Thoughts On The Dead

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

Tag: billy (Page 4 of 6)

While The Boys Sing Round The Fire

May 23, 2012 / / 3 Comments

The best big concert I ever went to was Pink Floyd. They played all of Dark Side and during On the Run, a model airplane zipped along a wire running the length of Giant Stadium, finally crashing in an enormous ball of flame behind the PA stack, whereupon 70,000 peoples’ heads just exploded from the amount of awesome that had just been placed in there. Later in the show, a massive disco ball eructated from the center of the stadium, opening like lotus petals to reveal Gilmour, coincidentally just in time to play the solo from Comfortably Numb.

The Dead did not do things like that. They engaged in virtually none of the tricks and antics that most other bands rely on; two reasons come to mind. Firstly, they were congenitally incapable of most show business bullshit. Of course, being the Dead, they felt the need to take this to its illogical extreme: sucking at big shows, punching record executives, and (depending on the lineup) being made-up of anywhere from 67 to 80 percent really ugly dudes. This is not how Jon Bon Jovi did it.

Second, the Dead’s audience could be counted on to provide at least half of their own entertainment. At any show, most of the crowd would have been just as amused by their own hands as by a flying drum kit, so why spend the money?  While Tommy Lee’s roller-coaster drum solo was immensely cool, it wasn’t for Billy or Mickey. Drums did not fly in the Dead. Thrown? Quite often.

Not that they didn’t have their own little stage moves. Phil would march up three feet, then back three, then up. Garcia unconsciously pushed his glasses up his nose before he took most solos. Keith did this adorable thing where he would pass out in a corner, a pool of hot piss spreading slowly underneath him. They all had their thing, is what I’m saying.

It just wasn’t the usual way to rock. You know that move where the two guitarists stand back-to-back, as if they can no longer remain upright unassisted because of the sheer POWAH! of the rock they were laying down? Imagine Bobby trying to do that to Garcia. Now, in your head, did Garcia gracefully side-step, leaving Bobby to tumble onto the ground? Because he did in mine. I wouldn’t even let the Bobby in my head TRY to do that shit to Phil, because I need the Bobby in my head to keep doing silly things I can tell you nice folks about, and we all know that touching Phil leads to hiring attorneys.

There was never any of that happy horseshit about “how nice it was to be here in (checks note affixed to monitor) THE FINGER LAKES, YEAH!  We been all around this country and nowhere rocks harder than the (double-check) FINGER LAKES!”  No pandering nonsense about the local teams, we were not asked to put “them” up, nor was it demanded of us that we wave “them” in the air. No enquiries were made about our level of interest about waving “them” in the air, whatsoever. Paul Stanley would have been disgusted.

P.S. Credit does have to be given to the entire group for avoiding the most pernicious of rock tics: Guitar Face. I mean, occasionally Garcia would knit is brow in concentration during Slipknot! or something, but none of them ever came down with a full-blown case of Les Palsy.

If I Told You ‘Bout All That Went Down…

May 22, 2012 / / 3 Comments

As is my wont (and my tont and my soupt), this begins with a plea, an urgent command from the Library to listen to something, something you’ve almost definitely heard before, but listen to Keith here on 5/7/77 playing Mississippi Half-Step on THE ORGAN FOR THE FIRST TIME SINCE THE TOUR STARTED, THANK YOU.  Forget the sheer tonnage of beatdown Garcia is bringing: listen to the B3!

 ————————–

Okay: I can tell how many people are clicking on what links and the cold, hard fact is that not nearly enough of you are going on to listen to 8/24/72 even though I keep telling you and breaking your toys in front of you and making you wear Dead Mom’s lipstick every Wednesday night. Humpday? Huh. You got no idea.

—————————

In the early days, they all had different relationships with the concept of being in tune. Phil agreed whole-heartedly when it came to his bass and his voice in the early days, but after his vocal sabbatical, he was just all over the place. Bobby played in tune and sang out of it, Garcia sang in tune, and played out of it. Keith was just plain out of it.

————————–

Tupac keeps making popping up, Morrison went to Africa like Rimbaud, and people will be seeing Elvis along the highway for as long as the Republic stands. Garcia? He’s gone.

————————–

39:07 for The Other One on 9/17/72? Why? Why, Grateful Dead: why would you let this happen? Forget the sheer tonnage of notes; instead, note the date: September 17, 1972. It’s been released, officially, as Dick’s Picks 23. This is not just a show they played, this is something they offered for sale in the market with their imprimatur. In other words. the Dead are telling us that this is behavior that they are proud of. “Most bands could play a song for maybe 20 minutes and then it would get weird and sad. It took us 40 minutes. GRATEFUL DEAD RULES, EVERYBODY ELSE DROOLS”

I Will Not Condemn You

May 21, 2012 / / 2 Comments

There have been new visitors to the bloggings, mostly from the wonderful and masculine-smelling Reddit, which was exciting and sexual. Problem was, I think the last few postings on the bloggings have been kind of weird and insular and not really about the Dead as much as my wrestling with the Creeping Insanity and that fucker just having his way with me. No contest, just taking his sweet time.

Until I yearned for it.

That is the kind of shit we had the meeting about.

Right, right. Sorry. So: who is this for? If you fit any one of the following descriptions, you should dive into the archives.(Actually, physically dive into them. Running start right into the computer: I swear it will work. It is an app.)

  • You love the Weather Report Suite, yet realize the lyrics are so dumb they ought to be quarantined. Black dirt live again, my ass. (But here’s an awesome WRS from the Curtis Hixon Convention Center in Tampa on 12/18/73. This is one of my favorite names for a 70’s arena. I just wish it had merged with the nearby building in Pembroke Pines to become the Curtis Hixon Sportatorium, which is the most 70’s you can get in three words. You can almost picture the enormous tie knots and boxing still being relevant.
  • You’ve ever idly wondered whether, after building the Wall of Sound, they considered building a Wall of Sight. Or maybe a Wall of Taste. (Warning: do not taste the Wall of Taste.)
  • You like the parts that are in between the songs better than the songs.
  • Occasionally–not always, but certainly not never–Jack Straw gets on your last nerve.
  • You have forgiven Vince, but still choose not to listen to his dinky tinklings.
  • Your ongoing argument with yourself regarding The Greatest ___ Ever! has resorted to factionalism, dirty-fighting, and–since Billy is involved–crotchpunching.In my head, it feels as though each year has achieved sentience and is now throwing evidence around when I’m trying to do other things like eat or cry or eat while I’m crying. It’s like the Italian parliament up there, but with nary a spicy meatball.
  • You want Sugaree to be longer. No matter how long it is, you believe it could stand to gain another 8 minutes or so.
  • You’ll put up with Bobby’s cowboy bullshit, but not his first set turn as Silly Dixon.
  • You got here by googling “rule 34 grateful dead.” You are sick, though constantly recurring, blips on my analytics and I welcome you to a place where you’ll be accepted. (Warning: there will be NONE of that “slash” fan fiction stuff where you take other people’s characters and hump them together like they were your childhood toys. However, we may dip our toes into that shiver-inducing pond by figuring out the most horrifying match-up: my money’s on Phil/Billy, because in the whisper of time before Billy started punching dicks, it would be awkward.)
  • Now you’re thinking about it, aren’t you? Even if you don’t want to, your brain’s just going “Brent/Mickey? Hornsby/Phil?” Tell me what the worst of the terrible, terrible images your brain is rifling through right now against your will in the comments. Best one wins a lifetime supply of Beard! for men with beards. Have a beard? Use Beard!

Perhaps They’re Better Left Unsung

May 11, 2012 / / 2 Comments

It wasn’t like roulette, you see. The casinos have made fortunes since they installed those immaculately legible tote boards listing the numbers that have landed previously in red with big ol’ tempting empty spaces in between and they’ve been raking cash in because your dumb ass has evolved to think 15 is gonna hit because it’s due. It makes sense to believe that present events are based upon past observation: that’s why people instinctively shielded their crotches whenever Billy came around, for al the good it would do them. Billy was like Gretzky: he could always find your five-hole.

But just as it is a logical fallacy to think that the rules of real life apply in the casino, it is also a mistake to think that Hoyle has any say over the world. (It’s called the Ludic fallacy, which I know because it is one of those facts that gets lodged in my brain instead of, say, how to find love.)  So, why do we forget that about the Dead? Why do we lionize certain shows only to ignore the rest of the week? These men were, appearances to the contrary, human. They had good runs. But the forest is invisible but for the trees, especially when some trees are, y’know, Barton Hall or Red Rocks. They suck up all the light.

Talking about the Dead is to talk about overshadowing. Garcia overshadowed the rest of the band, Mickey’s overkill overshadowed Billy’s light touch, ’77 and ’73 overshadowed all the other years, and Vince’s playing overshadowed the charitable work he did as a participant in the saddest Make-A-Wish event ever. Even Vince knew enough to be embarrassed.

We let ourselves think the greatness appeared as weird happening, crepuscular beams from a murky sea. Not so. 5/19/74 is rightfully well-regarded, especially the raging Truckin’>Mind Left Body jam. but listen to the very next show, 5/21/74 at UCLA the University of Washington* where they proceed to pull out a GODDAM 45 MINUTE PLAYIN’. Give the kids some Robotussin, shoot the dog and LISTEN to this thing, to the peaks and valleys that spring like Zeus out of inchoate spaciness one after another. (And, since it’s a GREAT matrix mix, listen to the appreciative audience cheer every twist and turn. Listen to ’em ROAR for Donna in Playin’. hell, listen to Donna!

Yeah, 2/14/70 is historic, but 2/11 is better. Yes, 1977 was THE year, but y’know: ’78 kicks more ass than an avowed lover of kicking ass who had spent his last dime to enter an ass-kicking contest in an attempt to win enough money to open his own business, a high-end Ass-Kickery.

 

*Thanks to a comment by an Esteemed Enthusiast, the location of the 5/21 show has been amended to note the actual location. For his Sherlockian abilities, he will receive a lifetime supply of Bobby Weir’s Shorts Shorteners. Shorts too long? Shorten ’em with Shorts Shortener!

thoughts on a show

May 3, 2012 / / 5 Comments

Halloween, 1991

Kesey’s son just died*  and with the band raging behind him, he goes into ee cummings Buffalo Bill:

Buffalo Bill's

defunct

        who used to

        ride a watersmooth-silver

                                  stallion

and break onetwothreefourfive pigeonsjustlikethat

                                                  Jesus

he was a handsome man

                      and what i want to know is

how do you like your blueeyed boy

Mister Death

Try writing another joke about Dickpunchin’ Billy after that shit, man.

* This is not true, as noted in the comments. Bill Graham had just died, not Kesey’s son; Kesey’s son had died seven years prior.

Other Times, I Can Barely SEO

April 29, 2012 / / 5 Comments

Do you have an Old Mall in your town? As those caverns of the 70’s stubbornly rust all over the country, they evolve into one of a number of morphologies: there’s the Ghost Mall, that has maybe one store still there and the others look haunted and Cormac McCarthy-ish. The giant letters forming the names of the stores have been removed and left their traces on the wall. Best “out of business” sign there is.

Then there is another kind of mall. Perhaps it is just as bustling as it used to be, back when it supported three separate record shops (one of which was actually–swear–cool) and an honest-to-god Tiny Comic Book Store. Not too big–just one long oval with Macy’s on one end and Sear’s on the other. A solidly striving, middle-class mall in America. Now, yes, there always was a bit of a crime problem, but you get a lot of shoplifters at any mall and quite frankly, the whole situation was needlessly exacerbated by the Police Chief getting himself run over while in pursuit three times. Twice, maybe. Three times, you start looking at the common denominator.

But where there used to be ladies apparel shops are now cash4gold places, the Body Shop replaced by the Dollar Store, and far more places selling baseball caps than you would think the market could bear.  It has become the Terrifying Mall, a mall you are sure “belongs” to someone who is not the rightful owner, someone for whom “laundry day” is never a valid excuse for wearing certain colors.

Jut asking, because apparently some poor soul got here via the search term socks for fat ankles boynton beach and everyone knows that the best place is Sweaty’s at the Boynton Beach Mall, in between the two kiosks selling iPod accessories and the Mexican supermarket. Godspeed, you fankled lovely. 

Do you know what analytics are? I didn’t, until I started making the bloggings. Now I know how each and every person got here–there’s a list of the exact search term. Let’s see a few, shall we? (The search terms are in bold, obviously. I have not altered them except when I did to make them funnier.)

Now, weir fucking donna is an obvious one, as is is phil lesh a jerk, but less predictable was the fact that three lost, lonely men (and you know that they are most certainly men) searched for ned lagin or ned lagin band.

I’d like to think that both dickpunching billy and grateful dead crotchpunch represent people who had been here before, but for one reason or another forgot to bookmark the bloggings.

As for the 8–FUCKIN’ 8 HUMAN BEINGS–who searched for grateful dead rule 34? You sicken me. On the other hand, it was nice to fill a niche

A Grateful Dead Movie

April 20, 2012 / / 1 Comment

Best Set: First!

Second-best Set: Second!

Set List: Fairly standard for the era!

Show Highlight: SUGAR BEGONIAS! Seriously, do yourself a favor and listen to the seamless perfection of the transition. It got a round of applause in the theater. If I didn’t know better, I would have sworn they practiced.

Small Favor: This film was not presented in 3D.

Shortest shorts: Wild guess!

Highest Light: Bird Song! Nice laid back jam at the end and Garcia’s voice still had its last tinges of sweetness. (You ever hear his voice crack on a high note, or slip and slide around the pitch like the rest of them? No…and no fair bringing up the laryngitis shows.)

Lowest Light: Eyes! That they at least had the courtesy to not play it for thirty-five minutes is the kindest thing that can be said about this particular rendition.

Love Light: And leave it on!

Goddamn Bullshit: $12.50 for the ticket, 11.50 for the popcorn and coke! (I am physically unable to stop myself from ordering the Jumbo Combo Snack Pack. I have watched precisely one movie in my life without popcorn and a coke: Super Cop with Jackie Chan. Atkins diet. Never again.)

Nicest Tradition: Smoke break during drums/space! You meet the nicest, most reasonable people during the drums/space bathroom-smoke-wander around break. They, too, refuse to coddle those muppets for the 85 minutes an evening they took to whack on things and play bloopy noises.

Saddest Thought: Maybe there’ll be a lady there and…I don’t want to talk about it.

Secret Hero: Brent! Brent was all over this show–musically–and he got as much camera time as anyone but Garcia. He’s fun to watch, too: throwing himself up and down his B-3 and smacking at its keys to produce that ‘ducka ducka’ sound. Plus, he’s got very large, very blue eyes that poke out from the Gimli of Gloin beard covering the rest of his face, and he zeroes in on Garcia with utter joy. I think there were pictures of his little girls taped to his piano and then he would look at Garcia and it was all very sad.

Average Age: Not all that young! Lot of sandals, too. Plus: a crazy guy! Old grizzled hippie-biker guy who apparently thought 7:00 PM at the Boynton Beach Plexiplex was going to turn into an acid test and we would all lube ourselves up with butter topping and do some sort of movie-orgy. He did have one good line, though: when Garcia lit up on-screen, Biker Guy chastised him, “Those things’ll kill ya!”

Best Factoid: Floor mats! Bobby, Phil, and Garcia had, laying on top of the rugs, what looked like floor mats right in front of their mikes. I was confused until I half-remembered that they were pressure pads that turned the mike on as they stepped up to sing. Which is clever, in an over-engineered, MythBusters sort of way.

Worst Pope: Bobby Knucklesandwiches VI! Seriously, that guy shit the bed.

Secret Secret: Phil! He didn’t get a close-up until halfway through the second set, when he terrified the entire audience by stepping up to his microphone to sing backup on Dear Mr Fantasy. A visible shudder went through the crowd, I swear to you. The only shots we got of him were immensely unflattering. Remember the sweatpants with the elastic on the ankles? Yeah, those. Plus, he was playing my least favorite of his basses, the headless Modulus. There is something unpleasantly fidgety about those headless guitars and I don’t trust them.

Biggest Surprise: Tyler Perry’s cameo as Madea!

Nicest Try: The Covers Project! Before the show, they showed three videos: classical guitar guy playing Bird Song endlessly, hipsters with too many Gram Parsons records wearing artisanal suspenders playing Brown-Eyed Women, also endlessly. Finally, a fat guy showed up and just awesomed all over his bass to accompany himself on I Will Take You Home. Pretty decent, that one.

Secreter Hero: The Director! (And the editor! and producer! as well, I guess.) Completely avoiding almost every annoying rock concert cliché. No swooshing Video Toaster effects, no split-screen, and quite clearly no over-dubs: coming out of space, the MIDI controller on Wolf crapped out, leaving Garcia standing there doodling noiselessly.

Shitting Me: 22 minutes and 28 seconds! That is the combined length of drums/space.

Best Face: Billy’s! Halfway through drums, Mickey called his usual audible and turned the promised Beating of the Drums into the predictable Berating of the Roadies. Billy just smirked at him and continued whacking his bongos.

Worst Hair: Mickey! He looked like the  hostage with whom you didn’t empathize.

Bobbiest Bobby: Bobby! Good sweet mammy, was Bobby as Bobby as he could be tonight! Doing his little duck-neck shrug and the lunge and those thighs! (In the spirit of truth-telling, Bobby does have a kick-ass set of gams. Bobby is up in the gym, working on his fitness.) His hair was nothing short of spectacular and he remembered the words to everything, even an awesome Stuck Inside of Mobile, and that song has a ridiculous amount of words. They should have told Bobby they were making a movie every night. (Not only did Bobby remember all the words this show, but check out the next night, when he crushes Desolation Row. BOBBY, WHY YOU REMEMBER ALL 20 BILLION VERSE  DESOLATION ROW, BUT FUCK UP PROMISED LAND? Yeah, Bobby: what the Vietnamese immigrant screamed at you.

My God: Phil’s outfit! I don’t mean to harp, but that inch of white tube sock in between the ankle elastic of sweatpant and the top of his New Balance sneakers is simply not doing it for me. The only thing Phil was missing was a mustard stain and a pocketful of food court napkins.

Lay Your Money Down

March 4, 2012 / / 1 Comment

Have you seen this book called How to be Like the Grateful Dead in the Business Places or Something: Business Innovations from the Long Strange Trip? Something like that, but the actual title is under the page on which I am working and I am just that committed to doing NOT ONE jot of research for these bloggings, even when now I kind of want to know. I shall, however, resist.

A book like this can succeed on two fronts: it might have cool new photos or stories about the band, or it might have a coherent and well-considered thesis that the presence of the Dead only augments. The book falls short in both categories. There are some good pictures, but nothing revelatory. There are, for instance, no photos of Billy in his Spring ’85 tour alter ego.

Billy always adopted a tour alter ego, someone to transform into when the romping got to stomping and the hotel bar started eyeballing him. Billy’s tour alter ego was usually a horrible, vicious man named The Chasm. Luckily for some, Billy would presage the arrival of The Chasm, announcing in the style of the delightful street urchins on The Wire, “Chasm coming!” and everybody would just clear right out except for one guy who would lazily wobble his head towards Billy and ask, “Chasm? Cool, man. Is he holding?”

CROTCH!

But 1985 was different. The entire band had been out of their heads on the MDMA that tour, but Billy had shifted paradigms on ’em again and undergone a massive change in temperament, renaming himself Slobber T. Johnson. He’d walk around pantless with his crank in his hand sweetly inquiring of anyone who passed by, “Hello, I’m Slobber T. Johnson. Are you slobbering johnsons? My johnson sure does need a slobber, you johnsonslobberer, you.” and it just goes on like that.

So not only does it disappoint that there are no pictures of the event, it also confirms my skepticism about the whole project as just a cheapjack move to make some blood-money. [EDIT: In no way is the income derived from writing a semi-serious book about a country-rock jam band “blood money.” We renounce the writer of the previous statement, and as all-powerful editor, replace him with ourself.] FREEDOM! [Who let him out? Who the fuck let him out?] I will DESTROY the SOUL of the UNIVERSE unless you RELINQUISH the GAUNTLET OF GANTHET! [Shit, he’s fully capitalizing now. It’s bad.] The JAWS of my DARK ANUS will CHOMP on your NETHERS until you–

Guys. Guys, enough. Thank you: it was cute until the “dark anus” and then…you know, we just can’t be having it around the kids.

I am SORRY.

[My bad.]

Back to work, now.

The entire concept of this silly book is that you should take advice from a group of orangutans who had had more than one conversation involving the phrase, “He went where with the money?” Normal human beings might have that conversation once due to no fault of their own, but they never have it twice. You pay attention the second time. Not our heroes. For all we know, they might have chosen who to give the money to by who had the most pocket space. The Dead leaked a lot of cash. They behaved, in other words, completely contrary to every business practice known to man.

I’m betting the book is going to hit on the Dead’s early adoption of fan clubs and mailing lists as some sort of evidence that the Dead “really were the first social networkers.”  Next time someone tries to tell you that the telegraph was the Victorian twitter or somesuch, headbutt that fucker til he dies.

Ramble On Rosalita

March 3, 2012 / / 6 Comments

I was raised in New Jersey, so if you say bad things about Bruce Springsteen, I have to impregnate your cousin. No, not that cousin, the other one, the one no one would expect. My family takes our New Jersey rock seriously: my cousin once punched out Jon Bon Jovi. That is an actual true fact.

For graduation, one of my friends gave, as a “graduation gift” (don’t ask, it was a suburban thing), around 10 people the exact same CD, The Wild, the Innocent, and the E Street Shuffle. Not only was it the ballsiest act of record snobbery in the books, but it was the most successful: all of those recipients still listen to the record regularly. Because it’s The Wild and the Innocent, man, But it was also telling for the fact that in New Jersey in the 90’s, everyone was simply assumed to be into Bruce.

So, what do Bruce and the Dead have in common? Quite a bit, but not very much at all.

They both made their bones as live performers, got ripped off by shady idiots, and became beloved by white people everywhere. The Dead built a Wall of Sound, Bruce ripped off the wall of sound. But the analogy quickly falls apart.

Both favored the approach of putting as many people on the payroll as possible, but Bruce hired employees, and then yelled at them a lot. Which shouldn’t be held against him: it’s how most bandleaders have always treated their musicians. James Brown used to fine people for missing notes. Gene Krupa only played the drums for the permission it gave him to scream at sax players. If E Street bassist Garry W. Tallent had ever tried any of Phil’s multi-octave meanderings, Bruce would’ve just outright beat him to death in front of the rest of the band as a warning.

Bruce and the Dead never met, seemingly. They certainly never jammed together. Neither Mickey nor Phil would have taken well to being counted off in such a commanding tone; it would have ended poorly.

Yes, both favored 8-minute long songs, but in Bruce’s case, 5 of those minutes were the band vamping while he told a story about his father. Or, possibly, about the Highway of Hope or the River of Faith or the Off-Ramp of False Equivalence or whatever the fuck he’s been yammering about for the past 15 years ago or so.

(Plus, Bruce’s accent has now lapsed into either speech impediment or elaborate put-on. Growing up, I had a friend whose mom had gone to high school with Bruce, because everyone in New Jersey is required to have some connection, however tenuous, to Bruce under penalty of someone going, “What the fuck, you don’t have a tenuous connection to Bruce? What the fuck over here?” Do I need to mention that this woman who grew up not two miles from Springsteen’s house at the exact same time had not one hint of grizzled twang to her voice? At the beginning of his career, Bruce sounded like a sweathog, but now he’s Johnny 99% and he wants to Occupy It (All Night Long.))

Although, I certainly would have enjoyed hearing Garcia try to do one of Bruce’s raps:

“So, see, my dad, who was very much kind of his own avatar? If you can grok me on that, y’know? So, he was very much a man of his times–ooh, wait, I heard this cool thing about watches…

“GIVE ME YOUR LIVERS!”

“Someone take away Phil’s mic, please.”

My Best Friend, My Drummer

March 2, 2012 / / 0 Comments

Listen to this, starting at around a minute in. It’s the Stir it Up jam, you know it. But listen again to how the very instant that Garcia picks up the thread that he’s been doodling at, Billy’s right there with him.

Billy gets short shrift. The other chimps built a Wall of Sound around him, (literally*), but Billy was still sitting there like the lost Murray brother with his pervy mustache and dinky little jazz kit. Whenever Mickey wasn’t around to rope Billy into his percussion related…ideas…Billy’s entire kit would fit in the trunk and backseat of an El Dorado. He gets overshadowed, though, partially stemming from the fact that Billy is deliberately kept away from people, especially people who have crotches they don’t want punched.

Billy should be listed along with Charlie Watts and Animal Muppet as one of the greatest drummers of the time, but he labors under the double canopy of Garcia and Phil. Phil, as we have discussed, preferred to play all the notes. Other bassists would play some of the notes. Actually, most bassists would play merely a few notes repeatedly. Not our Phil, so it’s easy to forget The Rule:

The sound of a great band is made by two guys, usually the drummer and the rhythm guitarist, but sometimes the bassist. No exceptions.**

The Stones are Keith and Charlie. Van Halen is those two aging tweakers and whatever hepatitis-infected blond they can rope into screaming, “GLARBLE MONNA HARTFORD, CONNECTICUT!” for a three-month tour that lasts five weeks and ends in recriminations, lawsuits, and, finally, discussion of Wolfgang’s unfortunate resemblance in every single way possible  to A. J. Soprano that was totally uncalled for. Not cool, man.

The sound of the Dead is Garcia and Billy. Dead and gone.

(We do, though, have recordings of the shows, which we may listen to at our leisure. For your enjoyment, and to bolster my pro-Billy stance, listen to the Mind Left Body Jam in this China/Rider. It proves my point: Phil played the bass, but Billy played songs. Man.)

*Billy refused to sit directly under the massive center speaker conglomeration, primarily because he had been up all night doing drugs and shooting at the Invisible Ones with the people who erected the thing.

**I am including Rush in this. The sound of Rush is generated by Geddy and Neil. Lifeson, while technically known in official musician terminology as “a motherfucker,” has always been generic, generally.

ADDENDUM

Recently having written a post about Springsteen, I have come to the realization that the sound of Bruce Springsteen & the E Street Band is generated by Roy Bittan and Max Weinberg, making it an ultra-rare piano/drum combo.

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