Thoughts On The Dead

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

Tag: Brent (Page 1 of 2)

Haze, Craze And Dazed

November 9, 2013 / / 0 Comments

The guys hazed the new members a lot. Nobody got called a half-of-any-words, especially not that one, mostly because it wouldn’t have made any sense, even in the backstage’s loose handshake with reality. It would have been funny if one of them had called another one a–

Stop. No. Nothing’s funny about that word.

Which word?

If you just move on, I’ll do the Najinsky, for you, tonight.

…

Mickey shook Brent down for fifteen grand early in the third keyboardist’s tenure, and it was also for a trip to Vegas, but instead of carousing, Mickey planned to go to Caesar’s Palace and synchronize 64 slot machines’ cha-CHINGs together. He had some vague idea about chess and gambling and India, definitely India, but Brent didn’t have nearly enough money for India and the office had started locking up at night, so Vegas it was. Unfortunately, this sort of thing is against, like, 47 different state and federal laws, and Mickey hadn’t, you know, called ahead or anything, so when the large men came galloping around the corner, Mickey ran like fuck, but Brent got his long, luxurious beard caught in the slot machine handle and he got tackled like fuck. The album would never be released.

Billy punched Vince in the dick a whole bunch of times at first. But no more or less than he did later in Vince’s stint with the band: Vince was in Billy’s presence; Vince had a dick; Billy punched Vince in his dick.

Phil once drunkenly left a voice-mail full of ethnic slurs that didn’t quite fit for Keith, who never got it because he died in 1980. (Seriously, what the fuck is a Godchaux?)

Interns had to run The Gauntlet, and Billy was at the end of The Gauntlet, and Billy kind of was The Gauntlet? And also, there was an actual gauntlet that Billy wore that was just horrible. People came out changed, the ones that came out. Others learned to blossom in the shade, to worship the filth of the NECROMANCY OF RA-MEMTOP.

Buddy?

…

Yeah?

Maybe time for bed?

Getting there, yeah.

…

Garcia never hazed a living soul, but he did call everyone who sat at that piano “Johnny Keys” until his death. Which hurt much more than any prank ever could.

Nice recovery.

And It’s All The Same Street

May 31, 2013 / / 0 Comments

I’ve been to Chicago only once; they have a zoo in Grant park which is both free and seamlessly incorporated into the park. You’re taking a walk, not bothering anyone, and all of sudden you realize you’ve been looking at tapirs for five minutes. There is also a restaurant called the Billy Goat Tavern that the “Cheezburger cheezburger” sketch was based on and the burgers are so good that for hours afterwards, I was purposely belching just to retaste them.

And I went to the top of the Sears Tower, because it’s the law.

My connection to the Windy City is, I’m trying to get at, slight and superficial at best. Which is why the choice to listen to every single Dead show (within certain stringent, yet highly arbitrary limits) ever played in Chicago confuses me.

We begin with 12/3/79 at the Uptown Theater. (What a wonderful name: it grounds you in place and lifts you up simultaneously, poetry by excision…plus, none of that excruciating use of the British spelling bullshit. Theater is an American invention, and for that matter, so is the English language.  Fuck England. Y’know why? Because it’s Friday night and I’m home eating fried chicken and blathering on semi-nonsensically about a band led by a man who married a woman named fucking Mountain Girl. I can’t decide whether I’m a fox or a hedgehog when it comes to bad decisions: have I made one big awful choice, or millions of tiny horrid one? At least I have my chicken.)

A show without much acclaim, from a year that gets very little attention, in a city that at first glance looks like it was more immune to the charms of our favorite drug-soaked gibbons than other cities.  They played Boston, an exponentially smaller city, the same number of times; Philly, an exceptionally smelly and pointless place, more.

Maybe it was the relative dearth of colleges. Maybe the Dead made the (entirely righteous and Godly) decision that if these pork-infused Chicagoans insisted on calling that gooey tomato abortion ‘pizza’, then they were people to have no truck with. Maybe it was the fact that the Picasso sculpture used to have a dick before a certain someone punched it off. These are all logical and historically plausible reasons, especially the thing about Billy. The entire day before, he could be heard muttering darkly, “Modernist bullshit. Its eyes are like the eyes of every slum owner who made a buck off the small and weak. And of every building inspector who took a wad from a slum owner to make it all possible. I’m gonna punch it in the dick.”

Anyway, check out the propulsive Jack-A-Roe, slathered in Brent’s Fender Rhodes (the shag carpet of musical instruments). Compare the warm, friendly sound to Keith’s BLOCK CHORDS OF DOOM during the his last years with the band. (They’re actually even quite notable as early as Fall of ’77, the entirety of wich I recently finished listening to. Sweet sweaty Christ, I need a woman in my life. Or a tapir.)

Good Morning Little Schoolgirls (And Boys)

June 30, 2012 / / 0 Comments

Now,we know what would have happened if the Dead had taken over a hospital, but what if they all got jobs at a school? Wokka wokka?

Phil taught music, obviously. His decision to include the uncut Einstein on the Beach as the centerpiece of the Fall Music-alooza was hotly contested by some before the show, and by all about three hours into the show. Also, Phil threw a tuba at a kid once. In his defense, that kid’s a well-known dick.

Garcia went in the Teacher’s Lounge and it’s been a while since he’s come out and if you try to go in, Parrish punches you really hard in your face and head.

Keith taught geometry. Not algebra or trig, nothing but geometry. Sometimes, he could be harassed into teaching another subject, but he would do it so deliberately poorly, accidentally injuring so many students and mascots that he would be asked to stop before October got there, even, and he would go back to teaching strictly geometry, which it should be said, he was unbelievably good at. He is also heavily addicted to heroin and, to be honest, was rather mumbly before the Persian. Opiates are not the natural friend of diction

Bobby coached soccer and basketball and track because:

…and Bobby don’t do pants.

Mrs. Donna Jean was the art teacher. Because she looked like your art teacher, right: crunchy and maybe gay and in-retrospect high all the time and predictably liberal. But she wasn’t. Mrs. Donna Jean liked to get shitty on pills and whiskey and fuck Bobby and crash her BMW into things in the parking lot and sing off-key for eight years. (Now, you know I’m a Donna Defender, but if the old canard about “not being able to hear the monitors” were true, wouldn’t you have worked hard to fix that? Shouldn’t the Dead’s crew–for all the mockery, they could never be accused of being bad at their jobs; lethal, perhaps, but thoroughly competent in the face of disaster–have been able to set her up lickety-split? Things to think about.

The parents caught one glance of Billy leering at the 15-year-olds and chased him, reviling his good name in utter besmirchment and giving the dogs the lash to catch the natty minge. The parents rousted Billy into a boiler room, which they boarded him into and set ablaze! Now, with a scarred face in the shape of a mustache and drumsticks sloppily taped to his fingers, he haunts the dreams of hot, sexy teens doing hot, sexy teen things as…Billy Kreug-etz-mannger. (I did not think this through beforehand.)

Emergency Crew

June 29, 2012 / / 2 Comments

Breaking news, my fellow Enthusiasts: the Hiatus was a lie! Well, not that it occurred: the Dead played only four shows in 18 months. That’s fact. What’s not fact is the reason why. We were all told it was because the Wall of Sound and the Wall of Drugs were driving them into bankruptcy and insanity. True, but not the only reason. In fact, not even the MAIN reason.

In the Summer of ’74, the Dead played a gig that appears in no database. They appeared as ringers in a local Anal Creek, WV, talent show to raise money for Li’l Possum, whom the city doctors had proclaimed was, “just as fucked up as you can be and still be alive. You want me to kill it? Let me kill it: I’d be doing everyone involved a favor.”

Well, they won, and raised that money. To thank them, the townspeople gave them a hospital, short on staff but long on love: St. Stephen’s Medical Center.*

Billy became Chief of Staff and immediately improved the hospital’s standing, financially and medically. From the top brain surgeon to the lowest psychiatrist, everyone respected Billy’s simple management style. He had one rule: “Y’sure you wanna do that?” And only one punishment. You knew where you stood with Billy. And sometimes, you knew where you lay in the fetal position, tenderly cupping your battered banana while puking.

Phil immediately went Phantom of the Opera: like, during the very first walk-through. Not only was Phil skinny, but he could dislocate his hips to the point where he could shimmy through an 18-inch pipe and he ran away from the group right when they got in the door and SHHOOOOOOP right into a duct and no one saw him for a month or so.

Garcia became the pharmacist and then four minutes later he threw up on himself and passed out, so the road crew instinctively put him on a plane to Milwaukee.

Vince would wander the halls convincing people to let go and follow the light, but he wasn’t all that good at judging how sick people were, so he would end up with a lot of 12-year-olds getting their tonsils out and 55-year-olds getting their knees replaced. Vince would clutch them tight (otherwise, they would squirm away) to his chest, and whisper, “Stop fighting. Be with your ancestors. THEY CALL TO YOU. Succumb. Succumb!” People lodged formal complaints; it was the kind of thing you filled out paperwork about.

Keith “would fuckin’ thank people to stop mistaking me for a corpse, please. I’ve had CPR administered on me four times today. Stop it: this is just the way I look.”

Bobby was the crusading internist/trauma doc/diagnostician (which is not a thing) of the hospital. He could heal anyone…but himself: Dr. Bobby, M.D. He battles with the suits, makes love to Nurse Donna Jean and tries to find a lead in the case of the disappearing livers.

Brent was a male nurse. He was gentle and kind and shaved all the ding-dongs.

*Yes, we’re all quite aware none of this makes sense and this bit makes no sense in particular. You’re very clever to have noticed.

Hell Brent For Leather

June 27, 2012 / / 1 Comment

Douglas Adams had his Infinite Improbability Drive, but he didn’t go far enough: I introduce the Infinite Infinity Drive.

Assume infinity.

Assume the multiverse.

Therefore, if where you are is not where you want to be, then in one of the infinite universes where you are is where it is at. One can figure which is which by building a computer large enough to calculate infinity. Since such a computer would necessarily have to be larger than infinity, it might seem impossible, until one remembers that infinity must by definition contain, say, infinity+24.

It’s bigger on the inside.

You are teetering on the brink, my friend. 

9/5/79 at MSG (Do I favor East Coast show over West Coast? Am I a Coastist? Do I believe that the West Coast is fine and all, just as long as it stays over there? Yeah. Sue me.)

I am hissing at you. Hissing. Hssss.

It is, obviously, a Brent. Much like strangers at airport bars, I’ve always had an iffy relationship with Brent, but I’m going to give him a concentrated listening, at least until I can staunch this bleeding head wound. I woke up to vomit last night, like you do, and I THWACKED my head into the samurai swords I keep loose in the bathroom, the one room you’re almost guaranteed to roam around in like a piano tuner nightly. (I’m sure blind people must have gone to Dead shows, but did they bring the dog in with them? It seems mean to the dog, what with the dog-hearing and a Dead show had to be, like, the most INTERESTING SMELLING PLACE IN THE WORLD to a dog, but a guide dog has to be like those guards outside Buckingham Palace.)

(BUT, if you were blind, would you ever go to a concert or put on headphones without your dog, or the biggest, strongest, most loyal buddy in the world with you? Like, your brother just happens to be The Big Show. And I’d rather have the dog: some drunk asshole will have a go at The Big Show just because, but nobody messes with dogs. Music would cut off all your connection to the outside world; you wouldn’t be able to hear anyone sneaking up on you and people sneak up on blind people all the time)

My equivocation towards Brent lies with his playing and his voice. His playing is tremendous: he fit in with the band instantly and added new layers with his adroit B3. His playing stepped up everyone’s game and though his Rhodes could sound tinkly, it was still a welcome relief from the constant piano block-chords of the later Keith years.

I just never warmed to Brent’s voice. It always sounded like a hack comic doing a Michael McDonald impression. I’m sure there are those of you who disagree. I am sorry for your wrongness.

Trouble Behind

June 9, 2012 / / 0 Comments

Things that would get you thrown out of the Grateful Dead’s backstage:

  • ****ing Phil. I’m using the asterisks to denote the universality: eyeballing, grab-assing, mounting. Just assume anything you do that involves Phil will lead to a thrashing, then a quick exit.
  • Even looking at Garcia’s ice cream.
  • Not splitting Aces and Eights.
  • Any Game of Thrones spoilers whatsoever.
  • Any sort of ninjitsu whatsoever. Not since the last time. Brent dressed in the traditional Japanese racist pajamas and, using “ninja tools” that were almost certainly fashioned from the cutlery on the catering table, climbed halfway across the ceiling, which was quite impressive, until the ceiling fan sucked Brent’s wizard beard into the rotor and he nearly died, mostly ’cause the other guys just left him there for four or five hours. Mickey just couldn’t stop laughing.
  • Demanding to meet Ringo.
  • Introducing what were known internally as “pernicious thoughts” into Bobby’s head. There was no firm definition of such, more of a Potter Stewart vibe to the whole thing, but past concepts deemed inappropriate for Bobby include: spandex, hair dryers, mesh, Garcia is stealing your soul from you when you switch off singing during Jack Straw, platform shoes, platform boots, platform anything-of-any-kind, Last Tuesdayism (Holy shit, the next person who mentions any sort of solipsism-based paradoxical view of reality to him is getting stabbed with a knife), and everyone’s favorite: “monkey gonna getcha.”It took two hours to drag him out from under the trailer that time, shrieking the whole way.
  • Any kind of keening, ululating, glottalizing or hooting.
  • Wearing eyeblack for a game in a domed stadium. You’re just wearing makeup at that point.
  • Saying the letter ‘L’ around Billy. It wasn’t so much that you would be thrown out afterwards, it was that you would probably like to leave, having been punched so thoroughly in the dick. But, you should give it to Billy: the “L” thing did make it sporting. One clever fellow made it a good six minutes into a conversation before Billy got bored and just punched him in the dick anyway.

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!

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.

How Does The Song Go?

March 20, 2012 / / 4 Comments

There are few Dead related pleasures more piquant than the moment when Bobby just totally gives up on remembering the words and starts singing, “yuh duh DUH yuh DUH.” Actually, Bobby’s constant memory lapses led to the classic stage configuration: Bobby had to be in the middle so everyone had an equal opportunity to yell at him when he sings Truckin‘ like this:

It’s hilarious. You can almost see Garcia contemplating the whole Mickey and the Hartbeats thing again.

Garcia knew the words, Bobby. Brent and Donna knew the words. Pigpen knew the words even when they weren’t technically words at all. (I refer you to “Box back nitties, Crayfish and mormon mice. Workin undercollar onda mall all night.”) Phil did not know the words.

New contest: has there EVER been a show where Bobby made it through without forgetting where he was? Identify it in the comments and win a year’s supply of Forearm Sweatbands by Mr. Phil of Palo Alto.

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