Listening Trail - Best Grateful Dead Shows

Another installment in the GDLG Listening Trails Series.

It is understandably natural to want to find your way to the best Dead shows ever when first exploring Grateful Dead music. The band was famous for playing a lot of concerts, and always known for being better live than they ever were on studio albums. However, we are heading into treacherous waters when we try to claim which Dead shows were the best of all time.

None-the-less, that doesn’t seem to change the fact that people are always looking for them. Our goal here will be to call out some performances (from those that have already made it into the Grateful Dead Listening Guide) where the band reaches the golden ring deep inside – shows that truly do stand out for containing extra special musical moments.

A wickedly hard list to compile (and one often fraught with personal opinion), we’ll start below with just a few shows listed chronologically, as truly ranking things in order of greatness is a foolish venture, indeed. No doubt, there will be more “Best Show Ever” trails to come. This first pass is intended to include shows that our entire community could probably agree are true standouts.

Try to forget the “best ever” name of this trail, and see it as a walking tour of some shows that highlight the Dead going over the top musically; hitting musical satori like a bell. These are shows where the Dead’s musical muse is aflame with light and creativity.

Please follow the links below to fully enjoy this Listening Trail.

06/24/70 – Stop here, and don’t pass Go. The sound quality of this tape might be hard on first time listeners (more on that in the review itself). Deadheads may disagree on the topic of “best ever,” but most will agree that it rarely got better than this. Dark Star > Attics Of My Life > Dark Star > Sugar Magnolia > Dark Star > Saint Stephen > China Cat Sunflower > Jam > I Know You Rider. Words can not express… Perhaps one of the longest stretches of pure flowing X factor we have on tape.

07/27/73 – The Watkins Jam. So famous, we often forget just how mesmerizingly special it really was. There was nothing quite like it before or after. This is something for the ages. Note: it’s the audience tape addressed in the review, not the version you might have heard on the So Many Roads boxset. The AUD is fantastic, and a bit of it is featured in podcast listening session 001.

08/06/74 – From a year of knock out performance after performance, there’s something somehow a cut above happening during this day’s first set stand alone Eyes Of The World, and Playin’ In The Band > Scarlet Begonias > Playin’ In The Band. Hold on tight.

05/08/77 – Damned if I don’t include it on a “best ever” list, and perhaps equally damn if I do. Everyone owes it to themselves to figure out how they feel about the most famous Dead tape of them all.