Grateful Dead - Live Dead

Improvisation had been the Grateful Dead's tie-dyed calling card since their beginnings as the house band for novelist Ken Kesey's mythic mid-60s "acid tests." So, after the fair-to-middling artistic results of their initial three studio-recorded albums, the band opted to release their first-ever concert collection--and irrevocably changed the course of their entire career. Propelled by the epic classic, "Dark Star," as well as folk-tinged "Death Don't Have No Mercy,' and the fusion-ish "The Eleven," Live Dead showcased the instinctual, probing interplay between Jerry Garcia, bassist Phil Lesh, and the rest of the band, and finally captured the Dead's special magic for all to hear. --Billy Altman

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