Grateful Dead: Next Steps

Editors’ Notes The Dead's legacy is often reduced to lengthy noodling jams, shape-shifting live shows, and the fascinating counterculture that surrounded them for more than 50 years. We love those things, but in the midst of all that, what gets lost is the fact that the band had actual songs! Check out the Steely Dan-style jazz-funk vibes of “West L.A. Fadeaway,” "Cream Puff War”'s raw punk energy and garage-band raunch, the poetic soul-baring of “Attics of My Life,” the bluesy, autobiographical mission statement "The Music Never Stopped.” The Dead's hybridization of Americana goes off in a million different directions; give this playlist a listen and it just might change what you think of them.