@AlbanyYEM said:

sorry if this has already been mentioned, but i had an idea that i didn't want to lose hold of while reading all the way through this (awesomely) long thread. we have to look at historical context (musical and otherwise) if we can even begin to compare the emotional weight of the respective bands without problematic anachronisms. hate to sound all hippy-dippy here, but the world was wiiiide open to new levels of expression when the dead started out; add a fair amount of acid and fearlessness and the love of disorder will bloom.

Your whole comment (post!) is excellent, but I wanna bounce of this part specifically, and cite the musical analogues of the lysergic/ecstatic/spiritual order you're talking about:

Phish came up in a musical world in which: punk rock had flared, snarled, and died; VCRs and cable TV made 'close viewing' standard (as the Walkman did for close (re)listening); the Walkman, moreover, made booming root-downbeat bass a musical imperative for public listening; disco and New Wave music had placed a musical premium on sweeping, swooning old-fashioned sentiment atop ice-cold synthetic beats; Michael Jackson was a long way into his journey from the naked sincerity of 'Just call my name / and I'll be there' to the TV-paternity-scandal freeze of 'Billie Jean / is not my lover' and beyond; rock'n'roll had embraced, discarded, then re-embraced pure bombast as a defining feature; and hip-hop was beginning to assert itself as a close-kept musical counterforce to white pop radio. In other words, the musical universe was totally changed from when the Dead came up.

Add to that a sharp decline in LSD use (due to its illegality not least!), the rise of other drugs and other drug culture, the Nixon/Reagan reaction to the culture wars of the 60's (where is Nixon in the Dead's music?), the widespread shaming of Vietnam era 'opt-out' culture, and the domestication of human dreams like space travel and nuclear power. There was simply no way to embrace a warm-blooded late-60's cultural form like the Dead's music/circus...and Anastasio was never that kind of guy anyhow. In some ways he still isn't - in the Charlie Rose interview he talks about the sidelining of the musical work itself as his biggest Phish-related regret.

My point is that you're right to emphasize the different worlds the two bands came from, but since Phish is in some way a conscious reaction to the Dead among other bands, it's good to throw light on the very specific transformations made to the Dead's legacy, and to the broader legacy of the Sixties cultural revolutions, by the time Phish got together in the mid-80's in Vermont.

I still think it's good to contrast the two bands, particularly given the important overlap between their fandoms (and their similar fan-methodologies).

Good on ya.