Grateful Dead - American Beauty (1970)

It's perhaps the only Grateful Dead album you ever need to buy if you're not a true fan of the band. More folk-inflected and tightly-structured than anything they've done before or after, 'American Beauty' testifies to their collective capacity for creating songs that you can not only hum but also use as tools for recollecting magical moments in your life.

Just about every track here — you'll never tire of listening to 'Box of Rain', 'Friend of the Devil', 'Candyman', 'Ripple' and 'Attics of My Life' no matter how many times you play them — induces a flood of terrific memories for me... moments from my youth that seemed insignificant at the time but have become so precious and dear in these days of disillusion and fear.