Thoughts On The Dead

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

Tag: 1978 (Page 12 of 13)

Stay Classy

July 10, 2013 / / 0 Comments

Speaking of Betty and her Boards, here’s one from that weird, rocking refractory period after Egypt that began and ended at Winterland. 12/28/78 at Golden Hall in San Diego is a great night for the boys and an emblematic one for a girl.

Betty’s recording is perfect, as good as most official remasters and better than a couple I could name (Looking at you, Digital Download series.) Drums swept hard left and right and fully encompassing the highs and lows of the sound stage. You can hear the woody thwump and thunderous phwooOOO of Phil’s bass. Vocals are subtly separated–you can almost see them standing there.

PLUS, an awesome early Shakedown with great Donna backup, a killer Lazy Lightning>Supplication, AND at 9 minutes into Eyes, they play Lovelight. Not, like, a little Lovelight tease: they flat-out play the sumbitch for half a minute.

And then, because it’s the winter of ’78, we gotta sit through Mickey playing the fucking oud for six minutes.

 

July 24, 2012 / / 0 Comments

Sorry for the disappearing act: I didn’t feel like making jokes, especially not about Billy punching dicks. Tawdry and insignificant, in the face of it.

But time goes on, so more goofy wackiness to come. PLUS the continuation of the Spring ’78 tour run-through! AND special guest blogger Elvis Presley!

USE MAH ROYAL TITLE, MONKEY.

Umm…His Man-jesty, the Most Hung and Holy Fourth Degree Black Belt, Tushee Monster Extraordinaire, Elvis Presley.

FUCKIN’ A.

Lexington Stealie

July 18, 2012 / / 0 Comments

Which brings us, again, to 4/21/78 at the Rupp Arena in Lexington, Kentucky. This tour is something of a Rust Belt/Appalachian Trail theme and, yes, there were two shows I’ve neglected, but my versions sounds as if the recording device had been keestered in and then never un-keestered, to be found post-mortem and released in a macabre recreation of Betty Canter-Jackson’s storage locker incident.

So, I went to the Rupp show, which I’ve written about before: it  with this weird, wired energy that isn’t just the coke singing. Listen to the Playin’>drums. All of them stay up there for drums and listen to it climax 12 minutes in with a Donna-led call-and-response chant that makes this one of the only drums I’ve ever listened to on its own.

And then, right after that, Mickey starts playing the Knight Rider theme.

Holler

July 17, 2012 / / 4 Comments

4/16/78, West Virginia. Holy shit, they must have been broke, although it seems like WV would be pretty in the spring. Check out Garcia’s solo in Peggy-O, the way he leads the chord changes. Just listen to Peggy-O: this version is astonishing.

In fact, Garcia has been on fire the entire show and for most of the tour, but sweet Sally in the alley, would someone take that slide from Bobby. For the children, if nothing else.

And then listen real careful to Ship of Fools, where Garcia implores us to “Looky here,” before he tells us how late it was when he got around to believing.

P.S. in the New Orleans tradition, when the body is brought to the church, the Second Line follows, playing traditional funeral dirges. IKO IKO IS NOT ONE OF THEM, GENTLEMEN. Hop to it, guys: you’re killing me.

Two Of A Kind

July 16, 2012 / / 0 Comments

I have moved onto 4/11/78, also at the Fox Theater, which is in downtown Atlanta, on Peachtree. There are, apparently, 140 Peachtree streets, boulevards, avenues, lanes, roads, byways, thruways, terraces, ways, places in Atlanta and this joint may or not be located on one of them. It matters not.

There’s a reason this show isn’t on anyone’s top ten list. Still: better than not listening to the Dead AND listen to Terrapin, ten minutes in: something blows up, cutting off Phil and Bobby, so it’s left to Garcia and Keith to slowly wind the show the show into what will be the first of a number of full-band  (or at least more guys than just Billy and Mickey) Drums.

 

On A Spring Roll

July 16, 2012 / / 0 Comments

Now, as you know, Blair Jackson and the rest of Big Dead are keeping things from you, important things: the keys to the Vault, the fact that “Mickey Hart” was played by different actors before and after the hiatus, etc. Why is this? Why does Blair Jackson hate the Dead?

No. You’re not going to do this.

Is it because he’s from Kenya?

Please: not again.

Is it because a mere TEASPOON of his liver, eaten, would produce TREMULOUS LUBICOSITIES OF THE UTMOST in the recipient?

Are you going mad or insane? There is a difference, and I can live with mad for now.

Ah, right: Blair Jackson is Yog Soggoth, the Ancient Anus with many Eyes!

Good, just mad.

Anyway, Blair Jackson is doing this thing over on Dead.net about listening to ten shows in a row so I’m going to beat him by doing the entire Spring ’78 tour because god help me, I need a girlfriend. We join in progress with 4/10/78 from the Fox Theater in Atlanta, GA.

Listen to the way Garcia snaaaaarls Los Angeles? Gimme Norfolk, Virginia. Tidewater 4-10-0-9…

And then stick around for the off-kilter BEW. Both drummers have  been exploding with goodness and syncopation and tomfoolery this tour. And Keith is fucking killing it, but then, on a dime, his playing turns awkward and overpowering and there is a reason they rarely played It’s All Over Now.

And then check back in for Music Never Stopped which is such a train wreck that Harrison Ford is leaping in front of it.

P.S. After full listening, I give this show 3/2 thumbs up and a pat on its ass: “Good job,” I would say to it, were it here, even though it was goofy and sloppy and all over the place–they rocked the Fox with a crackling, coked-up energy. Proud of you!

Boo

July 13, 2012 / / 0 Comments

Oooooh. OOOOOooooooOOOOOOooooh. (What’s weird is that if you use two ‘h’s, it’s no longer spooky. Well, yeah, it’s spooky, but in an unclean way: Ooooooohh.  Right? Just got fifty shades of creepy in here.) It’s Friday the Thirteenth. Oogie-woogie.

The origin of our dreadful fascination with the date arose when Jesus was 13 and Joseph came in from a hard day of being a fictional character offscreen and said “Thank God it’s Friday,” and Jesus leapt up and screamed “You’re not my real dad, I hate you.” and stormed–well, I was going to say into the other room, but the Christs* probably had more of a loft thing, right? The open floor plan was big in Judea in, well, I guess it would have been 13, wouldn’t it have been?

So, then Jesus opened his religion and after that there were Knights Templar, who liked to roam around Europe building hospitals and having gay orgies. That got the Pope mad so he killed them all and, even though none of this really happened, it took place on Friday the 13th which is why on this date, we kill black cats on sight with impunity.

(There is a good possibility that none of that is true.)

So, tonight is filled with horror and foreboding (totally out of context, check out Bobby’s slide solo in Werewolves of London). Jason would have cut a swath through the Dead like Mrs. Donna Jean through a Holiday Inn, as would Michael Myers, mostly because Jason is a blatant rip-off of said Mr. Myers.

Freddie Krueger would have had no luck with the boys; there was nothing he could conjure up in their dreams that was scarier than things they had seen while awake.

Draculas of all sorts were known to avoid the Dead for fear of catching something. Or, more likely, catching everything. The weird, quickly evolving bacterium and viruses that followed each tour did some wonderful things (from a science point of view). There was one pathogen that caused a nearly 80% result for an incurable disorder called Total Nipple Refraction. TNR, man! So, like pretty much anyone with three or four brain cells, the draculas stayed away from the tour blood.

Werewoofs also would have been no sweat. A guy who turns into a raging beast once every 28 days? So, like, half-a-Billy?

It doesn’t matter anyway: Bobby still demands his nightlight to sleep.

* Until the age of 25, I thought that Christ was his last name. Like, “Hi, we’re the Christs. I’m Joseph, and this is my wife Mary.”

The Pyramidial Tracts

July 9, 2012 / / 1 Comment

Egypt was a problem, a disaster, a lovely vacation, an apparently epic party, the setting for about a hundred pages of Kesey’s late-period hairy-chestedness.  The third show was decent; the tapes are readily available. There are even videos:

[youtube http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SFYIsvcspmQ&w=420&h=315]

Now, understand that this is not a fan video or something shot on an iPhone, mostly because it was ’78, but also because this is the official film. The best they could do.

So, no triple-album with limited theatrical release film attached, no recouping $650,000. Bupkiss. On the other hand, the Grateful Dead played in front of the Pyramids under a total eclipse.

So, God bless America, huh?

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