Maybe there’s been an auspicious alignment of stars and tides known only to the tie-dyed. Six years after Jerry “Captain Trips” Garcia shuffled into the sunset (August 9, 1995, to be precise), rendering the Grateful Dead inoperative after 30 years locked in their own singular orbit, comes a 12-disc box set of the San Franciscans’ Warner years.

Containing a mind-bending 15-plus hours of much-misunderstood music, The Golden Road offers each original album, remastered and bolstered by the now customary bonus tracks. Deadheads will think all their birthdays have come at once. There’s even a double CD of ultra-rare and previously unreleased early folk-rock and blues sides, cut for the Autumn and Scorpio labels, as well as live tracks said to date from July 1966. Whatever the sonic shortcomings, it’s an intriguing start.

The Dead were not as other bands: Garcia’s roots were in bluegrass, keyboardist Ron “Pigpen” McKernan was a card-carrying bluesman and the classically trained bassist Phil Lesh’s background was mostly in jazz. Joined by drummer Bill Kreutzmann and rhythm guitarist Bob Weir, a man who had blown the jug alongside Garcia and McKernan in Mother McCree’s Uptown Jug Champions, they first played as the Warlocks, cranking out routine rock & roll for nobody in particular. Fate, though, had marked their cards. With LSD still legal in California at the time, they became part of Ken Kesey’s acid tests and generally went a bit weird. They changed names, too, adopting the trippier Dead moniker in early 1966. What Garcia later called “one of the remaining American adventures” had begun.

Recorded in four days, the band’s 1967 self-titled debut offered only glimpses of their freewheeling powers. In contrast, the experimental sound collage Anthem of the Sun took six months to nail, pushed psychedelia to the max and, with minimal sales, almost crippled the Dead financially. Something had to change. Aoxomoxoa, with Robert Hunter’s wordplay edging to the fore, was the first step, Live Dead the second. Free of studio restrictions, they finally took flight on the wondrous, mazey workouts “Dark Star” and “The Eleven.” Hippie heaven, Live Dead turned the band from underground cult into rock institution—for some, almost a religion.

In 1970 they followed up with two albums of the finest Americana, Workingman’s Dead and American Beauty. With Garcia’s love of country music shining through, the songs were richer, the mood mellower, and with “Ripple,” “Box of Rain” and “Truckin’, ” they finally had tunes FM radio could play. Reflecting the shift, another live double, The Grateful Dead, appeared in 1971, earning them their first gold record. A fondness for marathon live sets, however, cut them increasingly loose from the mainstream, a situation the triple vinyl Europe ’72 and contract-fulfilling History of the Grateful Dead, Vol. 1 (Bear’s Choice) underlined. In truth, not a lot changed until 1987’s In the Dark made them MTV’s unlikeliest stars. But that’s another story.

Like some eternally damned torchbearers for the mythical ’60s, it seemed as if the Dead might last forever. They didn’t, but the brand lives on; T-shirt sales are buoyant and there’s still a shelf-load of concert recordings to dust off at regular intervals. From October 1989, Nightfall of Diamonds (another double, of course) is the latest, though not the greatest. Far better to go for the big one instead—it’s sometimes hard work, yet still blessed with moments of transcendence to place the Dead among the very best.