@jcmarckx said:

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!

I don't mean Brent didn't complement Garcia, I just mean for pure technique. I'm with pretty much everyone here on that score - Brent was definitely the best fit of any of the Dead's permanent keyboardists, and in some ways a better complement than Hornsby, who was a real showman and natural bandleader in his own right.

This thread has reminded me that I need to spend more time listening to Brent's work with the Dead, and I'm glad to be so reminded. I don't think that changes the argument of the post, though it makes me want to expand on my aside about the band's chops, which seems to have sucked up a lot of oxygen here!