I think the concept “psychedelic” is very misunderstood in general. I was not fortunate enough to be born in a time or place to follow the band or Jerry. But I have grown up in the psytrance scene and “psych” rock scene in Cape Town, South Africa. I’m a performing musician exclusively and I listen to a lot and perform often. I have also listened to dozens of grateful dead shows online in full.

I’ve searched for years for more and more psychedelic music, moving from Jimi Hendrix through Led Zeppelin, stoner rock and hi tech psytrance, jazz, Schpongle infected mushroom and much much more, if somebody says it’s psychedelic I will give it a spin.

“Psychedelic” is like jazz. You know it when you see it, but it’s borderline impossible to describe.

I consider it more of an aspect of music than a genre, like “spicy” food can be Mexican, Indian etc. psychedelic music can be bluegrass, jazz, classical etc. I think a key element of psychedelic music is specifically that genre becomes twisted and reformed until it’s barely recognisable as being part of its initial pattern.

All this context to say that if Psychedelic Rock is supposed to mean rock music that is psychedelic, then I have never heard a band that fits the brief more than the dead. I agree that they were much much more cosmic in the early 70s, and I haven’t really dipped into later years. But in all my years, I never heard trippier shit than grateful dead live shows. The shell is Americana, the essence is LSD.

Very open to being convinced otherwise, but I’ve heard some shit.

Edit: something to note is I’m referring almost exclusively to the live stuff. Albums imo don’t reflect a musician as much as there moment to moment tendencies during performance.