As Rhino Records releases more and more boxed sets of complete Grateful Dead tours (Europe ’72 Complete Recordings, Spring 1990) and other massive overviews (30 Trips Around the Sun), it’s as good a time as any to take stock and ask whether it’s a wise idea to keep this up. For completists and other hardcore Heads—the obvious audience for these mega-packages—the answer is always going to be the Jerryer the merrier, and this new limited-edition 12-disc collection offers a few legitimate draws even to the most invested collector. The first three of the five shows presented here—July 1, 3 and 5, 1978—come from the so-called “Betty Boards,” high-quality concert recordings long thought lost. The other two, the band’s debut shows at Colorado’s Red Rocks, are fabled among connoisseurs as some of the best of the era. The sound on all five shows is impeccable, the performances solid to sensational. So, to answer that earlier question, yes, as long as Rhino can maintain the quality, keep it up.

Highlights? Take your pick. For this listener, you can go straight to the end, the final set at Red Rocks on 7/8/78, and allow “Terrapin Station” to engulf and wash over you with all of its vastness. It’s what made late-‘70s Dead quite often great, that pivotal period right before Keith and Donna Jean Godchaux were booted and the Brent Mydland era then ushered in. The St. Paul “Dancing in the Street” on 7/3 may leave some fans cold due to its so-called disco arrangement, but that jam saw the band digging deeper into the possibilities of funk and liking what it found. Or go with either of the offered takes on Warren Zevon’s “Werewolves of London” and recall just how much fun the Dead had with that one. What’s next, Rhino? Can we talk ‘71 radio shows or “The Complete Fillmore East?”