"The Sunny Side Of The Street Is Dark"

Assembling a what-might-have-been final Grateful Dead studio album is a fairly common exercise among shut-ins and teeth-sucking seniors with nothing better to do. The source material is all out there, and it's a matter of personal taste what you paste in and where. Apart from the chronologically dubious (and so what - lyrically and musically it fits) last track here, this is probably as successful a try as any. It's not the material that makes it one of the weaker Dead albums, which is potentially right up to par for their later years, it's the inevitable unfinished sound and the weaker-than-usual vocals. But we don't care about that, because we're Dead fans, man. If given the polished (and I use that word as a compliment) production values of their later recordings, this album would have been a fine last bow from a band who never got enough credit for their studio work. The boilerplate DeadHead© stance that the studio albums are negligible is just hooey. There's not a single Dead album that's a waste of anyone's time.

Lookit my cover! [click to enlarge - Ed.] Note skellington! Note roses! Note apocalyptic San Francisco earthquake photograph with dude calmly walking toward collapsing building! Hoo boy! Some fun, huh?