‘Dead’ To Release Double-Cd Set

The Grateful Dead has a new album scheduled to come out Oct. 3, though an Arista Records spokesman was not sure what effect band leader Jerry Garcia’s death Wednesday would have on the release date.

The project, a double-CD set recorded live in Germany, will likely be the group’s highest-charting album, eclipsing the No. 6 position reached by “In the Dark.” The album would benefit from music fans who buy a posthumous “last” album not so much as a collector’s item as to fill a void and assuage a sense of loss of someone who is close to their hearts. The phenomenon has been seen twice in the past two weeks as albums involving recently deceased artists, Selena and Eazy-E, both debuted at No. 1 the charts.