A Spotify playlist published by the U.K. outlet Far Out has put every Grateful Dead official live release in chronological order. This mammoth undertaking amounts to a whopping 362 hours and chronologizes the band’s 30 year history of live concerts.
The playlist, titled “The Grateful Dead live: A complete chronological playlist”, was made public earlier this week. The collection features all of the official live releases sanctioned by the band, from Dick’s Picks to Road Trips to the Download Series and everything in between.
Even though the Dead, who had only recently changed their name from The Warlocks, played their first show on December 4th, 1965 at one of Ken Kesey‘s famous Acid Tests, the playlist’s first entry comes from the Rare Cuts & Oddities 1966 collection released in 2005. This album delivered what it promised via a hodgepodge of studio outtakes from the band’s self-titled debut album, as well as rough early recordings from gigs at the Fillmore Auditorium in San Francisco, CA and Los Angeles’s Danish Center. From there, “The Grateful Dead live” traverses through the long strange trip that was the Dead’s career. The final entry on the playlist, unsurprisingly, is “So Many Roads” taken from the Dead’s final concert on July 9th, 1995 at Chicago’s Soldier Field. While it wasn’t the final song Jerry Garcia sang at that concert, the pain and exhaustion in his voice perfectly encapsulate the final march of the Grateful Dead. Garcia died of a heart attack a month later on August 9th, 1995, signaling the end of the Grateful Dead.
While “The Grateful Dead live: A complete chronological playlist” doesn’t offer any new material, and obviously is unable to include the thousands more hours of Dead content available via an army of concert tapers, it condenses the band’s career into a neat package. To anyone looking to begin the deep dive into the seemingly-never ending well of the Grateful Dead, this playlist would be an ideal starting point. It could also be useful to any Deadhead looking to kill just under 15 days time.
Listen to every official Grateful Dead live recording in chronological order via the playlist below.
  The Grateful Dead live: A complete chronological playlist
[H/TÂ Far Out]