Thoughts On The Dead

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

Tag: donna godchaux (Page 6 of 7)

Dead & Company To The Core

August 5, 2015 / / 2 Comments

Let’s have a post that burnishes–rather than tarnishes–the fine name of a semi-defuct choogly-type band full of violent dipsomaniacs and leering ephebophiles, shall we?

Playing in the Band is not what 1977 was known for, but this one from 4/22 at the Spectrum is a HoF version that gets spooky-scary in the middle and then transitions into Scarlet Begonias as if that’s a thing.

They just do it like it’s a thing.*

Then right when they drop down into Fire on the Mountain, Mrs. Donna Jean does that adorable thing where she punctuates the first beat of the riff with a cheerful yelp of “FIRE.

*They do not do this, as it is not a thing. Playing is the last song of the first set, and Scar>Fire begins the second set. That’s a thing, not the thing I thought was a thing. My mind wandered and upon its return decided that a transition that made no sense and would surely be famous if it had happened and that I was the first one to discover had happened.

TotD regrets the error. Still a phenomenal show you should be listening to right now.

Donna: Lean

June 17, 2015 / / 1 Comment

bandindexHey, Mrs. Donna Jean. Whatcha doing?

“Feelin’ it. Waitin’ for my part. Being skinny.”

Yeah. You kinda look like a Pez dispenser.

“Bless your heart.”

You explained what that meant to me last time we talked.

“Did I? It was a while ago.”

Aw, Mrs. Donna Jean, don’t be like that. It’s bad enough with Garcia’s whining.

“But: he’s dead, honeysuckle. Me, they just don’t wanna pay.”

Still, he’s pretty insistent on being there. Keeps huffing and puffing about “backup bands getting delusions of grandeur.”

“I’m sure I don’t know whatever he may mean.”

…

You and Bobby were the only ones with chins, weren’t you?

“Mickey had one, but where I grew up, we were taught it was polite to pretend Jews didn’t exist, so: yes.”

Just Gotta Poke Around

May 12, 2015 / / 0 Comments

IMG_1587Never before had Mrs. Donna Jean been in such torment. Did she love Bobby or did she just loving up on Bobby? For all his faults, Bobby was good at loving up on ladies. He was even better at loving up on girls, but that’s neither here nor there.

Innocently it started, with things like this – a shared mic, a drink in the afternoons while Keith ate pills he found on the floor. Since Mrs. Donna Jean joined up, she and Bobby had shared the unspoken bond that comes from being the only attractive people in the room.

Perhaps not “unspoken.” More correctly, it was unspoken of in front of the rest of the band because, as ugly as they were, they only became uglier when making their sad faces. The two of them would share a plate of fries (“Ugh, I am so fat.” “Shut up, you skinny whore.”) and talk about the loneliness that comes with beauty.

Post-Hiatus, Bobby and Mrs. Donna Jean got closer, almost by default: her husband and Garcia were locked in increasingly smaller cells of addiction; Phil only wanted to talk about Canadian football; interactions with the drummers so often ended in a duffel bag full of raccoons being hurled into an Wendy’s.

Love? Of course not. Bobby was a single guy, and everyone was having fun. As much fun as an affair that could fuck up a multi-million dollar tour could be, anyway.

(Epically fun. Tremendously, stupendously, stupefyingly fun. Sneaking around hotels and stolen glances and spy moves with room keys and what not: epically fun.)

She put the question out of her head, and knew that Bobby hadn’t even thought of it. It’s hard to be a woman. Doubly so when you’re being written by a man.

Two-Faced

November 23, 2014 / / 0 Comments

jerry what? donna

Try this: hold your thumb up, or your phone, or your pet’s remains up to the screen and cover up the left side of Garcia’s face. Your left (unless you are standing behind your computer or viewing it upside down or via a mirror or you are a six-dimensional being from three realities over and experience direction as color, in which case you should cover up the mauve half of Garcia’s face.)

Do you see the Old Campaigner–that man of twists and turns who knows sorrow and infinity and infinity’s horrible twin exfinity? (Infinity is everything that ever was, is, or will be. Exfinity is the stuff that wasn’t, isn’t, and won’t be. Lot of early potential in exfinity.)

Keep covering that left side, continue the face-ectomy: Garcia can see forever, but knows that forever’s a mighty long time. And he can tell you: there’s no such thing as an afterlife. Shit, most people barely have lives to begin with.

There are rocks, then water, then money, then water, then rocks; and then it starts again: we are all the Buddha because we’re all full of shit. And then we try for holiness and fuck it all up. We’ll do it together.

We’ll do it together this time or not at all.

Now cover up the other side: that Garcia has no clue what city he’s in.

Woman Enough

November 7, 2014 / / 0 Comments

bobby boots phil mic

Is it tough, Mrs. Donna Jean? Being a woman in the boy’s club?

“Oh, darling, you make do. Do what y’can. It’s all a big boy’s club–the music biz–not just this here Dead. They all treat me like a little sister, cept for Keith, who treats me like his wife, and Bobby, who treats me like a woman.”

Umm…

“Like last time we all was in Omaha. Crew had them a groupie cockfight: they’d tape razor spars to the girls’ hands and fight ’em. Usually they had to jack the ladies up on Meth and Tequila, but this night they found two girls who was natural mean. One of ’em was missing an ear, and it had happened recently…”

I don’t understand where you’re going with this.

“So them girls get to rassling and Lady Van Gogh got haunches like a teen kangaroo, she could kick a hole through a mountain and SCLERODERMA! she cracked the other girl’s sternum. Now, I was mortified! The sight of it all! But did I leave? No. Avert my eyes? Bless your heart if y’think so.”

And what does this–

“I did leave the room shortly thereafter, as the fracas had aroused in a sexual fashion Billy’s loins. It was just better to not be around when that happened, sugar.

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