Your Favorite Grateful Dead Era
 

1966-1973 Pigpen




1974-1979 Keith


1980-1990 Brent




1990-1995 Vince




by the way, rest in peace and god bless the soul of all these gentlemen who ALL died in the line of duty playing keys for the dead...

Pig went out by the bottle, Keith by the car, Brent by the speedball, and Vince by his own hand...

damn that curse!

...that really is ironic, wow. Hah.

I still don't know tooooooo much about the band, but I'd say Pigpen. The songs he did vocals on were like, I don't know, he was great. Brent is kinda cool from the few songs I've heard with him. To be honest I have never even heard of Vince, I thought Brent was there til the end.

I've always enjoyed the fluidness of the keith era, even if it did mean putting up with Donna Jean.

agreed, the keith days were relatively nice days for the dead, they really evolved their style.

I myself like the dead in chronological order..

my first love is Pigpen, that bastard knows the blues!

Then I fell for Keith, cuz 1974 and 1978 were fucking golden years for the dead, really really good live music, keith really evolved the dead to what they would become later, took them out of the blues and out of the dark star era and led them into a more jazzy, more musical time.

Brent, shit brent was as much fun as Pig, perhaps brent's style was a true blend of Keith and Pig, and it made the 80s good years for the dead as well.

Last of all there is Vince, good ol vince, unfortunetely I only like vince's work from 1990-1992, after that I think the dead went back too noodling too much, not enough solid music, but many many deadheads will punch me in the mouth for that, they absolutely adore 1990s dead..

The year or so when Tom Constanten played with them has always a warm place in this little heart of mine. He survived!

Pigpen

I've only got their first three studio LPs and Live/Dead so i assume, by default, that I like the Pigpen era best.

Same here really, Live/Dead is a great record.

Yeah, it is great, and the three studio ones i've got (Grateful Dead, Anthem of the Sun and Aoxomoxoa) are very good too. I'd sort of convinced myself for years that I didn't like The Grateful Dead, something I managed to sustain up until I actually sat down and listened to them. That was when I annoyingly discovered that actually I quite like them.

what? no bruce hornsby???

(lol)


ok. now that "it's just the way it is" is stuck in my head, this shit ain't funny anymore.

What Demonrail said, though on the SF acid-bingo side, I prefer the bummer trip of the 1st Mad River LP, and for the folky-blues side, I go for the rolling thunder juggernaut that is The Band.

Yeah, the Band are pretty much in a league of their own for me at the moment. I've not heard anything by Mad River. I'll definitely check that album out.

I love those 1973 epic shows....the 77 run is also quite tasty.Don't really care much after 79 though.