Playlists
Spotify mixes hand-built by the Curator — dream sets, jam runs, era deep-dives, and listening companions assembled from across the corpus. Each one has a thesis. Press play.
Cross-era dream set · 10 most-mentioned songs
The best available version of each of the ten songs the Curator's notes mention most. Songs span incompatible eras — Pigpen-era Dark Star, mid-70s Help-Slip-Franklin, late-70s Estimated Prophet. No real show could ever have contained all of these, which is the point.
20+ minute versions only
One rule: nothing under twenty minutes. A chronological arc from Pigpen's peak Lovelight to the Dark Star comeback. Every track on this playlist is the kind of run that turns a show into a religious experience.
1974 Wall of Sound dream set · Spotify-available only
Two sets of 1974 material that could have been one impossible night. Built entirely from Spotify-available official releases, weighted toward the Curator's personal callouts. The year the band sounded like a cathedral.
High-BPM workout fuel · officially released only
Built for sustained energy — runs, lifts, workouts. Every track is a propulsive Dead song pulled from officially-released takes, weighted toward Cornell '77, Englishtown, Closing of Winterland, and the GAMH '75 Wall-of-Sound peak. Paced as a workout arc: warm-up rockers, sustained chargers, a mid-set peak, then four push-to-finish closers.