Thoughts On The Dead

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

Tag: bobby (Page 5 of 8)

Got To Find A Number To Use

June 4, 2012 / / 0 Comments

8 – Hallelujah hatracks (Really?)

4 – Dead keyboard players. Not 4 keyboardists for the Dead, 4 dead keyboardists. How is it possible that the mortality rate for musicians in an improvisational country-rock outfit is higher than that of those guys who parachute into forest fires? The family crest of the Dead keyboardist read Pertransiit sine me (Go on without me).

3 – Fancy little shoe racks for TC’s fancy little ankle boots.

210,000 – Number of dollars Lenny Hart stole from the band while “managing” them.

40,000 – Number of dollars Lenny Hart stole during the meeting to try to explain the financial irregularities when someone left the door to the safe open. They were trusting men, at first, our Dead.

88 – Keys on a piano.

176 – How many Keith usually saw.

1 – Number of times a crew member looked Phil directly in the eyes. Just that once.

95 – Live albums released, 110 if you count the Digital Download series (One of which I’m listening to now, the Donna-tacular 4/30/77 at the Palladium in NYC. (Audience copy, if you’re into that sort of thing. Harumph. But, seriously, it’s an AUD: think about whether that’s the person you want to be. AUD guys are to Enthusiasts what fat guys fluent in Klingon are to Trekkies)

13 – Studio albums

2 – That were any good at all.

0 – Number of times the question, “How many fingers does the Grateful Dead have?” can be answered with a whole number.

12,000 – Amount extra versus a standard P.A. it cost to tote the Wall of Sound around. Luckily, it was worth the price because it was “the righteous thing to do, man.” That is an exact quote from Blair Jackson, who was actually talking about something else entirely, but FUCK CONTEXT.

6 – Months it took the righteous thing to do to break the band’s back.

2 – Drummers.

1 – Drummer.

2 – Drummers.

12 – Teenage male hustlers found horribly mutilated throughout the 80’s in a pattern correlating to the Dead’s tour schedule. The culprit was never found, but was described as having luxuriously thick blond hair and singing the high harmony part. The pattern stopped briefly in 1989, but picked up again–far more rapidly now–in 1990, except this time it was females and there’s a weird theory that there were two guys based round this mystery man they call Suburban Lanky. Doesn’t make any sense at all, if you asked me.

40 – Milliseconds after Bobby asked, “Tonight, what if we open…wait for it…with the encore?” that his dick got punched.

300,000  – Dollars spent by Mickey in the winter of 1977 to create his most ambitious percussive masterpiece to date. Mickey planned and rehearsed diligently. He spent over a year writing the score and hired musicians from all over the world, building them a brand-new studio. Then he locked them in that brand-new studio, set it ablaze, and recorded their dying screams. Lou Reed is quoted as saying, “Why didn’t I think of that?” The album was never released, except in Norway where it reached #31 on the Billboard-flurgen charts.

14 – Bucks for the Oven-Roasted Shrimp and Sun-Dried Tomatoes at Phil’s new hotspot, Terrapin Crossroads. Come for the food, stay for the Phil!

That’s Who I Am

June 3, 2012 / / 3 Comments

The Dead were not a Prog-Rock band, as that required hours of rehearsal, which was impossible when the phrase, “Let’s try that one again,” led at least three men to start wildly swinging their fists without even looking to see where they were going. The Dead were like Sinatra: one-take. If you allowed them back at the material after the first try, they would fiddle with it endlessly, eventually disappearing up their own asses entirely.

The Dead were not a Boy Band. Boy bands feature young, girlish men who conform to pre-slotted roles as the Cute One or the Shy One. The Dead was made up of men whose appearances might have been put on cans of stew. Yes, Bobby was the Cute One, but there was also the Locked in the Bathroom One, the Punching One, and Phil. Tiger, yes. Tiger Beat, no.

The Dead were not Alternative. I think it might have been the attitude towards guitars. Since Johnny Ramone threw his plastic Mos-Rite in a shopping bag and carried it into CBGB’s, one of the key signifiers of “cool” in the punk/alternative status game is who can find the shittiest, most obscure guitar. Garcia did not like that game, not one bit.  He chased the dragon with those guitars as much as with his habit. Elaborate, expensive and–most of all-heavy things that he could fuss over. And, as we all know, anything fussed with too much is shit and those last guitars, my god, the pomp and circumference!

Wolf! Wolf weighed–I looked this up–211 pounds.

The Dead were not a Country Rock Jam Band with Delusions of Grandeur. No, no: they were. That is what they were. And, damn they were good at it.

The Dead were not Electronic Music, even though they used to let Phil’s retarded cousin Ned Lagin finger his MOOG onstage occasionally. I’m talking the Ibiza stuff, KLF is gonna house you, that thing where the bass stops and then it makes this WUBWUBWUB sound, that sort of thing. First of, all the darkness would lead instantly to a round of stealthy dickpunching the likes of which this party’s never seen! WHOO! Second, the Dead would, upon seeing the other large, bass-heavy sound systems, immediately go nuclear, leading to destruction.

“Chief, what have those Grateful Deads done this time?”

“Mr. Mayor, they’ve wired the sewer lines and turned the very ground beneath us into one giant sub-woofer!”

“And what happens if something goes wrong?

“Mr. Mayor, do you know what a caldera is?”

The Dead is not Hip-Hop, although there are similarities: the guys whose job title is kinda loose, weed.

Easy Answers

June 1, 2012 / / 3 Comments

Okay, Grateful Dead cocktail party games. Annnnnnnnnnnd: go!

Dead as countries Phil is Germany, technical and peevish; Brent is Canada, adorable and drunk; Billy is Mozambique, because Mozambique’s flag has a fist holding an AK-47 on it. No secrets, there.

Dead as Wars, Ancient Phil is most certainly the Punic Wars, all of them: savage, righteous, salted. Mickey is the Warring States Period, just because I like the name. (I was thinking about reading about the history of China, so I looked at the shop and the smallest of the books was so heavy that the Dead lugged it around with them in ’78 “just because.” Plus, I know I should care about the place where a sixth of the world lives, but try reading that wikipedia page. I get three sentences in, tops.) Garcia is the Persian War.

Dead as animals(visual) Garcia is obviously a koala: just picture a koala, now add the glasses. (That image isn’t getting out of your head, sorry.) Brent is a hedgehog. Donna is a squirrel. Phil is halfway between an ostrich and a giraffe.

Dead as animals (metaphorical) Bobby: Springer spaniel. Garcia: silverback gorilla. Phil: halfway between an ostrich and a giraffe.

Dead as rivers: TC is the Danube; Vince is the CayuhogaCuyahoga; Billy is the Mississippi: mighty, proud, and difficult to spell.

Most appropriate Dead song for the funeral of a FTM transsexual He’s Gone. 

Least appropriate Dead song for the funeral of a MTF transsexual He’s Gone.

Play By Number

May 31, 2012 / / 6 Comments

On 2/22/74, at Winterland, the Dead played BIODTL with a 22-beat opener. Or, as Bobby thought of it, “Just keep hitting an F chord until Garcia nods at me.”

P.S. Check out 11 minutes into the Playin’, when Garcia starts paying the twisty little riff to Slipknot! for the first(?) time. Billy sure didn’t know what was going on.

P.P.S. AND THEN HE PLAYS IT AGAIN IN EYES. I JUST POOPED WITH JOY. AND OREOS.

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!

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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.

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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.

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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.

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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!

Don’t You Come Around Here Anymore

May 19, 2012 / / 2 Comments

The British have a word, anorak. It means geek, but without the social acceptance the geek dollar has bought itself here in the States in recent years. Japanese, also: otaku. Otaku has a much more indoors-y vibe, though: an anorak might go a-rambling, but never an otaku. I can’t think up any other foreign equivalents, which might make sense, seeing as how the U.S., Japan, and the UK are really out in front of the rest of the world geek-wise. Italy has made some items of geek worship (cars, cowboy movies) but the national character just doesn’t lend itself to the sweaty-palmed need of the true geek, neither does the French: their most famous thinker walks around with his shirt unbuttoned to halfway down the shaft of his coq. Obviously, the Middle East is light on geeks: while they might have the obsessive nature and strong opinions, they lack the emotional restraint and real-world tethers to avoid being That Guy at the Con. That guy who makes us all look bad. Africa is…Jesus, man, you’ve seen what’s going on over there. They have better things to worry about than Doctor fucking Who.

Australia also seems like a geek-unfriendly culture. It’s still legal to punch homosexuals in the face for no reason at all down there and the whole place is trying to kill you constantly: the cookies have fangs. South America is also out: those fuckers get way too excited about things. Any group of more than seven people is automatically classified as a riot in, say, Bolivia. That is a true fact that, while teetering on the shiny edge of being racist, is definitely offensive to Bolivia, and the second they learn how to use computers and put down their ooga-booga sticks and…

DUDE! NOT COOL!

That one got away from me.

The whole thing, really. 

Yeah, okay.

Just dove into the seas of racism immediately upon hitting the beach, and then swimming with all of your might to leave the shores behind for the chance to finally be alone.

…what? 

And so oddly specific. What do you have against Australia?

Criminal stock.

It’s…it’s just that we’ve talked about this.

You couldn’t be righter. Over and done.

I hope so.

Over and done, chief. So, anyway: the Grateful Dead was–LATVIANS TOUCH GOATS IN THE ASSHOLE–

DONE!

–hey get offa me, man–

Bring in the next one! Sigh. Did I just say, “sigh?” Who’s writing this crap now?

I am, sir!

Who the fuck are you, you sniveling little…ah, it’s too late for either the Neidermeyer or the Dr. Doom: who are you and why should you be the new man?

Who am I? I am the Spirit of Shows Past and I am magical, oh, I am magical.

Every goddam time…

Wherever a crotch gets punched, I’ll be there. Writhing around on the ground, due to the whackle to my tackle. Whenever a harmony is deemed “good enough,” you’ll see me. Whenever at least three of them are playing different songs at the same time, around is where you’ll find this guy right here.

You’re hired.

YOU’RE HIRED!

Tat doesn’t mean anything…oh my god: Bobby?

MWAH-HA-HA!

Big doings, Fellow Enthusiasts! Bobby the Word-Monger? Italics Voice Guy remarkably underdeveloped? Dead barely mentioned? Check in next time on…The Fantastic Six (or five or seven or eight, you know the drill.) Arrondissement, kids!

Creamery Of The Crop

May 17, 2012 / / 4 Comments

By 1972, Bobby had learned how to play. Not just play, but lead the band in his big-boy pants. Bobby was carving out a little space for himself and turning into Sergeant Major Clap-Yo-Hands and it was a good thing. Listen to 3:20 in Greatest Story: 8/27/72 is a Bobby show. Arguably the perfect versions of all of his Cowboy tunes, especially the soft landing he gives Dark Star with a counter-intuitive saunter into El Paso, and a great Promised Land, when he’s allowed to get to it.

The announcer is so stupid that he grew up to be Bill O’Reilly. Don’t tell people they were about to be sprayed with shit, man. His stupidity does lead to one of Bobby’s brighter moments. For some reason known only to his gods, Doofus decides to announce the location of the lost children tent over a loudspeaker. Because that’s information that everyone needs to know. Nothing bad could possibly come from broadcasting the location of our most vulnerable. Cleverly, Bobby cuts him off. Bobby was always sensitive to the welfare of children: his adolesence was rife with incidents resembling the Tragedy of Koko from the 1980 musical film Fame. Bobby now paid good money to ugly strangers to recreate the squalid de-pantsenings because, if pressed, Bobby would admit to enjoying every second of it. With Bobby, it was better to focus on actions; intentions were–at best–murky to all involved.

By the end of the show, you want to hurt the announcer. Physically. Methodically. Strategically. You can keep a man alive for such a long time while you introduce him to new worlds of PAIN (Scary music: oooh-AH-ahh!)  His groovy dude patter sounds like a passage from the upcoming Ken Burns 32-hour documentary Summer of Love/Edgar Winter of Discontent: The 60’s; it will be read by Russell Brand doing a bumptiously fucked North California…accent.

(An aside, a flash-forward to the real, or at least realistic: America picks the worst Brits. We’re offered Eddie Izzard, we pick Piers Morgan. Piers Morgan is the Devil. No joke, no exaggeration. Foe the sake of the country, someone should plant heroin on him. And in his house. And car. Spider-Man had a bad guy named the Sandman who could turn himself into sand (Don’t think about it.) Like that, that much heroin. Just make him go home.)

1972 was a rock-solid year: it wasn’t flashy. If you said the word “swag” in front of ’72, it would hold you down and–using only his rough and manly stubble–flay the skin from your haunches AND your flanks. Forget about the loins, the loins are long gone, for these men were so very hairy in 1972. There was no grooming, no manscaping (well, sure, there was…just not in that part of San Francisco; couple miles away, freshly shorn was cute-and-kissable) back then, and their northern European bristles permeated everything and the music grew Teddy Roosevelt mustaches all over itself  and the mustaches were made of balls and the BALLS WERE THEMSELVES HAIRIER THAN YOU’VE EVER THOUGHT BALLS COULD BE.

PS  In keeping with my new pet theory about listening to the shows around the great shows, I present you with 8/24/72. Berkeley Community Theater. Setlist-wise, it’s comparable to the Veneta show, but with a great Morning Dew and far longer stretches of everybody being in tune.

PPS  8/24 blows the Veneta show away.

On The Road Again

May 3, 2012 / / 0 Comments

The first time Robert Hunter dropped, “But what would be the answer to the answer man?” on everyone, I am willing to bet everything I have there were at least three “whoas.” I am also laying 7-2 on a “far out, man.”

But anyway…

7/19/74. Selland Arena in Fresno, California. Start with He’s Gone.

None of them are in tune, with themselves or each other, and Garcia is the worst: he is a noticeable quarter-step away from where he wants to be for most of the song. Plus, he playing the wrong chords. Combining those two choices makes it difficult to succeed. He’s not the worst, though: Billy keeps wanting to get to the next bit a beat early and Keith is being overbearing like he could be, stomping and comping in the middle register with block chords like he did near the end…

But then, as they’re finished with the song part of the song, they turn around and snatch it from themselves and wrestle it with brawny arms and steaming loins and thrusty parts and soiled trousers and punchy crotch and shivering fists and they make Selland Arena in Fresno their lady-friend. (Which would be kinda nice, actually. Old ladies got put on the payroll. Plus, there was most certainly not going to be any of that Led Zeppelin shit going on. Yes, hotel rooms were being consumed by flames at precisely the same rate as Keith Moon went through them, but Garcia was always really sorry about it, man. You know he didn’t mean that shit.)

Here’s the only problem: Selland Arena only held 6,500 people.  How do you get 6,500 people to produce enough revenue to justify moving the Wall of Sound? During the GODDAM GAS CRISIS. And it wasn’t like nowadays, they didn’t charge rich people prices at concerts yet; hell, there were no rich people in Fresno fucking California in 1974 going to the Dead show. There might have been some cats with a roll, but nobody with any money. Even if they had money, rock bands didn’t learn how to really sell shit until the Stones’ Steel Wheels tour.

But not of that matters, because GO BACK AND LISTEN TO EYES, PEOPLE. The end of it, the Stronger Than Dirt part, where you suddenly realize again that the Dead, if they hadn’t had such strong strictures in place regarding practicing, could have been Yes. You listen good and hard to what Billy is doing: he has, as I’ve mentioned before, become Jazzbo Billy by 1974, but he was GOOD AT IT. Billy played his drums like he fucked his women: anally. (You are right, that is going too far and it doesn’t make sense, but wow did it make me giggle like a ninny when I thought of it)

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