A deepening sense of Dead

I'm watching myself with a certain degree of fascination - and my card bills with a much higher degree of horror - as I succumb to an ever-greater addiction to the Grateful Dead. And this is the 5th or 6th time I've caught the disease in the last decade - every time it comes back in a more virulent form, exacerbated by the fact that the Dick's Picks series is now ever harder to find and it's successor, the Dave's Picks series is only being issued by the Dead's official organization in limited editions in any case. 

When you find yourself at home on a Friday night coming home after listening to 'Spring 1990', sitting yourself down and watching the DVD of Sunshine Daydream and then drifting off to sleep reading the excellent 'A long strange trip' by Dennis McNally, something is clearly up. 

But what? 

It may be worth exploring why I largely stayed away from the Dead (with exceptions - I was instantly drawn to American Beauty the first time I heard it, and was also a great fan of Terrapin Station, a record I do not have much time for these days) for years and refused to engage except by trying to listen to the odd live track and trying to work out what the whole deal was. I have a hunch the roots of this lie in the same reason that I stayed away from Steely Dan for a long time - today, of course, I would give at least serious thought to walking over broken glass to go to a Steely Dan gig.