Thoughts On The Dead

Musings on the Most Ridiculous Band I Can't Stop Listening To

Tag: 1977 (Page 6 of 11)

Stuck In The Middle With Keith

March 30, 2016 / / 11 Comments

band 77 bw phil tie

I’ve seen other shots from this photo shoot (Phil Wears a Tie in ’77), but not this particular picture. It’s been a while since we’ve had a good group shot, and we shall get back to basics by going left to right.

  • Mickey wins.
  • That is the most fuckable Mickey’s hair has ever been.
  • Plus the hockey jersey/mustache combo: he looks like a the left-winger on the fighting line.
  • Sure, there’s a bit of coke-face going one, but still: Mickey wins.
  • What happened to the guy who used to own that tie?
  • Did Phil take it as a prize?
  • Phil’s hair also looks good, but not as good as Mickey’s; also, Phil has no mustache.
  • And he needs to stop looking at Mrs. Donna Jean like that.
  • And Mrs. Donna Jean needs to stop looking at Phil like that.
  • Garcia sees it.
  • Look at Garcia’s face.
  • I’ll wait.
  • …
  • Right?
  • There’s no culture in the world in which that expression doesn’t translate to “Goddammit, man.”
  • (Although neither Phil nor Garcia is wearing his glasses, so they might think they’re looking at each other.)
  • A rare L for Bobby.
  • Bobby usually wins the picture, but his starter beard can’t stand up to Mickey’s Doug Henning-style.
  • If Bobby’s ’77 beard used the Time Sheath to meet Bobby’s current beard, it would be in awe.
  • The real-life Billy has the liberal views you might expect from a Grateful Dead, but Billy’s face in this picture is voting for Trump.
  • Also, if Billy and Mickey tilted their heads to opposing sides, their mustaches would form parentheses around the Grateful Dead.
  • Oh, Keith.
  • You’ve seen some shit, haven’t you?

I Stick My Double-Neck Out For No Man

February 23, 2016 / / 7 Comments

bob weir double-neck englishtown

There is very little scholarship needed on the subject of Weirdo Guitars the Dead Were Photographed With: there’s just a few pictures, and it’s an exceedingly trivial subject. A scholar should be embarrassed to study it.

Luckily, I am not a scholar, so I can link to some Guitar Nerd bullshit, and then make stuff up.

It would be a shame to leave Bobby out: you’ve probably seen this photo before; I’m sure I’ve posted it. It turns out to be a bit of a mystery.

An interview with the head of Ibanez (actually a more interesting read than it sounds) says this:

When I first went to see the Dead in ’74 or so, I didn’t really know what guitar or guitars to take to show them. The copy we did of the Rex Bogue doubleneck was about the snazziest thing we had, so I brought it. I can’t recall what else we took down there. I brought my partner in crime, Roy Miyahara, with me to the show, which was at the old Philadelphia Civic Center – one of those massive airplane-hangar-style joints.

You might already see the problem: not only is the picture clearly not of a joint, massive or otherwise. In fact, I thought it was Englishtown. It can’t be ’74 for many reasons, not the least of which is the missing 75-ton sound system.

BUT

By the date of Englishtown, Ibanez already had a double-neck in (limited) production and it wasn’t the one Bobby’s playing. Look:

ibanez artwood twin

That’s not the guitar Bobby’s playing. Compare the headstocks. The one Bobby’s playing is a copy of John McLoughlin’s custom-made guitar.

Here’s the point where I become lost: that picture of Bobby up above is definitely from Englishtown. Here’s a picture I got directly from Garcia’s website that labels it as 9/3/77:

jerry bobby englishtown

Nothing makes sense.

In Which The Question, “What If Each Song From 10/9/77 Were A Walrus?” Is Answered

August 30, 2015 / / 32 Comments

New Minglewood Blues Feisty walrus at a lesbian bar picking a fight over who’s got next at the pool table.

They Love Each Other Walrus who remembered his anniversary the second he walked in the door, except his walrus wife saw him empty-handed, so even though he totally meant to pick up something on the way home, he is now in trouble.

Cassidy Walrus wearing sunglasses indoors screaming “Don’t you know who I am?” at a young person in the service industry.

Dire Wolf Were-walrus.

Looks Like Rain And somewhere in the darkness, the walrus? He broke even. And in his final words, I found an ace that I could keep.

Brown-Eyed Women Brown-eyed walrus.

Lazy Lightning>Supplication A walrus in a Hawaiian shirt punching dicks being followed around by a walrus in a Greek fisherman’s cap taking selfies.

Sugaree Once I went over to this walrus friend of mine’s house and he has Mein Kampf in the bathroom. Like, as a joke, but you know: Mein Kampf. I get putting Finnegan’s Wake on the back of the toilet: ha ha, little light reading. Put Hitler’s manifesto away, man. I didn’t;t hang out with that walrus a lot after that.

The Music Never Stopped Walrus passing as a seal to the point where she is the president of the local chapter of the NAAS (National Association for the Advancement of Seals.)

Samson & Delilah Why do I yearn for the desert, Louise cried to the heavens, but it just sounded like URRRRRGRNAAAHHrukrukruk, because she was a walrus.

Scarlet>Fire No one knew where he got the van, much less how he learned to drive, but all the hookers on Mulberry knew to run when the blue Chevy came around the corner: there was a walrus in it, and he was horny, and walrus parts are violently incompatible with human parts.

Estimated Prophet This walrus was a fervent Trump supporter, because Mr. Trump said publicly what he, the walrus, was thinking. He was thinking these things because he, the walrus, was a little dumb and a lot racist.

He’s Gone Of all the marine animals, walruses are the fastest readers.

Truckin’ A walrus who dreamed he was a man.

Drums A man who dreamed he was a walrus, then awoke to find he had been transformed into a giant cockroach.

Terrapin Station Kinky walrus.

Around and Around If Around and Around were a walrus, its mother would have taken thalidomide, but because they were walruses, the flipper thing was not a problem.

Oh, right: 10/9/77 from somewhere in Texas.

Just Gotta Poke Around

May 12, 2015 / / 0 Comments

IMG_1587Never before had Mrs. Donna Jean been in such torment. Did she love Bobby or did she just loving up on Bobby? For all his faults, Bobby was good at loving up on ladies. He was even better at loving up on girls, but that’s neither here nor there.

Innocently it started, with things like this – a shared mic, a drink in the afternoons while Keith ate pills he found on the floor. Since Mrs. Donna Jean joined up, she and Bobby had shared the unspoken bond that comes from being the only attractive people in the room.

Perhaps not “unspoken.” More correctly, it was unspoken of in front of the rest of the band because, as ugly as they were, they only became uglier when making their sad faces. The two of them would share a plate of fries (“Ugh, I am so fat.” “Shut up, you skinny whore.”) and talk about the loneliness that comes with beauty.

Post-Hiatus, Bobby and Mrs. Donna Jean got closer, almost by default: her husband and Garcia were locked in increasingly smaller cells of addiction; Phil only wanted to talk about Canadian football; interactions with the drummers so often ended in a duffel bag full of raccoons being hurled into an Wendy’s.

Love? Of course not. Bobby was a single guy, and everyone was having fun. As much fun as an affair that could fuck up a multi-million dollar tour could be, anyway.

(Epically fun. Tremendously, stupendously, stupefyingly fun. Sneaking around hotels and stolen glances and spy moves with room keys and what not: epically fun.)

She put the question out of her head, and knew that Bobby hadn’t even thought of it. It’s hard to be a woman. Doubly so when you’re being written by a man.

Park Life

May 12, 2015 / / 0 Comments

IMG_1585
I could make some sort of half-hearted attempt at going left to right, or concocting some sort of ludicrous rubric, but let’s just agree that there will be skipping all over the place and the drummers will be discussed at length.

  • As with all of the other pictures from this photo shoot, Mickey will be playing the part of “Cocaine Jones.”
  • Dammit, Mrs. Donna Jean: stop beguiling me.
  • Some people will say you shouldn’t advertise another brand in your own publicity. Those people probably also think you shouldn’t wear a sweatband so high up on your head that you look like a pineapple, so fuck ’em and their opinions.
  • “Just keep walking, Dwayne. Don’t make eye contact with the crazy honkies. Just keep walking.”
  • Is Billy holding a beer? There’s no can there, it seems. Does Billy unconsciously carry a tall boy of Coors around?
  • What did Keith know and when did he know it?
  • Mrs. Donna Jean’s hair is longer than Mickey is tall.
  • I mean, they’re all equidistant from the camera, so it’s not perspective doing that to him. (They are on a slight slope, but Mickey’s clearly one of the Wee Folk.)
  • He is the day’s potato salad champion, though.
  • Actually a photo-realistic painting, this piece entitled The Last Days of Garcia’s Fuckability is on exhibit at the Museum of Modern Terrible Dead Art (MoMTDA).
  • The motorcycle boots with the slightly flared jeans, the dark aviators, the complete lack of accessories: Garcia brought his sexy to the park this day in 1977 and, judging by the historical record, left it there.
  • Did they have to do that with Keith literally in between them? Was the pole-climbing the climax of this exchange:
  • “Bet I can climb that pole all the way to the top.”
  • “Why you always braggin’ on yourself, Bobert Weir. So unattractive.”
  • “I’m gonna climb that pole, Mrs. Donna Jean.”
  • “Yeah? And’ I’m gonna watch you climb.”
  • “You gonna watch?”
  • “Yeah.”
  • “You like to watch me climb poles in the park?”
  • “Climb any pole you want, sugar.”
  • Were Keith conscious, he would be crying.
  • Sticking with the two of them, it is odd how–even in daylight–Bobby and Mrs. Donna Jean’s lighting seems to be better than everyone else’s.
  • “Take a walk through the park, Dwayne. It’s a nice day, Dwayne. There won’t be a gang of hippie CHUDs there, Dwayne.”
  • Two things you shouldn’t do in white jeans: climb light poles in parks, and wear white jeans at all.

BONUS LIST!

Acceptable Reasons for Mickey’s Appearance:

  • Bit part on Starsky and Hutch.
  • Cocaine.
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