While Deadheads almost unanimously say they prefer full-show recordings over anything else, anyone who quibbles with the long, strange sonic trip that is the Music Never Stopped is simply looking to complain. 

Clocking in at close to four hours, overflowing with fan favorites and rarities and spanning 1969-1994, this set contains a song or segue from each of the concerts on the sprawling companion box set Enjoying the Ride – full-show recordings galore, folks! – and ensures every band member, even short-timers Tom Constanten and Bruce Hornsby, is represented. 

Jumping around haphazardly, Music is sequenced so Pigpen powering a mighty “Hard to Handle” in ’71 is followed by an elegiac 1987 “Wharf Rat.” The set closes similarly, with an equally wistful “Days Between” from ’94 melting into a dizzying “Not Fade Away” -> “Going Down the Road Feeling Bad” -> “Not Fade Away” sandwich from 23 years prior. 

The producers were sympathetic and generous in the song selection, featuring short-in-rotation numbers like “Doin’ that Rag” (’69), “My Brother Esau” (’87) and the bonkers return of “Big Boy Pete” for its one-time-only reprise in ’85. 

Bonus – the sound quality ranges from quite good to sublime. 

Toss in the famous Greek “Scarlet” -> “Touch” -> “Fire” of ’84; perhaps the perfectest “Attics of My Life” from 10/3/94 in Boston; and the crazy transition between “Truckin’” and “Smokestack Lightnin’” at Deer Creek ’89 that is somehow both smooth and sloppy and unusual enough to merit inclusion even without the powerful performances on either side, and only a cynic could say the Music Never Stopped is not just exactly perfect, even if it doesn’t run just like a Swiss watch.