Tom Banjo

Calling all Grateful Dead fans! I thought I’d start a thread for me and whoever else loves the band.
I’ll start the discussion with a couple of questions.
Favorite Dick’s Picks or other live albums? I think Europe ‘72 is hard to beat.
Dead & Company with John Mayer, yay or nay? It took me a bit to get over Mayer is the Garcia role, but now I enjoy it.

Jack Straw

For someone starting out, I highly recommend getting Without A Net with songs culled from the band's spring 1990 tour. Sourced from multi-track recordings, the band is firing on all cylinders in what would be the last several months with keyboardist Brent Mydland in the band. The Europe '72 material is also wonderful and much more adventurous and uncharted improvisational playing. Then, anything from May '77 is stellar as well, including the 5/8/77 Barton Hall Cornell Ithaca NY show. Happy exploring and discoveries!

stvn1974

I have all of the studio albums and several of the live albums/box sets. It is hard to sit down and listen to a three hour show on CD sometimes but when I do I prefer the 1969 stuff.

Tom Banjo

I’ve been a fan for many years (my username comes from Mountains of the Moon), but I guess you could say I recently rediscovered them. My wife has Sirius/XM and I added the app option, so for the last several months I’ve been streaming the Dead channel whenever I can. Such a great catalogue, and I’ve discovered a lot of great material I never knew back in my original GD phase. Such as Jack Straw!
So far I’ve probably enjoyed the mid to late 70’s stuff the most, although Black Muddy River is an underrated gem of the 80’s.
My most disappointing buy so far is the Pacific Northwest ‘73-‘74 album. The Box of Rain on that just makes me cringe, maybe because it was one of my favorites for many years.

Tom Banjo

Downloaded Dead & Company’s 2016 Bonnaroo show a day or two ago and it’s pretty great. Donna Jean sits in for a couple of tracks. I swear it feels like they transition from song to song with no space between for much of first set. Great stuff.
Full setlist:
Truckin->Smokestack Lightning->Bertha
Playin in the Band-> Birdsong
Tennessee Jed
Shakedown Street
Passenger->Birdsong
Casey Jones
set two
Help on the Way-> Slipknot
Scarlet Begonias-> Fire on the Mountain
Terrapin Station->
Drums->Space->
The Other One
Wharf Rat-> Franklin's Tower
E: Touch of Grey

sauce07

I've seen Dead & Co a couple times, really enjoy it for what it is, slowed down dead songs that speed up once the yams start. Meyer is a blast, usually decent song selection. Bobby usually derails the last 1/3 of each set, but that's just my opinion man.

Tom Banjo

Super excited about this, and thought I’d share here.
I recently got tickets for Dark Star Orchestra in Birmingham in April, and Dead & Co. tickets for Charlotte in June. First time seeing both live. I’d love to see JRAD soon too, but it doesn’t look like they’re playing anywhere relatively near me any time soon.

sauce07

JRAD is awesome, love that they don't treat it like a nostalgia act, they actually try to do something with the music.