- Overall album rank: #10,466 - Rank in decade: #1,551 - Rank in year: #142 - Appears in: 33 charts. In hindsight, the Dead’s final studio album’s title has an ironic twist: The band was no longer built to last. Their studio albums, stripped of the improvisations and sonic explorations featured in their live performances, showcase the incredible songwriting of the Jerry Garcia/Robert Hunter and Bob Weir/John Perry Barlow partnerships. The true standout here is the ballad “Standing on the Moon,” which features Jerry and Robert Hunter taking stock of their lifelong success and concluding they’d rather be in a lover’s embrace. Genres: Jam Band, Roots Rock, Folk Rock. Holiday Sale! Find Jerry Garcia discography, albums and singles on AllMusic. If this album didn’t include the supremely cheesy disco-rock cover of “Dancin’ in the Streets,” it would probably shoot up a few rankings. The only track not limited for time by scrupulous record executives was “Viola Lee Blues,” a 10-minute enthralling odyssey that transforms a three-chord bluesy jugband melody into a multidimensional vamp that easily fit as a soundtrack to many Bay Area boomers’ acid-test experiences. “Musically, this is a deceptively demanding combination of American Beauty and Aoxomoxoa,” rock critic Robert Christgau wrote of the Dead’s sixth studio album. It’s a shame the Dead didn’t include the same sessions’ takes on gorgeous traditionals “Peggy-O” and “Jack-a-Roe,” because Go to Heaven might’ve had an entirely different and better feel. The title track, meanwhile—with its statement of purpose and all—would’ve been a better offering for rock radio, but sadly got overlooked by whoever made such decisions. ... Jerry Garcia Band (with Keith and Donna Godchaux and Merl Saunders) 28 Feb 1980 : After Midnight : Jerry Garcia Band (with Ozzie Ahlers) Before the Dead were psychedelic space cadets or hippie cowboys, they were a blues-rock band. 1, Saunders/Garcia/Kahn/Vitt, 1988 Keystone Encores Vol. As such, this list solely focuses on the albums featuring original studio recordings—i.e., albums like Europe ’72 are not included, despite the heavy use of studio overdubs and mixing. But as with all the Dead’s more mediocre studio efforts, the great songs on this record became live staples, all without the slithery and misguided self-indulgence of their studio versions. Get a year of Beast Inside for only $19.99, 8/27/1972 at the County Fairgrounds in Veneta, Oregon, when Jerry himself told Weir it was totally fine, recorded while he was well aware he was near-death, as drummer Bill Kreutzmann wrote in his autobiography. Founding member and original frontman Ron “Pigpen” McKernan, who died in 1973, is enshrined here as his whirling Vox organ and harmonica breathe a primal fire into nearly every track. All Good Things: Jerry Garcia Studio Sessions is a six-CD box set by Jerry Garcia. Stephen,” “China Cat Sunflower,” and “Cosmic Charlie.”. (Is it just me or could the song’s intro have easily soundtracked a Scorsese segue?). There are many obstacles (mostly imaginary) to the average person listening to the Dead, but once you get it, you truly get it: The Dead were among the greatest rock, folk, and country-rock songwriters of the 20th century. Essential tracks: “Terrapin Station Part 1,” “Estimated Prophet,” and “Samson and Delilah.”. Part of what makes a classically great songwriter immediately identifiable is the ease with which their songs can be covered or reworked into a different tempo, swing, or genre altogether. Essential tracks: “Touch of Grey,” “Black Muddy River,” and “Hell in a Bucket.”. On their third studio album, pronounced “ox-oh-mox-oh-ah,” the Dead reached the pinnacle of their psychedelic-tinged experimentation—as the trippy acid-induced cover underscores—with freak-folk acoustic Appalachian folk songs and jagged acid rock tunes that scream peak Haight-Ashbury. Shop eight volumes of Jerry Garcia Band live music & more! “Estimated Prophet,” a tripped-out song about a messianic zealot, is one of Bob Weir’s finest vocal turns. Where to start with live Dead? Albums include Cats Under the Stars, Jerry Garcia Band, and After Midnight: Kean College, 2/28/80. Jerry Garcia Albums. Our team of experts breaks it down, combing through thousands of shows to find their greatest songs and most transcendent moments 8 essential Grateful Dead albums you need to own. Essential tracks: “Standing on the Moon,” “Built to Last,” and “Victim or the Crime.”. The album’s bookends, “Uncle John’s Band” and “Casey Jones,” are among the era’s most influential and widely recognized songs, largely thanks to their easy accessibility on classic-rock radio, while urgent ballads like “High Time” and “Dire Wolf” show off Garcia/Hunter as a formidable country folk-writing duo on par with Dylan, Gram Parsons, Robbie Robertson, and the whole cabal. Hippie-folk tunes like “Sugar Magnolia” and “Ripple” sound like what most millennials imagine their parents’ hazy, lazy summer memories look like, while “Truckin’” is the quintessential American open-highway song. There was a Top 10 single at last: “Touch of Grey,” from the 1987 LP, In the Dark . Cuts like Jerry’s breathtaking, twinkling ballad “Stella Blue” and the slide-guitar-and-bass-thump of “Row Jimmy” show off the band’s astounding songsmanship, while “Eyes of the World” boasts of the technical mastery of the Dead as a cohesive unit in a jazz-like ensemble. We haven't included Jerry Garcia live albums or compilations, so everything you see here should only be studio albums.