History YMMV / TheGratefulDead

* AudienceAlienatingPremise: They are up there with Frank Zappa and the Mothers of Invention and Lou Reed and the Velvet Underground as defining unconventional music of the 1960s. Jerry partially lampshaded this with the "licorice" quote.

* SugarWiki/SweetDreamsFuel: Some of the band’s folk material probably qualifies – “Attics of My Life”, for example.
* TearJerker: [[TearJerker/TheGratefulDead Have their own page.]]
* TrueArtIsIncomprehensible: At times, their music could get this way. “What’s Become of the Baby” and some live versions of “Feedback” (which is mostly ExactlyWhatItSaysOnTheTin) are good examples.

*** Overall: The ''Music/AmericanBeauty'' signatures take the top spot, sharing the wealth with "Dark Star", "Casey Jones", "Wharf Rat", "One More Saturday Night", "Dark Hollow", "Sugaree", "Shakedown Street", and "Touch of Grey"

** ''Shakedown Street'': The title track

** ''Live/Dead'': "Dark Star" or [[CoveredUp "Death Don't Have No Mercy"]]

** ''Europe '72'': "Cumberland Blues", "One More Saturday Night", [[CoveredUp "You Win Again"]], "Brown-Eyed Woman", or "Tennessee Jed"

** ''Blues for Allah'': "Franklin's Tower", "The Music Never Stopped", or "Sage & Spirit"

** ''Shakedown Street'': The self-titled track

** ''Built to Last'': "Foolish Heart", the self-titled track, or "Standing On the Moon"
** ''Without a Net'': "Looks Like Rain"

* SignatureSong: By studio albums...

** “What’s Become of the Baby” probably ruined a rather large number of LSD trips back in the day.
** "Blues For Allah," especially the second movement "Unusual Occurrences in the Desert." The dissonance continually grows throughout the piece, becoming a chaotic whirlwind (or sandstorm, as the case may be) of dizzying instrumental mayhem.

* SignatureSong: Almost certainly “Truckin’”, although “Box of Rain”, “Casey Jones”, and “Touch of Grey” also have strong claims. If we consider their live output separately from their studio work, “Dark Star” and "The Other One" have the strongest cases to be the signature song of their live repertoire.

* AudienceAlienatingPremise: They are up there with Frank Zappa and the Mothers of Invention and Lou Reed and the Velvet Underground as defining unconventional music of the 1960s. Jerry partially lampshaded this with the "liquorice" quote.

* CoveredUp: A lot of listeners probably know songs like “Not Fade Away”, “Mama Tried”, “Morning Dew”, and “Turn On Your Love Light” better from the Grateful Dead’s live cover versions than they know them from the original artists (in these four cases, Music/BuddyHolly, Music/MerleHaggard, Bonnie Dobson, and Bobby Bland, respectively). “Morning Dew”, in a rare case of a song being CoveredUp by two separate artists, was also performed by Music/JeffBeck on ''Truth'' (with Music/RodStewart on vocals!), though it probably doesn’t help the fame of Dobson’s version that she didn’t record a studio version until 1969, by which point Beck and the Dead had both already recorded theirs. Also notable is “Me and My Uncle”, written by John Phillips of Music/TheMamasAndThePapas and actually the song the Dead performed most often in their concerts, with 616 known performances. Phillips didn’t even remember writing it, as he had been incredibly inebriated at the time; the first commercial recording of the song was by Music/JudyCollins, who had recorded Phillips making it up on the spot and then recorded her own performance. The Dead apparently learned it from Curly Jim Cook. Phillips would later joke that every time a royalty check for the song came in, he would regain a little of his memory of writing it.

** The most obvious split is "who was the best keyboardist," with the most common contenders being Pigpen, Keith, and Brent. Pigpen fans praise his personality and charisma, and enjoy the blues touch he brought to the Dead's early sound. Keith fans enjoy his creative playing style (especially pre-hiatus), and credit him with pushing the Dead's jams to interesting new territories and helping the Dead recover from Pigpen's decline. Brent fans hail him has a point of consistent creativity who crafted his own unique sound with the band through his heavy use of the Hammond organ, and also enjoy his songwriting and singing touches in the discography. Sometimes Bruce Hornsby is added to the list for balancing his already-established solo style with the greater Dead sound. TC and Vince Welnick aren't mentioned as often, but even they have their fans.

* FollowTheLeader: The Dead, and their improvisational concert performances, inspired an entire "jam band" musical genre that began to take shape in the 1980s. Music/{{Phish}} and the Music/DaveMatthewsBand are the best known of these groups, with Widespread Panic, Blues Traveler, The String Cheese Incident, The Aquarium Rescue Unit, moe., Gov't Mule, Blues Traveler and Spin Doctors also gaining renown in the 1990s. Although all of these bands counted the Dead as a major influence, all of them were musically different from both the Dead and each other.

* EarWorm: As innovative as their music was, it wouldn’t have had the lasting impact it had if so much of it hadn’t been so catchy. The big hits like “Touch of Grey”, “Truckin’”, “Casey Jones”, “Sugar Magnolia”, and “Friend of the Devil” are obvious contenders here, but even the extended jam pieces like “Scarlet Begonias” -> “Fire on the Mountain”, “Dark Star”, “That’s It for the Other One”, “Turn On Your Love Light”, “Not Fade Away”, and others have plenty of catchy moments.
** Their arrangement of “Big River” is somehow even more infectious than Music/JohnnyCash’s original.

** The band’s first “face” was founding keyboardist Ron “Pigpen” [=McKernan=], who not only acted the group’s spokesman in the 1960s (he was the only founding member who did not take drugs, preferring alcohol, which made him the natural choice to put in front of non-hippie media), but was also responsible for their early musical direction and sang lead on their most accessible early songs. By 1969, the band’s movement away from the blues and R&B sounds that [=McKernan=] preferred towards country and folk resulted in Garcia and Bob Weir jointly overtaking him as the band’s leaders (his growing drinking problem didn't help things either).

* SugarWiki/AwesomeMusic: [[AwesomeMusic/TheGratefulDead Have their own page]].

* FollowTheLeader: The Dead, and their improvisational concert performances, inspired an entire "jam band" musical genre that began to take shape in the 1980s. Music/{{Phish}} are the best known of these groups, with Widespread Panic, Blues Traveler, The String Cheese Incident, The Aquarium Rescue Unit, moe., Gov't Mule, Blues Traveler, The Spin Doctors and the Dave Matthews Band also gaining renown in the 1990s. Although all of these bands counted the Dead as a major influence, all of them were musically different from both the Dead and each other.

* AudienceAlienatingPremise: They are up there with Frank Zappa and the Mothers of Invention and Lou Reed and the Velvet Underground as defining unconventional music of the 1960s.

** Donna Jean Godchaux’s live vocals can be this as well. Her performances on their studio records from the time period are generally pretty well loved, but some listeners feel she was off-key in some of the live shows (her wails on "Playin' in the Band" are a frequently cited reason). Others defend her by pointing out that the rest of the band members weren't terribly good singers themselves and by claiming that she can sing very well most of the time, but the fans often judge her worst moments as being indicative of her singing as a whole.

** Despite being in a few fan favorite shows, Keith Godchaux's playing is generally agreed to have declined in quality in the late seventies[[labelnote:*]]Though fans are in disagreement as to when his decline actually started.[[/labelnote]], so much so that even [[http://www.dead.net/band/keith-godchaux?intcmp=topnav/keith-godchaux the band's official website]] admits as such. By then most of the band, Keith included, had developed nasty drug habits and struggled with juggling the band and their families. In Keith's case, it actively hampered his playing; before the hiatus he played a unique piano style that took influence from dixieland, bebop, and classical music, but by the late 70's, he had slowly but surely shifted to a more conventional "comp the chords" style, occasionally copying Garcia's licks. And on top of that, he and Donna would argue viciously behind the scenes with both each other and the other bandmates. Because of all this, the Godchauxs would leave in February 1979.

* BaseBreaker:
** The band’s {{disco}}fied single version of Martha Reeves and the Vandellas’ “Dancin’ in the Streets”. Live performances of the song from the same era are still well loved, probably because the jamming that Deadheads love is still present then.

** Paul Buckmaster’s (Music/EltonJohn, amongst others) string arrangements on ''Terrapin Station''. They’re sometimes considered to clash with the songs themselves, and the band members themselves didn’t like them; Garcia in particular complained that the rhythms of his arrangements for the title suite clashed with the song’s rhythm: Buckmaster and producer Keith Olsen “changed it from a dotted shuffle to a marching 4/4 time”. The song was never performed in its exact studio configuration live, though the first three movements (with an extended instrumental coda) stayed in rotation until the band’s dissolution. “Terrapin Transit”, “At a Siding” (with no lyrics), and “Terrapin Flyer” were performed once (on March 18, 1977 at Winterland, San Francisco); the final segment, “Refrain”, was apparently never performed live.

** Despite being in a few fan favorite shows, Keith Godchaux's playing is generally agreed to have declined in quality in the 78-79 ballpark[[labelnote:*]]Though fans are in disagreement as to when his decline actually started.[[/labelnote]], so much so that even [[http://www.dead.net/band/keith-godchaux?intcmp=topnav/keith-godchaux the band's official website]] admits as such. By the late 70's, most of the band had developed nasty drug habits, Keith included, and it, as well as road life, took its toll on him and his wife Donna, especially since they had a son to raise as well. Because of all this, the Godchauxs would leave in February 1979.

* TheScrappy: Vince Welnick, the last keyboardist often saw himself as this, especially after he was excluded from several of the post-Garcia reunion concerts. This may have been his depression manifesting itself.

* SignatureSong: Almost certainly “Truckin’”, although “Box of Rain”, “Casey Jones”, and “Touch of Grey” also have strong claims. If we consider their live output separately from their studio work, “Dark Star” is probably the signature song of their live repertoire.

** The most obvious split is "who was the best keyboardist," with the most common contenders being Pigpen, Keith, and Brent. Pigpen fans praise his personality and charisma, and enjoy the blues touch he brought to the Dead's early sound. Keith fans enjoy his creative playing style (especially pre-hiatus), and credit him with pushing the Dead's jams to interesting new territories and helping the Dead recover from Pigpen's decline. Brent fans hail him has a point of consistent creativity and enjoy his songwriting and singing touches in the discography. Sometimes Bruce Hornsby is added to the list for balancing his already-established solo style with the greater Dead sound. TC and Vince Welnick aren't mentioned as often, but even they have their fans.

* FollowTheLeader: The Dead, and their improvisational concert performances, inspired an entire "jam band" musical genre that began to take shape in the 1980s. Music/{{Phish}} are the best known of these groups, with Widespread Panic, Blues Traveler, The String Cheese Incident, The Aquarium Rescue Unit, moe., Gov't Mule, Blues Traveler, The Spin Doctors and the Dave Matthews Band also gaining renown in the 1990s. Although all of these bands counted the Dead as a major influence (except for Gov't Mule, which was initially formed as a jam-oriented side-project of Music/TheAllmanBrothersBand) all of them were musically different from both the Dead and each other.

* FollowTheLeader: The Dead, and their improvisational concert performances, inspired an entire "jam band" musical genre that began to take shape in the 1980s. Music/{{Phish}} are the best known of these groups, with Widespread Panic, Blues Traveler, The String Cheese Incident, The Aquarium Rescue Unit, moe., Blues Traveler, The Spin Doctors and the Dave Matthews Band also gaining renown in the 1990s. Although all of these bands counted the Dead as a major influence, all of them were musically different from both the Dead and each other.