It's a rainbow full of sound… Grateful Dead: All the years combine

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The Grateful Dead was the most recorded band in history. Their legendary tape vault contains thousands of master audio tapes of performances dating back to 1966, from stereo reel-to-reels to cassettes to two-inch multitracks. But film and video? Not so much, really, until the late 1980s.

Why? Well, there are several reasons. Audio recordings were easy to manage, even in the days of stereo reels. Owsley "Bear" Stanley, who became the group's first dedicated soundman (not to mention the San Francisco scene's leading LSD maker and advocate), believed that the musicians could learn something from listening to recordings of their performances and rehearsals, and though they were not scrupulous about it their first couple of years, eventually taping shows became an important part of their routine. The result is a deep vault that is the envy of bands from that era who didn't have the same foresight as the Dead — in other words, everybody else!

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