For context I am 31 years old (born 1992)

Apart from Woodstock documentaries and the rare mention here or there, my childhood really didn’t overlap with the Grateful Dead.

However, when I got a new car going to college and was scanning my Sirius XM channels I stumbled upon the Grateful Dead Channel, and from the first song I knew I had found something special. I very rarely changed the channel. I even renewed Sirius XM after the free year was up because I couldn’t live without this band. It became the soundtrack of my life in so many ways. And what used to be stressful car rides both around town and over long distances stopped being stressful and just became more time I got to spend with the band.

If I’m having a bad trip, work is becoming too much, or anything else is too difficult in life the Grateful Dead can always pick me up and put me back on my feet. After all the hours and all the road trips, I feel like I know the band personally (especially Jerry).

The reason I am sharing this is because I have never had the connection to Dead & Company that I have with the Grateful Dead, even though the Grateful Dead with Jerry stopped playing in 1995. Or even remotely close. It was fun to see Dead & Company one time, but I have never had any interest to spend the money for an additional show.

I would however without a doubt (if I had been born even 20 years earlier) followed the Dead around for an entire tour.

So I guess my two fundamental questions are (because I cannot formulate my own opinion)

  1. What made Jerry so special (that I feel a bond to him), when I’ve never met him, and never got to see the Dead live?

  2. What has been lost in the band - post Jerry’s death & what bands have made you feel even remotely close to the way the Grateful Dead made you feel?

(For context, the Grateful Dead is soothing and soulful in a way no other band has been for me + Phish has always sounded soulless and silly to me)