Yes, of course there’s about to be a dickpunching, but it looks to be self-inflicted.
Musings on the Most Ridiculous Band I Can't Stop Listening To
Tag: dead (Page 11 of 19)
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.
No caption necessary, is there?
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.
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?
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
No posts today, fellow Enthusiasts. Here’s a pic of Phil and his boys for Father’s Day.
The Dead neither dated nor married for effect. There are no reports of Phil squiring, say, Joyce Dewitt into the Whiskey while wearing an enormous trenchcoat containing Mickey and Billy for some reason, I don’t know, it’s just a funny visual: the two of them LEAPING out from within the coat like that was Phil’s mutant power, to be able to generate two rampaging cashfuckers at will from his vestments. Phil was actually an X-Man briefly, but chafed under the authority of Professor X and got Colossus killed again, so…
He had to transfer to Garcia’s School for Exceptional Youngsters. Garcia was a benevolent presence that infused the grounds with his personality, riding around in his Alembic-made $400,000 wheelchair; he wasn’t crippled, just lazy. His mutant power was to bring people together and spread love and cheer so that everyone in the room was having such a good time that no one saw him sneak off to the bathroom, which he would invariably burn down.
Bobby takes down villains and keeps the peace with the power of his muscular thighs.
Donna is capable of emitting a banshee wail powerful and strident enough to paralyze an enthusiast at ten paces away from a good ’74 Playin’. (Wait, she’s not a mutant? She just sang like that? Huh.)
P.S. Despite my general distaste for most of the dirges of ’76, here’s a goodie from this day in Dead history: 6/15/76 at the Beacon Theater in money-making, heart-breaking Manhattan.
Someone got to the bloggings yesterday by searching “Did Brent Mydland like groupies?”
My friend: if you don’t like ’em, they ain’t groupies.
Well, since y’all were so helpful with the last one, here’s another shot from the Nudie show (3/19/73?) with Donna looking particularly fetching.
© 2026 Thoughts On The Dead
Theme by Anders Noren — Up ↑
Recent Comments