Thoughts On The Dead

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

Tag: donna (Page 1 of 4)

Ran Out Of Track…

September 1, 2020 / / 21 Comments

Hey, Mrs. Donna Jean. Whatcha doing?

“Mah part, sugah! Ah’m th’ getaway pilot.”

Wha?

“F’r the Murder Heist.”

Oh, goddammit.

“Ah’ll poke out y’r eyes if’n you blaspheme anymore.”

Sorry, ma’am. I’m just a bit frustrated by the durability of this stupid idea.

“Nothin’ stupid ’bout an old-fashioned Murder Heist.”

Why is it capitalized?

“Cuz it’s so proper, sugah.”

And you’re the getaway pilot?

“Mm-hmm. Course, Ah also provide a platform for th’ wingsuited ninjas.”

I suppose you can’t have a Murder Heist without wingsuited ninjas becoming involved.

“Be like peach cobbler without th’ peaches! Simply won’t do.”

Do we know the wingsuited ninjas?

“The Busboys from Terrapin Crossroads.”

Sure.

“Between you an’ me, them boys don’t have their papers, but they Christians.”

What precisely is getting heisted, and who is getting murdered?

“Oh, that ain’t how we do it ’round here. Compartmentalization is th’ key. Ah just know Ah land on Wilshire Boulevard right outside the Tar Pits at exactly 3:18 PM.”

Then what?

“I pick up mah passengers and get t’ scootin’.”

Your passengers? You don’t know who you’re picking up?

“Need t’ know, sugah. Ah was told that Ah’d recognize ’em. Prob’ly gonna be Elvis. Maybe Billy. Y’gotta admit this whole plan stinks o’ Billy.”

It does. I want to lodge my formal complaint about this storyline.

“They can’t all be winners, sugah.”

I guess not.

Had About Enough Of Your Bullshit, Garcia

November 23, 2013 / / 0 Comments

donna jerry bw onstage

Occasionally, Mrs. Donna Jean would be tuckered from a day of turning Keith on his side, eating Tuinals, and shopping for caftans and just hit an existential wall mid-song. She would stop her little hippie-chick easy skank thing and grab onto the mike for support. She would think about her boys, so far away.

She was in…well, she was in a basketball arena, or a gently decaying theater. She was somewhere smoky. Somewhere the tap water doesn’t taste right: maybe Denver, possibly Atlanta. Detroit?

It was cold, she knew that. Or too hot. In a borrowed bed and an airplane seat previously sat on by someone else who didn’t want to be there. Hotels and planes and hospitals and jails and Billy’s basement: people are only there because they have to be and that disgust seeps into the cushions like chili farts in a fat camp mattress.

She was vulnerable like the others weren’t: no shield. Nowhere to hide–certainly not a giant children’s fort of drums set atop a defensible platform. Keith was as ludicrously encircled by keyboards as any English prog-rock ivory-tickler of the time, but preferred to spend his time on an instrument so large that there are specialized businesses that only move that instrument. They all had places to hide, but not her. She was scared up there.

Occasionally, Mrs. Donna Jean would be tuckered.

Then, she would remember that Billy had always punched her in the dick just as much as everyone else, and she would feel better.

 

 

Lexington Stealie

July 18, 2012 / / 0 Comments

Which brings us, again, to 4/21/78 at the Rupp Arena in Lexington, Kentucky. This tour is something of a Rust Belt/Appalachian Trail theme and, yes, there were two shows I’ve neglected, but my versions sounds as if the recording device had been keestered in and then never un-keestered, to be found post-mortem and released in a macabre recreation of Betty Canter-Jackson’s storage locker incident.

So, I went to the Rupp show, which I’ve written about before: it  with this weird, wired energy that isn’t just the coke singing. Listen to the Playin’>drums. All of them stay up there for drums and listen to it climax 12 minutes in with a Donna-led call-and-response chant that makes this one of the only drums I’ve ever listened to on its own.

And then, right after that, Mickey starts playing the Knight Rider theme.

Stop! Donna Time #1

July 17, 2012 / / 0 Comments

This photo is obviously not telling you the whole story: Mrs. Donna Jean liked to fight as much as the guys, but she was a fairly petite woman and Billy’s program of punches and kicks were meant to be performed by a guy who made his living beating on things. So, Mrs. Donna Jean clawed and scratched and bit. In this pic,  she is  washing about two fl. oz. of Keith’s plasma out of her teeth.

So now you know.

On A Spring Roll

July 16, 2012 / / 0 Comments

Now, as you know, Blair Jackson and the rest of Big Dead are keeping things from you, important things: the keys to the Vault, the fact that “Mickey Hart” was played by different actors before and after the hiatus, etc. Why is this? Why does Blair Jackson hate the Dead?

No. You’re not going to do this.

Is it because he’s from Kenya?

Please: not again.

Is it because a mere TEASPOON of his liver, eaten, would produce TREMULOUS LUBICOSITIES OF THE UTMOST in the recipient?

Are you going mad or insane? There is a difference, and I can live with mad for now.

Ah, right: Blair Jackson is Yog Soggoth, the Ancient Anus with many Eyes!

Good, just mad.

Anyway, Blair Jackson is doing this thing over on Dead.net about listening to ten shows in a row so I’m going to beat him by doing the entire Spring ’78 tour because god help me, I need a girlfriend. We join in progress with 4/10/78 from the Fox Theater in Atlanta, GA.

Listen to the way Garcia snaaaaarls Los Angeles? Gimme Norfolk, Virginia. Tidewater 4-10-0-9…

And then stick around for the off-kilter BEW. Both drummers have  been exploding with goodness and syncopation and tomfoolery this tour. And Keith is fucking killing it, but then, on a dime, his playing turns awkward and overpowering and there is a reason they rarely played It’s All Over Now.

And then check back in for Music Never Stopped which is such a train wreck that Harrison Ford is leaping in front of it.

P.S. After full listening, I give this show 3/2 thumbs up and a pat on its ass: “Good job,” I would say to it, were it here, even though it was goofy and sloppy and all over the place–they rocked the Fox with a crackling, coked-up energy. Proud of you!

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.”

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