Oh, I thought you said *Cherry* Garcia

American Beauty (Grateful Dead): I guess I'm unlike your typical Dead fan, in that a) I'm not obsessive about the band, and b) I prefer their studio stuff to their live stuff. I know, that's silly, especially when I already said I preferred Widespread Panic's live stuff (the same is true about String Cheese Incident). I don't know, I guess I'm a little bit of a recording quality snob. This is a bad thing, but I have a hard time listening to a sh*tty recording of anything, no matter how great the material itself is. So, the Dead's studio stuff is really good, especially considering it's now 30-40 years old. The live stuff, besides being sooo long, with sooo much pharmaceutical noodling, is often sub-par with respect to recording quality, in my humble opinion. There, I said it. I try out the Dead station on Sirius now and again, but don't stay there very long. Sorry. Peace and Love. So many good tunes on this album. The same as with The Beatles, I don't have "point in time" perspective for the Dead (unless you count Shades of Gray). Much like Abbey Road, I think many that consider themselves unfamiliar with this record would be surprised at how many songs they could singing along with: Box Of Rain, Friend Of The Devil, Sugar Magnolia, Ripple, Truckin'...