Studio Albums vs. Live Shows

Been a fan since 1992. Over the last 20+ years, I have somehow gravitated away from studio albums towards listening to a mixture of Live Trax on Spotify and a ton of DMB’s DMBLive recordings and other bootleg MP3s that I acquired many years ago from forum boards online. Mostly everything I’ve been listening to has been live. UNTIL THIS PAST WEEK.

I recently had a long distance road trip where I had 10-11 hours of windshield time to listen to all 10 *official* studio albums back to back to back. Straight through. And it was glorious. UTTAD, Crash, BTCS, Everyday, Busted Stuff, Stand Up, Big Whiskey, AFTW, Come Tomorrow & WATM.

I was absolutely BLOWN AWAY at how much it took me back to the days and, well, how much I’ve missed over the last 15 years by obsessing over the huge catalogue of available live show recordings and not listening to these. 😳 The studio albums are where it’s at. Every single one of them. And dammit did I ever miss them. If I had to pick my least favorite, I’d go with a dead tie of AFTW and WATM. But truth be told I even enjoyed those when listening straight through.

I am sure many opinions will different from mine but I came up with my ranking of the 11 albums shortly after my drive:

1)UTTAD (it’s not even close)
2)Crash
3)BTCS
4)Busted Stuff
5)Everyday
6)Big Whiskey
7)Stand Up
8)Come Tomorrow
9)WATM
10)AFTW

DMB is, IMO, the greatest band of all time and nothing will ever change my mind on that. Gonna continue to take a break from the live stuff and ride out this studio album listening phase into yet another Summer Tour season!