The Very Best of [Best of, Original recording remastered]

But this CD shouldn't be you only Grateful Dead CD in your collection. Grateful Dead was, by all means, a LIVE BAND, and on this CD you'll find only one live version ("One more Saturday night"). So, if you should happen to like this CD, check out some of their live recordings too. There are a whole bunch of live albums available, so it's often hard to decide which one to buy and which one to avoid. Well, let me help you. You can't go wrong if you buy either of the following three albums: "Ladies and gentlemen..." consists of live recordings from five shows at the closing of Fillmore East, April 1971. "Stepping out...England '72" is a compilation of highlights from their UK gigs on their famous European tour in April and May 1972. "The closing of Winterland" covers the entire New Year's show at Winterland 1978/79. All three CDs show Grateful Dead on top of their career, and it will sure give you an experience of a lifetime!

Back to the CD: The period from 1971-72 is, for some reason, not represented in this "very best of" collection. The majority of the songs (7 of 17) are from 1970, including five from their best studio album "American beauty". The rest of the songs are mostly from 1973 to 1978. "The golden road" (1967) represents their early years while "Touch of grey" and "Hell in a bucket" are songs from their commercial break through, as late as 1987.

One single CD with the very best of Grateful Dead will always cause problems. Since everyone has their own favourites, you can't put all the best songs on one CD. It's just impossible. But some songs are definitely missing. OK, I can understand why a 23 minutes "Dark star" wasn't included, but what about songs like "Scarlet begonias" and "Playing in the band"? They are way more essential than "Fire on the mountain" or "Hell in a bucket"! Songs like "China-cat sunflower", "The other one" and "Me and my uncle" could easily have made it to this compilation too. Personally, I would have liked to see "Going down the road feelin' bad" on this CD.

But don't misunderstand me, this is a great record, and it should be found in every music lover's CD collection. It's a highly recommended CD!

Now that the Grateful Dead has remastered all of the 22 official albums, the hardcore Deadheads will probably want to recollect all of the orginal releases, because there is a significant improvement on the sound of the remastered editions. The track separation has dramtically improved the listenability of even some of their most ragged sounding efforts. Each time I've listened to the remastered editions of these tunes I've picked up on musical subtleties that were unmasked by the remixing of the analog masters, using the highly developed digital technology that we now call "state of the art". So for me, I will be buying (for the third time) all the 22 Grateful Dead offical releases that have been remastered. It will take some time however, because there seems to be no end to releases from Dick LaVala's archieves or ones from "The Vault" that keep on coming. Until I can afford to rebuy all of the remastered offical releases, this haphazard collection of Dead tunes sounds fantastic.