Members of the rock group Grateful Dead are Bill Kreutzman (striped shirt), Jerry Garcia (black ... [+]
This week, Grateful Dead returns to the Billboard charts in America, though it’s not as if they’ve been gone for very long. The rock band regularly sends archival and live releases to various lists, as their fan base remains ravenous for material they haven’t heard before.
The group earns another win on several tallies this week, though not with a brand new effort. One of their older studio collections debuts on a number of rankings it’s never appeared on before and returns to another following the release of a special edition to celebrate the title’s fiftieth birthday.
Grateful Dead From The Mars Hotel was originally released in 1974, and it marked one of Grateful Dead’s last proper albums. The set was a commercial win at the time on the Billboard 200, as it once rose to No. 16. Now, it reappears on that ranking of the most-consumed albums in the U.S. this frame at No. 58.
In the past tracking frame, every version of Grateful Dead From The Mars Hotel moved a total of just over 14,300 equivalent units across America. Almost all of those–all but a few hundred units–were actual purchases, though streaming activity did play a small part in the title’s renewed success on the Billboard 200.
That list is the only Billboard roster that Grateful Dead From The Mars Hotel appears on this week that it has reached in the past. The decades-old collection debuts on four other tallies this frame, as it sold well enough to reach the highest tiers on several.
Grateful Dead From The Mars Hotel debuts inside the top 10 on a pair of charts this week. The full-length opens at No. 4 on the Vinyl Albums list. At the same time, it launches at No. 5 on the Top Album Sales ranking.
The band’s 1974 project is also new to two other rosters, and it almost cracked the top 10 on both of them as well. Grateful Dead From The Mars Hotel kicks off its time at No. 11 on the Top Rock Albums chart and No. 14 on the Top Rock & Alternative Albums list.
Grateful Dead From The Mars Hotel was re-released as the title turned 50 years old. A release announcing the exciting drop stated that the expanded edition includes never-before-heard demos, remastered cuts from the original version, and “a previously unreleased, nearly complete live recording from an epic concert at University of Nevada-Reno on 5/12/1974.”
