@McPhishman said:

Great discussion! Having first seen the Dead in 1973, and continuing to see bands like Further as recently as June of this year, I have been, and always will be a huge Dead fan.

(snip)

The bands are so different musically, but I embrace both bands sometimes to the point of scary obsession. I accept this, and my family seems to accept this "as just the way I am, like it or not".

I was never able to understand the arguments I have heard over the years about the superiority of one band vs. the other, and I am just very happy to have both of them, and I will generally attend any and all of the few West Coast Phish shows, and any Dead-related show here in the Bay Area.

It's great for our planet to have been blessed with both of these phenomenal bands!

Hellllllll Yes. I isolated the last part of this quote as I could not say it any better.

It was 9 years later than '73 that I actually got a ticket to a GD concert at the old Spectrum RIP (passed up the band for years and can't really recall why...). This decision changed everything in my musical universe profoundly. I lost count after 100 GD concerts all the way out to 1995, and ravenously collected the material from 1968 onward.

It was 1991 when PHiSH made their first stop in Seattle (Ballard's The Backstage RIP) and thanks to Rob G giving me Maxell XLII-90 copies of 4-22-90 and 10-31-90 several months in advance (my friend KNEW me) I made it to the show. It was a complete surprise to me at the age of 30 that year that there was another band that could capture my soul with such power AGAIN. I went to as many of the Pac NW shows as I could with the balance of my life - job/home/son/wife and soon enough my own band - not to mention whatever GD concerts I could get to as well.

Musically, I did not hear GD in PHiSH. I heard a wide range of influences that were my own. Like them, I was an east coast boy until I went northwest in 1986, about 3-4 older than them, and it's not surprising this could be the case. The 2-set format and tendency to mix songs that pleased me greatly with wild improvisational jamming was the common factor to me.

I just don't read analytical battles with these fans but I wanted to respond to this excellent OP. I spend THAT time LISTENING to the ass-kicking music that matches my DNA - from both of my live-performance obsessions. I LOVE IT!