It was the early 90’s. Maybe ’93. I’d just walked back into the house after walking down to the mailbox. A fat pack envelope was addressed to my dad from BMG. If you weren’t familiar with BMG, it was a mail-order music service where to start you out, you could get something like 20 albums for a penny, as long as you continued to order music over the following months.

I think I worked a deal out with my dad that a share of my allowance would go toward a BMG subscription and I sat down with the catalogue to start selecting my first 20 albums.

One of the selections I chose that day was the Grateful Dead’s Skeletons From the Closet.

I was 14 and I think I might have seen the Dead’s Touch of Grey music video a few times on MTV, but I was still largely unfamiliar with the band. I think at the time of ordering the album, I’d also missed out that it was a “best-of” collection.

This was point in my life when many of the albums I was drawn to were mostly due to the cover art. I had no real perspective on what was going on with the cover, beyond a smoking skeleton that was flipping off the painter and had a gold record spinning on its middle finger. That was likely cool enough for me to give it a go.

When it arrived, I think it may have been the first of that set of albums that I dug into. I was a little disappointed that Touch of Grey wasn’t on the album, since it was really the only Dead tune I was familiar with. Obviously, I equated having a music video with being a best song sort of thing.

After repeated listens, I started to recognize a pattern. My favorite tracks were Truckin’, Sugar Magnolia, and Friend of the Devil…all which hailed from the Dead’s American Beauty album. I think the Workingman’s Dead tracks also became favorite…Uncle John’s Band and Casey Jones. I was also digging Mexicali Blues, largely for the lively trumpets.

Oddly enough, I recall my dad liking the album too, which I found strange because he mostly listened to folk and jazz. Boy, was I in for a surprise when I started to learn about the Dead and their influences.

---

Skeletons From the Closet kept my appetite satisfied for a while. But after a few months, I’d given up on BMG and gone back to crate digging for music.

In ’94, my family took a spring break trip to ski Steamboat Springs. After a day of hitting the slopes, I managed to get away from folks long enough to hit up a record shop I’d found in the ski village area.

I don’t recall the name of the record shop, but what I do remember was it was a heady, trippy spot. Walking in, I was immediately hit by a stiff amount of incense, like I’d ventured into the Vatican during a service. The walls were nearly completely covered with large black light posters, B&W signed band promotional pictures and giant tie-dyed tapestries.

There was a guy at the counter with a giant beard and longer hair. He nodded to acknowledge that I’d entered the store, but wasn’t interested in the least to strike up a conversation with a wide-eyed 15-year-old. I started working my way through the CD racks.

At some point, I finally burst out, “Hey man, if you wanted to get into the Grateful Dead, where would you start?”

He ducked into a back room and returned with what would quickly become my second Grateful Dead album, Dozin’ at the Knick. It was a three-CD recording that I would come to learn came from three sets taken from the March 24-26, 1990 run at the Knickerbocker Arena in New York.

It checked all the boxes. Cool cover art. A ton of Dead tracks. And, finally, live Dead. Sure, Skeletons From the Closet had a few live tracks, but these were full sets from Dead shows.

“This was a good concert?” I asked.

“Man, they’re shows,” the clerk responded. Hmm…you learn something new every day, which would actually serve me well as I’d get deeper into the live Dead catalogue.

Studio albums are great, but the stage is where the Dead came alive. To this day, I have copies of all of the studio releases, but my collection of live Dead albums dwarfs the studio collection.

Dozin’ was the album that sparked by growing interest in Bob Dylan, after a few listens to the Dead’s version of When I Paint My Masterpiece. I found immense joy in the slower tracks, like Row Jimmy, Stella Blue and one of my all-time favorite Dead songs, Brokedown Palace.

I heard my first Drums –> Space. I also got a good supply of their classic medleys, including Playing –> UJB –> Lady with a Fan –> Terrapin Station.

So good. That was it. From there, I was on the bus, so to speak.

For some reason, I felt the need to try to front my own musical prowess, so I grabbed a copy of DMB’s Remember Two Things and said to the clerk, “This one has some great stuff, too.”

I had no idea. I suspect there was probably some gal at school that I had a waning crush on who was a DMB fan and I wanted to find some common ground to start up a conversation.

The clerk just rolled his eyes.

Again, I had no idea…