Grateful Dead- American Beauty

Now the album everyone knows and rightfully so, American Beauty. The Dead's 5th studio effort.

The most accessible, but honestly, one of the most well written and focused albums of their career. This album follows "Working Dead", which I'll review next (out of order). and continues the country and folk-rock mashup established on that album. Both albums were prolifically churned out in the same year.

Lesh's Box Of Rain, opening the album, is simply one of the best songs they've ever recorded. According to lyricist Hunter, Lesh "wanted a song to sing to his dying father and had composed a piece complete with every vocal nuance but the words. If ever a lyric 'wrote itself,' this did – as fast as the pen would pull. Lesh practiced the song driving to the nursing home where his father lay with terminal cancer. Before the death of Jerry Garcia, "Box of Rain" was the last song ever performed live at a Grateful Dead concert, during the final encore at Soldier Field in Chicago on July 9, 1995. Symbolically, it was the first song played at the first Fare Thee Well show at Soldier Field on July 3, 2015, bringing fans full circle.

The next one, Friend of the Devil, is another almost everyone knows and rightfully so. For a folk song, there's so much going on musically in this one. It's one of the most covered songs

• covered by Tom Petty, Dave Matthews, Bob Dylan, even Mumford and Sons.