I knew about the Grateful Dead, of course. Everyone knows about the Grateful Dead - or at least recognizes the band's distinctive iconography. Skeletons with top hats, rainbow-colored teddy bears, grandfatherly Jerry Garcia.

What I didn't know about the band was its music. Sure, I'd heard a bit of it in college, rambling stuff played on tinny boomboxes in ramshackle houses. But I didn't know it.

That all changed (as do a surprising number of things in my life) with a video game. Rock Band, the music simulator that includes plastic guitar and drum set, makes several of the band's songs available for play. I was charmed and diverted by one song in particular, "China Cat Sunflower." It bubbled with psychedelic energy.

One quick trip to Borders later, I had the band's psychedelic album Aoxomoxoa in hand. Soon after, I bought the classic American Beauty. Within a few weeks, I was hooked.

I didn't become a Deadhead. That takes years of practice, dedication and pharmaceuticals. But I made an important discovery - you don't have to be a Deadhead to appreciate the band.

It's true.

You see, the Grateful Dead was, above all else, overwhelmingly musical, a collection of plain-

looking guys who composed and improvised songs that were anything but plain.

Their music was an appealing bundle of contradictions - spacey yet earthy, exploratory yet directed, interplanetary yet down-home. In a band stuffed with talented instrumentalists, not one Dead member could sing in tune. They had two drummers, yet eschewed the heavy backbeat of most rock. Jerry Garcia played electric guitar, but in a style that drew from acoustic bluegrass.

Far from diminishing it, these opposing factors give the Grateful Dead's music a shimmering, laid-back tension. You can hear it on 1969's groundbreaking Live/Dead, capturing them at their youthful peak, and Dozin' At the Knick, a 1990 live set that finds them older yet still keyed into one another.

As I chatted about my newfound enthusiasm with co-workers, I discovered that I wasn't alone. A lot of people like the Grateful Dead. And a lot of people like them for the reasons that I did - musical ones.

I may never approach the dedication of my co-worker and Monitor columnist Ray Duckler, whose story on the Dark Star Orchestra demonstrates his deep love and understanding of the Dead.

But we can chat about the music, and we can appreciate the creativity of a remarkable band that, far from being a relic, remains a musical touchstone.

And that, for want of a better word, rocks.