I understand why many people here say they never "got" the Dead. I am not old enough to have grown up listening to them in their early years 68-72. And I wasn't really going to concerts until about '77, my first one being Santana. The strongest periods for The Dead were 68-72 and 77-78 give or take. During the 80's and 90's I was deep into jazz collecting and even though I listened to other stuff my friends listened to, The Dead to me were a cool band with some good songs but the ones played on the radio from studio albums just got tired for me. If I had more of a preference for a similar band, Jefferson Airplane was it. Better composed songs IMO.
I saw The Dead a couple times in the 80's but I wasn't paying that much attention and the fact is, big venues and an overblown scene together with not really their best playing period and I still didn't really get it either. (I have some friends that have seen 200-300 Dead shows.)But then, when the Dick's Picks series came out, I got a couple and really started to "get it". I ended up buying about 15 or more of the Dick's Picks and then a friend of mine turned me on to the Live Music Archive (
http://www.archive.org/details/etree) where the Grateful Dead community posted about 2,600 of their live shows (soundboard and matrix recordings in most cases) posted for downloading ALL FOR FREE. Now, they were one of about 2,000 bands on the LMA but I spent most of my time downloading only the Dead shows from the late 60's and early 70's as well as '77 and '78. Jerry's playing and the intense extended jamming really drew me in particularly with some of the favorite tunes for jamming. You see, studio recordings just were not what the band was about, not at all. You can't listen to "Truckin" and other tired tunes on the radio and "get" the Grateful Dead.
So, I downloaded all those shows from LMA and listened to The Dead almost exclusively for a year and I really got the opportunity to appreciate what The Dead were about. And as it relates to the music, it was about improvisation and the ability to travel so far in a song exploring far out musical boundaries and come back together to segway into the next song. That's an oversimplification of course and doesn't even begin to address the whole Dead experience traveling with the tour. In that sense, I was never a Deadhead, because I had a job and just couldn't take a bunch of time to be a Deadhead and I would have been too late for their best musical periods anyway. The whole scene got so overblown in the 80s anyway. Same with Phish in the 90's, just happened faster as it was like a whole new generation trying to get into the same thing. But hey, that's cool. I'm glad that people can be that much into music. There's worse things.
The Dead from the beginning were just sort of a homegrown product of the 60's, just a band doing what they do for nearly 20 years. They were certainly a flawed band in many ways. Bobby Weir's voice is not anything close to a natural singing voice. Jerry's voice is so fragile and weak but I love hearing it. They made a lot of mistakes in their shows. Throughout most of their time they were on a various assortment of drugs and alcohol. One of the best music bio's I have ever read is "Living with the Dead" that tells so many great tales about the things the band did and what they were always trying to do. The Dead started many things that many, many bands followed. They were committed to the best quality sound experience. They produced very high quality soundboard recordings from back as far a 1968 and allowed people to tape shows. They even encouraged trade-friendly live recordings and had a community of tapers that lived up to the rules. They started the whole traveling with the band thing. There was a lot they originated that most people do not know about.
So people who say they never "got" the Dead, I understand. I could imagine a similar thread called "I never 'GOT' jazz". Reminds me of something Miles Davis said when someone mentioned they didn't understand his music. He said "I been working on this for 20 years and you expect to understand it in 15 minutes..."
Bob Wier tours with his group, Ratdog and they sound great freshening up those Dead tunes. You can still get some of his shows from the LMA. Phil Lesh tours with his band that sees many people guest touring and playing with the group and while I wish he wouldn't sing, the band still sounds great.
Oh, and before you try to get the Grateful Dead shows on the LMA, you should know that they pulled the SBD recordings although you can hear any one of 2,600 or so shows streaming and that ain't bad.