the perfect playlist
  • The Perfect Playlist Book
  • About
  • Contact
  • Store
  • Blog
  • The Perfect Playlists!

Grateful Dead Perfect Playlist - The Best Grateful Dead Songs - To See You Through

6/15/2015

2 Comments

 
To create the Perfect Playlist, I've tried to impossibly accommodate the new initiate and the tape trading Deadhead alike.  Impossible to appease both?

The central question revolves around Dark Star.  The most important Grateful Dead song, and the song that served for the band's greatest live triumphs and its fans' greatest trips.  But how do we justify a 27 minute song consuming so much of our precious 80 minute playlist.  Similar questions arise for other concert favorites.  The calculus becomes easier if we limit ourselves to "studio" albums rather than entirely live performances.  As with all things Dead, even that dichotomy isn't simple.  For true believers, the studio versions are not only beside the point, they're missing the point.  The point of the Dead is the concert.  Studio versions of songs are only useful as a blueprint for what the band would do with the song in concert.  The studio versions are only useful for fans for evoking the concert versions.  The great compilation album, What A Long Strange Trip It's Been includes nearly an album's worth of otherwise unavailable Dead songs (unavailable in studio versions, that is) that some fans treat as the lost missing album, but in live versions, of course.  The Dead are, after all, a live experience.

So few bands of their stature and duration treat their fans to different setlists each night.  Pearl Jam does.  The most bootlegged live bands, from Bob Dylan, The Rolling Stones, and Pink Floyd generally played the same setlist every night during a tour.  Springsteen changes it up a bit, but not a completely new setlist night after night.  And really, with any band that you've loved, and become intensely familiar with, so that you have an opinion as to which live version of a song is best, how many times do you need to hear the classic studio versions again, when there are endless live iterations?

www.headyversion.com can direct you to the most popular live version of each song, with fan opinion and debate commentary.  The usual Cornell and Veneta proponents abound.  We're also treated to great and less well-known versions from across the world and across the decades.

So what have we done?  We've stayed true and brought you a Perfect Playlist of (mostly) studio Grateful Dead, as our starting point.  We can explore the Europe 72 tour once we know the language.  Here we go, right at 80 minutes, hitting the highs from the twin 1970 triumphs Workingman's Dead and American Beauty, diving deeper into the early recordings, and the solo work.  Including the concert favorites and some that I just like.

Box Of Rain                                  American Beauty
Scarlet Begonias                          From The Mars Hotel
Fire On The Mountain                  Shakedown Street
Franklin's Tower                          Blues For Allah
Ripple                                          American Beauty
The Golden Road                        The Grateful Dead
Rosemary                                    Aoxomoxoa
Jack Straw                                   What A Long Strange Trip It's Been
China Cat Sunflower                    Aoxomoxoa
Till The Morning Comes               American Beauty
Brown Eyed Woman                    What A Long Strange Trip It's Been
Ramble On Rose                         What A Long Strange Trip It's Been
Truckin'                                        American Beauty
High Time                                    Workingman's Dead
New Speedway Boogie                Workingman's Dead
Sugar Magnolia                            American Beauty
Casey Jones                                Workingman's Dead
Uncle John's Band                       Workingman's Dead
Cassidy                                        Ace (Bob Weir Solo)

For a band with such an extensive catalog, distilling its essence to 80 minutes means that very deserving songs have been left off the Perfect Playlist.  If you'd like a deeper dive, and a second lick, try out:

One More Saturday Night            What A Long Strange Trip It's Been
The Wheel                                   Garcia
That's It For the Other One          Anthem Of The Sun
Deal                                              Garcia
Estimated Prophet                        Terrapin Station
The Music Never Stopped            Blues For Allah
Shakedown Street                        Shakedown Street
To Lay Me Down                           Garcia
New, New Minglewood Blues       The Grateful Dead
Althea                                           Go To Heaven
Hell In A Bucket                             In The Dark
Doin' That Rag                             Aoxomoxoa
Eyes Of the World                        Wake Of The Flood
Cosmic Charlie                             Aoxomoxoa
U.S. Blues                                     From The Mars Hotel
Touch Of Gray                             In The Dark
Bertha                                           Grateful Dead (Skull and Roses)
Stella Blue                                    Wake Of The Flood
Wharf Rat                                     Grateful Dead (Skull and Roses)
Dark Star                                       Live / Dead
St. Stephen                                   What A Long Strange Trip It's Been
2 Comments
Indiana Ladyboy link
3/25/2021 07:02:42 pm

Hello mate great blog

Reply
Heating Contractors Oak Park link
8/24/2022 10:17:49 am

Hi thanks for posting this

Reply



Leave a Reply.

    Archives

    February 2022
    October 2017
    December 2016
    October 2016
    June 2016
    May 2016
    January 2016
    December 2015
    September 2015
    July 2015
    June 2015
    May 2015
    April 2015
    December 2014
    September 2014
    July 2014
    May 2014
    April 2014

    Categories

    All

    RSS Feed

Powered by Create your own unique website with customizable templates.