Thoughts On The Dead

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

Tag: brent mydland (Page 12 of 14)

The Matrix Revealed

October 7, 2013 / / 2 Comments

We’ve got to talk about these matrix mixes. I just went through about eight of them, one after another, the digital version of throwing a paperback across the room after an egregious sentence. Etree is full of the damn things, and fuck me if they’re not a solid 95% unlistenable.

In Bill Graham’s great posthumous oral autobiography (seriously), he tells a story about the light show folks trying to get more power and/or control and/and money. He laughed at them. “If you don’t show up, the band goes on; if the band doesn;t show up, you don’t play. The light show is an appendage! ZAYNE HASHEN MEIN TUCHAS, TU ZAF CHARATZIM MITTEN DER PICKLESCHMECKER! “

In a Matrix, the crowd is the light show: it’s there to complement, to heighten the drama, to punctuate and underscore. It can never become a distraction. Rising, falling, cheering, and occasionally singing: all as one, a great human sweaty glob of instant feedback. Technology (and, let’s not forget the hard work and love that Jeffrey Norman and the whole crew do) now allows for a clarity, a precision to the sound that can border on the sterile.

It’s easy to forget that these shows took place in buildings, buildings just chock-full of people going through some real heavy shit, man.

So when David Lemieux announced that the next Dave’s Pick would be November 30th, 1980 at the Fox Theater in Atlanta, part of the big news was that this would be the first (?) official release that could rightly be called a matrix and from the small (for the Dead: it’s still a two songs that take up 20 minutes) snippet of the finished product, they’ve just killed it. Go listen to the drums, how you can hear them playing not just in the band, but in the room. They sound like they are fixed in space in a way that hasn’t been so clear before. The crowd cheers them on at every turn,

As opposed to–and I’m not making this up–one I listened to (briefly) where the matrix was where a compressed-sounding SBD met an AUD that was just dudes shouting out one another and yelling out names of songs that could never in a million years be played at that moment in the show. (Seriously, Mr. Bro-tato Head? You’re shouting for Wharf Rat in the middle of the first set? Go jerk off your uncle.)

 

p.s. It doesn’t take more than half-a-dozen comments on the announcement page before someone starts someone starts whining that, while the show’s from the ’80’s, it’s not from far enough in to the decade. Bravo.

 

Head, Shoulders, Nods and Doze

September 24, 2013 / / 0 Comments

brent happy bw

Garcia and Brent had this cute game where Garcia would tap Brent on the shoulder, but the opposite shoulder, y’see, and when Brent would turn: NO GARCIA! so Brent would laugh and look back around and by then Garcia had already stolen his heroin and was halfway to his dressing room, and you have to know that Garcia had burst speed like Jim Brown on that all-important dash between copping and burning down a semi-permanent structure.

 

Fly Away

September 3, 2013 / / 0 Comments

jerry bobby kicking phil onstage

Bobby felt light onstage sometimes, not like he was floating, no: he was streaking across the sky with the band at his back and the horizon in his hair. No running start needed, not even a second at idle: just up, up, away. Past the lights, by the speakers, through the ceiling–sheer magical physics punching him through the roof–and he’s gone, going fast fast faster than the need of light (which is far greater than the speed of light, as light is rather insecure) until he hits the part of the universe that isn’t part of the universe and Bobby flies fast, he flies into the Space Between and every time this happens, Bobby feels an intense sadness that only someone who has loved only in dreams would recognize.

Sometimes, though, Bobby forgot it was a dream and started pretending to fly and making WHOOOSH noises into the mic and Garcia would just side-eye the fuck out of him until he started behaving.

Change One Letter

August 26, 2013 / / 0 Comments

Phil Tesh – John’s brother, stays in the guest place out back. Watches the kids, takes care of the house when we’re gone. Good guy, glad to have him around, good guy when he’s not drinking. 4 months, knock wood: we’re proud of him. Oh, damn, is it 3 o’clock already? I have to get Simon to soccer practice. Nice talking to you. Wait: who are you? How did you get in my backyard? JOHN! COME HERE! COME HERE AND PROTECT YOUR LAND, JOHN TESH!

Donna Bean – Cousin to the lima, pinto, refried, Mexican jumping, and the Funky Winker.

Drums/Spade – That time in 79 when, after the drum solo, Phil, et al, sat at a card table Parrish had set up and played Spades for a good 35 minutes, which is impressive when you realize that Bobby didn’t know the rules, Brent was losing on purpose to get people to like him, and Garcia had snuck back into his dressing room two or three hands into the session.

Winterhand – The nickname of the groupie with poor circulation who liked giving tuggers.

Sex Luthor – All of his elaborate plans involve Superman’s butt, and doing weird stuff to it. Supes has had it up to fucking here, man.

Wall of Hound – One time, Billy got high as fuck and piled three or four dogs on top of each other and made people come and look, repeating the joke all afternoon, and then he got bored and punched one of the dogs in the dick, and I’m gonna tell you something about dogs: they have no concept of the proper deference due to a rock star, so no matter what band you’re in, if you punch a dog in his dick, he’s going to completely lose his shit on you, plus the other dogs were mildly annoyed with Billy anyway, so they joined in and all of them chased Billy around for an hour or so; he was bitten repeatedly, and let’s face it: he simply could not have deserved it more.

Knob Weir – What Bobby calls his dick sometimes.

Cob Weir – What he calls it other times.

Throb Weir – Bobby also calls his penis this.

Mickey Fart

You Say Tomato, I Say Your Wife's A Whore

August 14, 2013 / / 0 Comments

It’s Thoughts on the Dead, not on the Psychedelic Sound or whathaveyou. I actively dislike most of the Dead’s contemporaries: I once saw Grace Slick in an airport and farted on her, just on general principle. Ditto for San Francisco and hippies and Woodstock and all of that self-congratulatory suckjob circus. One of the problems with liking the Dead is that you also like reading about them, which means you will inevitably read an article with a sentence in it that starts:

Joan Baez and her sister Mimi Farina… 

Murder sprees have started with less potent words than those.

Neither is this any sort of location for information on the jam band scene. Those festivals are not my land, nor are those dirty-soled fuckers pooping into a bucket any kin to me at all. First off, I am the opposite of Bear Grylls (What would that be? Truman Capote? Wendy Wasserstein?) when it comes to tents and sleeping bags, and if we’re going to be completely honest, I am one crying jag away from complete agoraphobia.

So, no festivals.

It is the Dead I love: their interplay, their evolution, their patently false mythology, their utter humanity. I can’t compare them to any other band because I don’t have the relationship with any other band I have with the Dead.

And I certainly won’t compare them to Phish, definitely not on the internet.

dead v phish

There’s three things I don’t argue about on the net: the existence of God, how many pictures of my dong I’m going to send you, and Dead v. Phish. (The correct answers, by the way, are: if He does exist, He’s got a lot of explaining to do; you will receive seven pictures of my dong; and, Dead rules, Phish drools.)

But there’s this:

[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2eBibggCibE]

Listen to it. Do you trust me by now? I mean, not when I tell you about how Brent used to hunt Beluga whales with an explosive harpoon in between tours because he insisted on using ambergris as a sexual lubricant, no: when I tell you to listen, to take a break, close your eyes. Get real high: so high your lips just fall the fuck off.

And listen to these four men (and Mrs. Donna Jean) at the absolute height of their powers. I’m going to listen, too, again.

p.s. Brent actually did that shit, The Cove-type shit. Yes, it was massively fucked up, but on the other hand, his B3 playing and high harmonies added so much to the sound.

p.p.s. I apologize for the title of this post, but lawdy miss clawdy, did it make me giggle when I thought of it.

PLUS at 21 minutes in, they tease Goin’ Down the Road. Go listen.

« Older posts Newer posts »

The Stacks

Follow Us

Google Verification

Follow Us

Follow me on Twitter

© 2026 Thoughts On The Dead

Theme by Anders Noren — Up ↑