Thoughts On The Dead

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

Tag: 5/5/78

What You Need To Know About The New Hampshire Primary

February 11, 2020 / / 13 Comments

OVERVIEW

Very green. Lots of mountains. Hence, New Hampshire’s nickname: The Granite State. (The mountains are made of granite, and “The Green Mountain State” was already taken by Vermont.)

SLIGHTLY LOWER VIEW

Ooh, a bluejay.

DEMOCRATIC TECHNICALITIES

None of that caucus shit. You go to your local elementary school library or church gymnasium and pull a lever, the way it says to do in the Bible. On Primary Day, the legal limit for drunk driving is doubled, and all the cops are watching the polls, anyway.

IF YOU AIN’T THE LEAD DOG, YOU’RE JUST STARING AT ASSHOLES ALL DAY

In a shameless example of government intruding into politics, New Hampshire is bound by state law to have the first primary in the nation. No matter how early another state schedules their primary, New Hampshire’s has to be a week before that. New Hampshire’s like the contestant on The Price Is Right that bids a dollar more than the last guy did.

OTHER CORNY, SMALL-TOWNY BULLSHIT

By tradition, the tiny hamlet of Dixville Notch is the first in the state to vote, doing so at just after midnight. The predictive powers of the village are not celebrated, though, as Dixville Notch’s inhabitants are all from the Pasdesdoux family, which has not bred outside the line since Shay’s Rebellion.

WHITENESS

All-encompassing, except for the greenery. 30% whiter than the national average. Whiter than Jimmy Fallon in a wedding dress. Even whiter than Iowa, which is 20% whiter than the mean. The fact that black people don’t get to vote in any numbers until the fourth primary is a complete coincidence, I would imagine.

PARTICIPANTS AND THEIR SPIRIT ANIMALS

Bernie Sanders – Mr. Jiggs.

Elizabeth Warren – The cartoon owl that eats the kid’s Tootsie Roll Pop.

Andrew Yang – Panda. (You’re right: this is a racist spirit animal, and I am just as aggrieved as you. I wish it were anything else, but I’m just reporting here.)

Amy Klobuchar – Also a panda. (Not racist, but not a fitting spirit animal. The woman’s clearly a condor. Whoever chose these is a fucking dunce.)

Joe Biden – Petey, the Li’l Rascals’ dog.

Michael Bloomberg – A pygmy marmoset, mouse lemur, or a bee hummingbird.

Pete Buttigieg – Ticketmaster.

ALWAYS A DEAD CONNECTION, JUST PASSIN’ THROUGH EDITION

New Hampshire became one of five single-show states–joining Idaho, South Carolina, Montana, and Mississippi–on 5/5/78. Only four states had no Dead shows at all. Name ’em in the Comment Section; no cheating.

RELATIONSHIP BETWEEN LEGENDARY TEEVEE ACTRESS HOLLAND TAYLOR AND HOLLANDAISE SAUCE

None whatsoever. It might be to her taste, but nothing beyond that. She is not, nor is she related to, the sauce’s namesake.

THINGS TO DO IN NEW HAMPSHIRE WHEN YOU’RE DEAD

Summer (July 10 – August 25): Set on the porch and whittle a fully-functioning rifle; turf wars at the lake; hunting for pennywises and tommyknockers trying to escape from Maine; making sure Billy Earl, who ain’t quite right, don’t lock himself in the dumpster again; helmet-less motorcycling; pilgrimages to Dio’s birthplace in Portsmouth.

Winter (August 26 – July 9): Various mountain-based activities such as, but not limited to, skiing, snowboarding, drunkenly pissing off chair lifts, getting chlamydia in a hot tub, wearing sweaters, abandoning your wife and children because you mistakenly thought there was an avalanche coming, hunting for Abominables. Winter is also the a perfect time to make a pilgrimage to Dio’s Portsmouth birthplace.

BERNIE SANDERS IS TOTALLY MR. JIGGS

Just look.

You see it. You know you see it.

I Wish I Had A Seatbelt On A Northbound Train

August 17, 2017 / / 16 Comments

The Grateful Dead weren’t a car band, not thematically. Keith’s Let Me Sing Your Blues Away uses an automotive motif, and Bobby has a line about Cassady’s Cadillac, but not much more than that in their original tunes. (I am deliberately not mentioning Money, Money.) Chuck Berry and Bruce and all the other blue-jeaned rockers covered the parking lot; the Dead tended to mine the depots and switchyards for their symbolic language.

Don’t believe me? Go check for yourself. Searching for “car” pulls up five examples, only one of which was written by the band and is actually referring to a boxcar. “Train,” on the other hand, retrieves eight original songs and a shitload of covers. The Dead’s songs generally take place in some dateless “West” where the past and present and future jerk each other off and eat each others’ lunches from the fridge; the introduction of an automobile gives a song too much temporal specificity.

The Dead also liked trains because the Dead were the trainwreckingest band that ever sold out football stadiums. They were capable of shanking any song at any moment, and in ways you’d not think possible were you not an Enthusiast and already apprised of the band’s infinite bush leaguery. Do you not believe me yet again? Listen to this El Paso from 11/2/84 at the Berkeley Community Theater. El Paso has two fucking chords and they played it every other night for their entire career, but the Dead found a way to utterly fuck the song up AND for way longer than usual: El Paso is usually three-and-a-half minutes long, but this Texas Tragedy is over six.

That El Paso is a bit of an outlier, though, in that you can’t quite put your finger on what went wrong besides everything. Not so with this Ship Of Fools from 5/5/78 at Dartmouth. 6:35 or thereabouts, Garcia jumps a beat in between “It was later than I thought” and “When I first believed you” and then refuses to listen to anyone onstage for the rest of the tune; the song never recovers.

But if we’re talking full-song calamities, then the 3/31/85 China Doll might be the winner. It’s got everything: Garcia randomly speeding up and slowing down, pooched lyrics, transition pile-ups, out-of-sync drummers, and several unplanned key changes.

Those, Enthusiasts, are all intrasong trainwrecks, but the Dead also managed to fuck up before they’d quite begun the tune.

Exhibit A:

Exhibit B (go to 2:02:00):

We have barely scratched the surface, Enthusiasts. There were many other categories of catastrophe. You’ll notice that the songs posted so far have been ones that the Dead knew how to play. But, sometimes, the Grateful Dead would play songs that they did not know how to play. For example, on 6/23/88 at Alpine Valley, the Dead did not know how to play the Beatles’ Blackbird. They did not let that stop them.

Well, Blackbird’s got a bunch of chords, you might think. Louie Louie, however, famously has only three. And yet, the Dead did not know how to play the song.

In terms of minor wrecks–ones that work themselves out within a few bars, but still make you giggle–the best place to go looking is right at the intersection of Jam and Song in Playing in the Band. That spot was the Dead’s equivalent of that one wobbly step on your staircase that you trip on every time but never fix.

I’m missing quite a few, obviously. Speak up in the Comment Section, and don’t forget to like, share, and subscribe.

What?

I’ve been watching a lot of YouTube videos lately.

Stop that.

Okay.

 

(With thanks to everyone on Twitter who pointed out these gems.)

Wrapped Around The Manzanita

October 8, 2013 / / 1 Comment

It is time, ladies and perms, for another installment in Almost Great Shows, but I’m gonna be honest: this one’s special. Like, an aide from the state helps you with lunch special.

5/5/78 from Dartmouth College is our choice tonight. “I’ve never heard of that show, TotD,” you say. Well, there’s a reason: it’s just all over the place. The three singers seem to have invented a new key each (perhaps j minor) for Lazy Lightning, Garcia is so casual with the lyrics in Candyman that it sounds like he’s being sarcastic, and Ship of Fools is an absolute Hall of Fame Trainwreck.

About halfway through the song, someone gets a half-bar off, either Garcia or the rest of them, which sounds easily fixable if you’re not the Grateful Dead, but unfortunately they were, at the time, the Grateful Dead and instead of pausing a little bit or whatever, Garcia and the band play tug of war with the melody and the chords for the rest of the tune. Best part is, the mikes pick up all the sniping and bitching at one another afterwards.

But a valley always leads to a peak, and they burn through a great Estimated>Eyes into a common, yet beloved (by me and only me. it seems) feature of the Spring ’78 season: Full Band Drums!

There’s fuck-ton of caveat emptor on this one. Maybe even a smidge of Abandon all Hope.  As usual and as with all shows that I deem to be not up to my snuff (and you all know that my snuff is high as fuck), I instantly stopped listening once I was done, had rewound the really good bits, written around four e-mails discussing it, and rustled up 300 words to tell you what was wrong with it.

So, you know: there.

 

p.s. Even if you don’t have time for the whole show, even if you don’t like 1978, even if you’re leg’s caught in a bear trap: listen to Garcia sing Stella Blue. And then listen to him play. Listen to him dust off those rusty strings.

The Stacks

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