Thoughts On The Dead

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

Tag: bobby weir (Page 5 of 8)

Hi, I’m Bobby

June 23, 2012 / / 5 Comments

There’s this new tumblr I like, Phil is weird, I think that’s the name. Funny pictures of Phil and funny captions and Phil is exceedingly goofy, just all the time and I haven’t seen most of these pictures: this Tumblr guy is a Google ninja and I salute him (or her, but let’s be honest, him.)*

Are you shitting me? When you saw the site, you sulked for an hour, muttering darkly, “Somebody’s being funny about the Dead on the internet: that’s MY thing, I invented that.” You whined like a kicked kitten.

None of that is true.

And then you stole all the pictures you could and reposted them on your little site, didn’t you?

I did that. Yes, I did.

But Phil’s just an amateur, man.

* It’s a lady. A pretty, pretty–

I’m warning you, buddy.

–lady. I’ve already planned our Wedding. The groomsmen have to wear Bobby shorts, then the Best Man locks himself in the upstairs bathroom for three hours.

I’ll Still Sing you Love Songs

June 23, 2012 / / 1 Comment

[youtube http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Mke6YlGSFBU&w=420&h=315]

Take all rumor as truth. For the sake of argument and thought, take all rumor as truth. So we accept that Buckaroo Bobby was putting the spurs to my golden-shanked filly Ms. Donna Jean right under Keith’s coke-ruined nose. (We hope. The possibility also exists that Keith was involved somehow, perhaps like that crippled foreign guy making his wife do sex in that movie: orchestrating things, directing, discreetly applying the necessary lubes and balms while rubbing himself. i choose not to believe that possibility.)

So, anyway, even Keith isn’t oblivious enough not to notice what’s going on, especially when Ms. Donna Jean keeps leaving notes on their hotel room door reading, “Gone Bobby Banging.”

And now you’ve got to go onstage and sing love songs written in the letters of your name as Keith cries the quiet tears of a cuckold onto his piano keys.

Awkward.

Who Wears Short Shorts?

June 22, 2012 / / 1 Comment

I need to stop watching these videos, because…I hate to say this, but: looking at Bobby and his choices distracts me from the music.

He is wearing a too-tight purple Izod, and his short pants. They are the type of short pants that suggest a bikini underneath and a long, soapy afternoon washing cars to raise money for Cayden’s cousin Rex who’s got cerurul pawsy. or something–it’s bad. He is playing not his ultra-cool 335, but a Casio guitar. Not a joke, that: it was seriously made by Casio.

Bobby, why won’t you let us love you? You know we do, Bobert. But, these fashion shenanigans (fashenanigans?) are going to have to stop or you will have to start letting me out of the car at least two blocks from school.

It’s 9/10/91, MSG, NYC. Ok? It’s one of the only Vince-related things to hold up at all, and as I’ve stated before, it’s tough to sound too bad when you’re being propped up by Bruce Hornsby and Branford Marsalis.

Anyway, I won’t do my usual dissection of the thing, except to point out one bit that I BEG you to watch because it will make you very happy, I promise: it happens at  1.15.30–Branford is coming out of this wonderful solo and plays this figure, ascending sixteenth notes, pretty but nothing mind-blowing, except Bruce starts playing it, so Branford goes back to it and the Phil picks it up, but he’s playing it going down the scale, and Garcia finally just reaches up the neck of his guitar, effortlessly, to where he knows the notes have always been, waiting for him to play them, and he picks up the figure twice and launches into his solo and yes I said yes I said yes.

Dave’s Nix

June 21, 2012 / / 1 Comment

In honor of the new Dave’s Pick (chosen from a year that’s often overlooked and more often underrated), tonight we will be featuring some shows that, for one reason or another, will never be officially released:

  • The January ’78 double laryngitis shows, where Bobby loses his voice as well as Garcia, leaving the vocal duties up to Phil, Donna Jean, and dear sweet Christ, you get away from that microphone, Keith. The show consisted mostly of half-remembered Dylan covers, Jazz Odyssey, and ended with the drummers doing the My Little Buttercup routine to a smattering of sarcastic applause.
  • Any ’94 where you can musically hear Garcia coming out of a blackout to find himself halfway through Althea in front of 60,000 people. Again.
  • 6/13/66 (It’s a Friday, BOO. I just scared the SHIT out of you, yo.) They played at Miskatonic University. (SPOOOOOOOKY and Liiiiiiiterary.)
  • The Rabies Show. Billy just started fucking biting people and wouldn’t stop. I don’t want to talk about–HE’S COMING BACK FOR MORE!
  • The Radio City gig with the Rockettes. Acid and stiletto heels do not mix.
  • That other ’75 show where not only were Ned Lagin and Merl Saunders invited up, but also Rick Wakeman, Emerson, the guy from Deep Purple, Bernie Worrell (he came with Merl), Doctors John and Teeth, Elton John in the Donald Duck outfit, the blue elephant-muppet thing from Jabba’s Palace, and van Cliburn.
  • Any of my beloved, yet polarizing, horn shows. Scoff if you must, but love, she is blind. Or deaf. Or Lithuanian, whichever is worse.
  • And, last and most believable because it’s true: 5/8/77. Their most famous show, and they lost the tapes. Because it was the Grateful Dead thing to do.

The Strangest Of Places

June 18, 2012 / / 1 Comment

1975. Weird year. Weird shows, with an “everybody in the pool” type of vibe to them.  “Who showed up? Ned? Umm. Does he have any weed? Well, give him a keyboard, I guess.” Merl and  Matthew Kelley (pre-dickpunching incident) sit in; Sammy Davis, Jr. comes out for a number. And each set begins the only proper way a Grateful Dead show can: with an intro by Bill Graham.

The drummers weren’t quite together yet, and the sound is cluttered, but it’s HUGE and it just doesn’t sound like any other year. Garcia sounds like it’s ’72, laying down long, ropey lines and just soloing throughout pretty much every song, expecting the other 97 musicians on stage to carry the actual song. Due to the ad hoc nature of most of the Hiatus show, having a grand piano on stage was impossible (said the road crew before pantsing Keith, forcing Donna Jean to shoo them away. “You have to stand up for yourself, baby. Can’t let the bigger boys bully you. Look at me, Keith: it gets better.”) so Keith was confined to the Fender Rhodes

Did they ever really retire? Were they ever serious about it? The fake-out retirement is a classic show-biz move: Sinatra retired at least 17 times, the Stones have done five straight farewell tours, Tupac became a hologram for some reason. They certainly needed a break from playing Atlas with the Wall of Sound, there was way too much coke and the Persian was creeping into the scene.

So, they took ’75 off, playing only 4 shows, all of them backyard gigs in the Bay Area. The most well-known (justly) is 8/13, the One from the Vault release from the Great American Music Hall. The S.N.A.C.K. benefit was certainly the weirdest: the human brain hadn’t evolved for a pre-noon Blues for Allah. The Winterland show in June is the most overlooked.

But the Secret Hero show is 9/28/75–Lindley Meadows in Golden Gate Park. Check out the Franklin’s, where Mickey and Billy chase each other around with their cymbals and Garcia lets loose a roaring solo right after “…if you get confused, listen to the music play.” AND THEN THE END OF FRANKLIN’S HOLY SHIT which is like the end of He’s Gone with the long a capella call-and-response and it’s just remarkable.

Aaaaaaand then the intro to Big River, which is a mess.

P.S. Thank you to the tapers, to the archivists, to the digital cleanup artists, to the uploaders. Thank you to the scribes and the safekeepers. After all, if Bobby forgets he words to Truckin’ and it is not preserved, then did he really forget the words? (Most likely, yes. Bobby forgot the words to Truckin’ so much it was on his to-do list: hair, squats, tickle-time with Garcia, slide guitar lesson (cancelled), forget words to Truckin’.)

P.P.S.  As I was writing about my gratitude for the archivists and digital Jawas that keep everything running, Archive.org went down.

All Hail Kezar!

June 18, 2012 / / 8 Comments

Hey, kids! want to start your week off in just the weirdest goddam way possible? Try 3/23/75 at Kezar Stadium, where Bill Graham put on a benefit for the underfunded schools of the Bay Area called S.N.A.C.K. (Students Need Athletics, Culture, and Kicks.) (Kicks? Wow, the 70’s were weird.)

Anyway, it’s not like any Dead set you’ve heard before: it’s just a 40 minute Blues for Allah jam, but with Merl and Ned on the back up keys and Keith on the heavenly Fender Rhodes.

Wondering how Bobby’s hair looked?

Play ALL the keyboards!

And you can come up with your own fellatio-related caption here, I suppose.

And, holy shit, just listen to Garcia lead the transition back into Blues from at 30 seconds in to the fourth track. That’s why he doesn’t get called by his first name

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