Thoughts On The Dead

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

Tag: dickpunch (Page 2 of 4)

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.)

Greatest Story Ever Traded

May 8, 2013 / / 3 Comments

Yes, clearly it’s Titanic and Mind-Blowing and Earth-Shattering and Vast and Under-Rated and Over-Rated and Just Exactly Perfect, but the one quality that no one ever mentions is accessible. And 5/8/77 is accessible in spades.

Sure, there’s jamming, but it’s not the Neptunian jazz of ’74, nor the acid-skronk of ’69. There’s no waste; Garcia’s long, liquid lines are building to something, always, and Billy and Mickey have their feet on the gas pedals with a safecracker’s whispered touch–little bit faster here, slower there, bigger now Bigger Now BIGGER NOW and shhhhhhh…

There is command.

The greatest ever? No. not even the best show that week–5/5, with its majestic Sugaree gets my vote–but Barton Hall has something that only Veneta and Egypt also have: mystique. Fame. Perhaps we can’t even make an honest reckoning of that night anymore. Read some Don DeLillo; it’s good for you:

Several days later Murray asked me about a tourist attraction known as the most photographed barn in America. We drove 22 miles into the country around Farmington. There were meadows and apple orchards. White fences trailed through the rolling fields. Soon the sign started appearing. THE MOST PHOTOGRAPHED BARN IN AMERICA. We counted five signs before we reached the site. There were 40 cars and a tour bus in the makeshift lot. We walked along a cowpath to the slightly elevated spot set aside for viewing and photographing. All the people had cameras; some had tripods, telephoto lenses, filter kits. A man in a booth sold postcards and slides — pictures of the barn taken from the elevated spot. We stood near a grove of trees and watched the photographers. Murray maintained a prolonged silence, occasionally scrawling some notes in a little book.

“No one sees the barn,” he said finally.

A long silence followed.

“Once you’ve seen the signs about the barn, it becomes impossible to see the barn.”He fell silent once more. People with cameras left the elevated site, replaced by others.

We’re not here to capture an image, we’re here to maintain one. Every photograph reinforces the aura.  Can you feel it, Jack? An accumulation of nameless energies.”

There was an extended silence.  The man in the booth sold postcards and slides. 

“Being here is a kind of spiritual surrender.  We see only what the others see.  The thousands who were here in the past, those who will come in the future.  We’ve agreed to be part of a collective perception.  It literally colors our vision.  A religious experience in a way, like all tourism.” 

Another silence ensued. 

“They are taking pictures of taking pictures,” he said. 

He did not speak for a while.  We listened to the incessant clicking of shutter release buttons, the rustling crank of levers that advanced the film. 

“What was the barn like before it was photographed?” he said.  “What did it look like, how was it different from the other barns, how was it similar to other barns?”

If you heard it today for the first time, would you recognize it as THE GREATEST DEAD SHOW OF ALL TIME EVER? Would the shock of genius, the green flash of recognition hit you, run up your spine, Billypunch the dick of your soul?

If you really did meet the Buddha on the side of the road…would you know it was him?

PS  I have deliberately not linked to the show on the archive because you have it.

Boo

July 13, 2012 / / 0 Comments

Oooooh. OOOOOooooooOOOOOOooooh. (What’s weird is that if you use two ‘h’s, it’s no longer spooky. Well, yeah, it’s spooky, but in an unclean way: Ooooooohh.  Right? Just got fifty shades of creepy in here.) It’s Friday the Thirteenth. Oogie-woogie.

The origin of our dreadful fascination with the date arose when Jesus was 13 and Joseph came in from a hard day of being a fictional character offscreen and said “Thank God it’s Friday,” and Jesus leapt up and screamed “You’re not my real dad, I hate you.” and stormed–well, I was going to say into the other room, but the Christs* probably had more of a loft thing, right? The open floor plan was big in Judea in, well, I guess it would have been 13, wouldn’t it have been?

So, then Jesus opened his religion and after that there were Knights Templar, who liked to roam around Europe building hospitals and having gay orgies. That got the Pope mad so he killed them all and, even though none of this really happened, it took place on Friday the 13th which is why on this date, we kill black cats on sight with impunity.

(There is a good possibility that none of that is true.)

So, tonight is filled with horror and foreboding (totally out of context, check out Bobby’s slide solo in Werewolves of London). Jason would have cut a swath through the Dead like Mrs. Donna Jean through a Holiday Inn, as would Michael Myers, mostly because Jason is a blatant rip-off of said Mr. Myers.

Freddie Krueger would have had no luck with the boys; there was nothing he could conjure up in their dreams that was scarier than things they had seen while awake.

Draculas of all sorts were known to avoid the Dead for fear of catching something. Or, more likely, catching everything. The weird, quickly evolving bacterium and viruses that followed each tour did some wonderful things (from a science point of view). There was one pathogen that caused a nearly 80% result for an incurable disorder called Total Nipple Refraction. TNR, man! So, like pretty much anyone with three or four brain cells, the draculas stayed away from the tour blood.

Werewoofs also would have been no sweat. A guy who turns into a raging beast once every 28 days? So, like, half-a-Billy?

It doesn’t matter anyway: Bobby still demands his nightlight to sleep.

* Until the age of 25, I thought that Christ was his last name. Like, “Hi, we’re the Christs. I’m Joseph, and this is my wife Mary.”

Ebony And Ivory

July 11, 2012 / / 3 Comments

The Dead had so many options after Brent’s all-bullshit-aside tragic death and they went with the worst. They apparently had this weird did-you-call-me/should-we-call thing with Merl that is far too Mean Girls to relate in good conscience and more’s the pity because maybe Merl would’ve kicked Garcia’s ass just a little, being a straight-laced man and proud deacon of the Mt. Holy Oak of Zion First Macadamia Church of the Redeemer in Christ. Plus, the Dead would have had a black guy in it. And as commercials have taught us, people hang out exclusively in carefully diverse groups.

There were others they could have at least auditioned. Elton John was hitting a rough patch at the time, perhaps he could have helped out. Something tells me Bobby would love to play Crocodile Rock. The flaw in the plan is that the first time Sir Elton threw one of his legendary tantrums, Billy would punch him in the dick, because this time I’ve gotta stand up for Billy: grown men throwing tantrums deserve a thorough dickpunching.

Rick Wakeman was also in a bit of a fallow period since wasting all of the money in Britain on an ice show to play arpeggios to. I have a feeling that the first time Rick opened his spangly cape to play two of his army of keyboards at the same time, Garcia would freak out and think he was a dragon and set him on fire. So, that’s a no for Rick Wakeman.

Stevie Wonder wouldn’t have worked because Phil still owes him $60 from a poker game and is ducking him.

Random Thoughts On The Dead

July 11, 2012 / / 4 Comments

The Timi’i people have only five words for colors, which seems odd until you realize that they live in a triple canopied rainforest and the colors are Green, Really Green, Thing That’s About To Kill Me, Sun’s In My Eyes, and Night.

In Phil’s secret language of dreams, his word for “roadie” is the same as his word meaning “one about to be chastised.”

—————-

I sometimes need to hear five or six versions of the same song in a row. Part of that last sentence was a lie: I sometimes need to hear Mississippi Half-Step  five or six versions in a row.

 —————-

Bobby was never more than two or three feet away from the note he intended to sing. Sometimes, this was an exciting musical choice–listen to Sugar Magnolia. Sometimes. Garcia’s voice was too fragile and sweet for the rockers, but it was in tune far more often than Bobby’s. Phil’s voice had a weird barbershop quartet thing to it, plus Phil’s larynx had not been informed of the fact that Phil had perfect pitch. At shows in the ’80’s, Enthusiasts hoisted signs reading Let Phil Sing. Note that these signs did not say Let Phil Continue to Sing: it was clearly seen as a one-time thing.

Pig wasn’t so much good at singing notes as he was at singing songs.

——————-

I’ll give the Dead this: they wouldn’t have put up with that My Little Pony shit at all.

The Dead did not subvert gender roles: they rejected your post-modernity and replaced it with a system that encouraged calling your wife “your old lady,” out loud and in public and getting away with it, which if you think about it, is a pretty good trick the guys played on their old ladies.

——————–

Could it be a coincidence that Roe v. Wade occurred in 1973? Is it chance that the landmark reproductive rights decision took place the VERY SAME YEAR that the Dead was just, y’know, killin’ it?

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.

In The Army Now

June 28, 2012 / / 0 Comments

Garcia was in the service, the Army. It was normal back then for most everybody except sissies, commies, or college boys in their raccoon coats. Mickey and TC were both in the Air Force (Mickey played drums in the Air Force, because the Brass didn’t let him play for three days or so and set fire to a mess hall, so they decided to just let the monster have his Slingerlands and keep the peace.)

Phil was in college and driving a mail truck while shooting speed, which seems like a lovely way to spend a summer at age 22, so no playing soldier for him. Billy got his letter and walked into the draft office, Pall Mall dangling from sneering lips under a newly-grown but already treasured mustache.

“You send me this letter?”

“Ye–”

SHWOKKATHOOM Dicks got punched, dicks got punched left and right, my friend. The sergeant, the lieutenant, the other hard-to-spell things: all of them down, dicks punched, just punched to shit, my man. Everyone got it; sometimes it seemed like he was going harder on the people who were just randomly there. A plumber just in the office got it the worst for some reason, perhaps because he begged. Ah, you think: if Billy hates it when one begs, then therefore, one must fight back to gain his respect.

No! Never fight back. You’re not understanding the main motivator here: when Billy gets to punching dicks, Billy gets to punching dicks. It’s not a competition: it’s a thrust, an urge, he MUST PUNCH DICKS. The thing that pisses him off is the time wasted: beg, bargain, fight, offer to slobber his johnson–these all just register on Billy’s radar as vague buzzing that, every second that it lasts, trends towards white-crazy lightning ruining his brain. You’re making it worse: just lie back and think of Sausalito.

Dead-ton Abbey

June 25, 2012 / / 0 Comments

Mr. Welnick, we haven’t been introduced. I am Rutherford, butler to the Grateful Dead. Allow me to show you to your rooms.

…

It is not common knowledge, Mr. Welnick. Most of the fans are unaware of the masters’ devotion to keeping a properly staffed and liveried house. I am the Head of House, under me is the Brigadoon plus two Manjacks, an Argie-Bargie, four Fops, an armorer, the individual valets, and a falconer.

…

No, sir, you have nothing to fear. The falcon died immediately upon being introduced into daily life with the masters. It wasn’t legally a suicide, but that’s only because there’s no box on the form to check off ‘Bird killed itself.’

…

So: Dinner is served promptly at 8:00 PM. We dress for Dinner here, sir. I do not know what retirement village-adjacent Goodwill’s dumpsters you’ve been shopping in, but it shall not suffice.

…

Before dinner, there is Drinks. For the sake of brevity, sir, just assume it is always Drinks. The appellation seems rather redundant at this pont, but tradition reigns, tradition reigns.

…

You’ll find much to do here, sir. There is the garden with the hedge maze and when you go in there, please bring Mr. Weir back with you.  There’s archery down at the–I beg your pardon, sir, I…misspoke. There is no archery. No archery whatsoever Sir will find that the cable package is exhaustive and we do have a jacuzzi, but House rules insist upon a buddy system. No triples.

…

Yes, there are stables. Full stables. Mr. Hart has been dosing the beasts with LSD and they’re having the time of–I cannot lie, sir: it’s like horse Guernica down there. Under no circumstances go anywhere near the stables. If you see a horse, shoot it, because it’s going to eat you. Ah! Your rooms!

…

Well. It seems like Mr. Garcia has burned down another suite. Apologies. You will have to go back to your houseboat for the evening.

How did you know about my houseboat?

Happiness Is A Warm Pun

June 25, 2012 / / 0 Comments

It’s sequel time here in Fillmore South:

Things I love about the Dead, Part the II

  • When Bobby would say “Thank you,” in that silly high-pitched voice.
  • The end of China Doll where it generally dissolves a little and then Garcia comes in all by himself with the “Take up your China Doll” part, which is really difficult to sing, because the notes are weird AND you have to get the time right, since you’re basically counting the band back in with it AND it’s pitched pretty high, but he got it right far more often than not.
  • The beginning of Truckin’ they’d do sometimes, with the whistles and the snare drums: BRUM-bum BRUM-bum BRRRRRR rum-bum.
  • Occasionally, later in the career, when Bobby would (as is the running gag with both my bloggings and, you know, actual recorded-on-tape reality) forget the lyrics to Truckin’, Phil would start BOMBING away at him and then come in on the next part where they all sing just SUPER LOUD, so clearly seething at the fact that it’s been ten years: learn the words, man.
  • He’s Gone. Not so much on the “Bop bop bop” coda.
  • The jam after Seastones from 6/23/74. Seriously, try to listen to Seastones. Now, on acid. But listen to what Garcia does right after: he plays the sweetest, softest lines, and leads everyone back from the dark place where Ned Lagin touched them.
  • The Baby Dead. The way they would take a riff and just brutalize it, tear it apart and put it back together, mostly the same but weirder for the journey.
  • Their refusal to give in to peer pressure. Often, they would be the only ones in the room who wanted to smoke and bullshit and yell at Bobby for five minutes; the other several thousand people present preferred some form of entertainment. Because, holy god, do these baboons take a long time in between songs. Sometimes for no discernible reason: you can’t hear them talking, nor are they tuning. Were they just wandering around confused for three minutes at a time? It’s not unprecedented: Thelonious Monk did it.
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