Best Grateful Dead album to start with

Dicks Picks and so on and on and on.....Great live recordings from all the years. Studio, got to get American Beauty, Workingman's Dead, Wake of the Flood, Mars Hotel.

 

My first Grateful Dead album ( 1975?) was 100% because a Senior in HS ( I was a Junior) had it on 8-track was
" Mars Hotel" ( which actually has 2 Phil Lesh lead vocal songs!).

He ( had $$) had a blue/white Stripe AMC Javelin/AMX and an 8-track- totally bad*ss!

Anyway I got "Mars Hotel" on vinyl and my first 'stereo component' system that Summer, before my Senior year.

My first GD recommendations would be American Beauty or Workingman's Dead for studio, and '72 Live European Tour- and then ( if you like them), you get everything, and never stop!
Here is TV clip from '72:

And a few years later, Long Live Jerry!

 

Dicks picks #1 is killer. Really good sound. Also check out Jerry at live at the keystone. Some pretty good picking.

 

Start at the beginning ~ The Golden Road To Unlimited Devotion

 

I’m like you, that’s one band that never interested me. I’m 67 and never got into them.

 

Watch the Amazon Original mini-series on the Dead, it's called "Long Strange Trip".

Then listen along to the albums as you watch it as they are mentioned.

GREAT series.

The dead are so different it's helpful to have something like this as a guide.

There might be a book that serves this purpose even better, but I haven't read it.

I don't know how you can "not get" the Dead if you play guitar unless you just absolutely hate playing rhythm.

I get how weird they are but so many of their songs just have phenomenal rhythms that are super fun to play.

 

American Beauty

 

Europe ‘72.
Lots of material & variety.
Good examples of progressive country, cosmic country, and county rock. It is refreshingly not “pop”.

 

Smart move.
Don't change a thing.

 

One of these, or all of them eventually and then the last one: Working Man's Dead, American Beauty, Europe 72', The Mars Hotel. And to really complete the baptism: Merle Saunders and Jerry Garcia "KeyStone Companions: The Complete 1973 Fantasy Recordings". The last one is a six LP, live set recorded over a period of days at the Keystone night club in Berkley. IMHO, it's pure Jerry, and better than anything that the Dead ever did. That and the Legion of Mary.

 

I like the night before... ;-)

 

Axis Bold As Love...

 

Europe '72 for sure. Loose enough, tight enough, jammy enough, singles-ey enough, gorgeously played and sweetened later in the studio. And from an era that's a little bit connected to the 1969 band, the 1977 band. Kind of the perfect average Grateful Dead experience, IMO.

 

Studio albums don't capture the Dead.
Live albums and bootlegs!

 

Like so many others here, I think, the Skull and Roses (simply called Grateful Dead but had a much different name to begin with) Europe, Workingman's Dead and American Beauty (which to me is like a double album) are the best. I've probably listened to the Dead more than any other single artist in the last 50 years and those are still my favorite albums.

 

The obligatory Grateful Dead Sucks! contribution to any thread dealing with them.

Such a valuable contribution to the discussion and really answers the OPs question.

I'll never understand the motivation behind posts like this.

 

I was in the OP's shoes for awhile. I had this thing where every year I would try to grok the Dead, and I never got it... Until late last year - - and then I got it!

I would say Workingman's through Mars Hotel are the most accessible points of entry, including Europe '72.

Before and after that they are still good, but this is the zone.

 

Seems unpopular, but Aoxomoxoa.

 

There was a stretch of time when I was in college that I loved them. That was 100 years ago. No more.
But Europe '72 is their best, IMO.

 

If you want to dive right in, and deep. Blues for Allah