I totally appreciate your opinion, and agree mostly with your write-up, but you must be out of your mind to not see that Brent matched Garcia perfectly. Brent played in that bouncy style that Garcia had. If you ever saw them when Brent was in the band then you would know that Garcia usually looked to Brent to bounce jammy ideas off of. I came into the Dead in 1985, so I am sort of partial to the Brent era. Brent had the chops and fit Garcia to a T. He is seriously underrated, imo.

Otherwise, great article!