff25bd7bb9

Our local AA team - the Bowie Baysox - has been doing Grateful Dead nights in the past few years as well.

https://scontent-atl3-1.xx.fbcdn.net/v/t39.30808-6/301663697_10160287791379675_2630031181872030361_n.jpg

Lots of potential for overlap between Dead and baseball audiences - long, boring-to-outsiders events in huge stadiums with the possibility of nerding out over deep minutia and stats.

https://i.redd.it/qfdgc2qqdvs41.jpg

https://scontent-atl3-1.xx.fbcdn.net/v/t39.30808-6/301663697_10160287791379675_2630031181872030361_n.jpg?_nc_cat=106&ccb=1-7&_nc_sid=730e14&_nc_ohc=n52-zLgLu4cAX_TdC6m&_nc_ht=scontent-atl3-1.xx&oh=00_AfDi0niQL6e-mCujZYHGlN2QodL6iFkwWyjsG7Lum64EVA&oe=6442F222

God, I love Mickey.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DWvEh-oSk_8

https://i.imgur.io/jYdzon9_d.webp?maxwidth=640&shape=thumb&fidelity=medium