The Grateful Dead have managed to accomplish a feat that’s almost unheard of in the music industry. The band that rose to fame largely outside the usual industry framework studio releases and album sales has now had 100 different albums land on the Billboard 200 chart in the United States.
You read that correctly: the Dead, who took 22 years just to produce their first Top 10 hit single, have now accomplished what almost no other recording artist has ever managed to reach thanks to their latest archival release.
According to a new report shared by Forbes, the arrival of the band’s Dave’s Picks Vol. 33: Evans Field House, N. Illinois University, Dekalb, IL late last month has since landed at No. 45 on the Billboard 200, marking the 100th time a Grateful Dead studio or archival release has done so. Also of note is that 43 of their 100 total albums which have made it to the Billboard 200 have managed to crack the Top 40.
Over the years, the band has landed only six total singles on the Billboard Hot 100 singles chart, with their highest-charting release coming when 1987’s “Touch of Grey” peaked at No. 6.
The latest release pulled from 1977—a year which many believe was the band’s strongest in terms of their live performances—was limited to just 22,000 copies. The three-disc archive release from the Dead’s 10/29/77 performance includes songs like “Bertha”, “Friend of the Devil”, “Estimated Prophet”, and more.
Watch the band’s archivist David Lemieux talk about Dave’s Picks Vol. 33 in full below.
Grateful Dead – Seaside Chat: Dave’s Picks Volume 33
[Video: Grateful Dead]
Congrats to everyone in the Grateful Dead family for this pretty unbelievable achievement–Keep on Truckin’!
[H/T Forbes]