My take on The Grateful Dead is that their vocalists were too weak, and yes, their instrumental interludes were often rambling affairs that could've done with more power and more musical ideas. But let's not forget that a lot of their albums were live - exploring what happens when audience and artist alike are hallucinating a mile a minute on LSD etc. In some ways, those albums are more like "you-had-to-be-there" documentary evidence.
There's just one (studio) album I'd strongly recommend; on American Beauty everything fell into place as never before or since. A great album in and of itself, it also works as a gentle, sympathetic guide to bring you back from the pyschedelic outer limits of your own skull:-
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"Am I enjoying this moment? I know of it and perhaps that is enough." - Sybille Bedford, 1953
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