GET me started in the Dead.

Workingman's Dead. Gotta have it. Plus the live double album of their early 70's European tour.

Plus the first LP. New Minglewood Blues and Viola Lee Blues in particular.

"Without a Net" is a double CD that was popular in the early '90's...it was a collection of live songs taken from the Spring 1990 tour. The sound quality is a true 10/10...and the music is fire! Jerry wasn't banged up and the band was firing on all cylinders.

I'm not really a jam band guy, but they have Dead and Jam channels on satellite radio that are cool to listen to once in a while.

Europe 72 is by far my favorite... China cat into rider is awesome

Drop acid and listen to 5/8/77. Or Live Dead. Or Blues for Allah. Or any random Dick's Picks or vault release.

Watch The Grateful Dead Movie. Browse the archives at archive.org. There's lots of stuff on YouTube. There are a lot of books on the subject. You could get on BitTorrent and download a bunch of shows.

If you're going to get into it, be prepared to devote some time. You can start anywhere. It's going to take a while before you've heard enough variety over three decades to get a representative sampling of their work.

The short answer is start in 1974 and work out from there. That's probably a good approach for any band from the 70's.

^^^
No Pigpen years?

Those are the best.

Haha, I see me and you found that 5-8-77 show to be great.

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Why would you start at 74? Not even a top 5 year touring year imo. 72 and 77 would be the best places to start for a newb.

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Because I think 1974 was the peak year for rock music. Really, I'd say it's '73-'74 but I give the edge to '74. It slopes down from there on either side of the graph with peaks and valleys but I think that era was the pinnacle. Look at what everyone was doing in '74, how many bands had huge album releases that year, or the few who didn't because they just had one in '73.

I'm cool with '72 and '77. I could make an argument for '69 when they had a more limited repertoire and their shows were much more geared toward experimentation. If you're really into the improvisational aspect of their music, some might say those were their peak years.

If you're going to get into the Dead I think you have to get some feeling for what they were like in the 60's, 70's, and 80's. It probably doesn't really matter in what order you take it. For reasons stated above, I've always found that starting at '73/'74 is a good approach.

And don't sell that era short. The Dead kicked arse in '74. Again, watch the GD Movie. It was the end of the Wall of Sound era. They were at the peak of what they had evolved into since Mickey left the band in '71. (You can see Mickey make his return in the GD Movie which was shot at their final shows before taking their hiatus in '75.)

There's not a wrong place to start. I stand by my handy rule of thumb for 70's bands.

If you havent already, check out that Bob Weir documentary, The Other One.

big dead fan here.

5/8/77 was my intro and it's great.

there sound really is different from era to era. the 60s sounded nothing like the 70s, 70s sound nothing like the 80s and same with the 90s.

Lots of good suggestions in here already. Europe 72 is a great representation of their early 70s sound. Dicks Picks Vol. 1 is great. Love the Without a Net rec too. great live album. Eyes of the World w/ Branford kills it.