Musings on the Most Ridiculous Band I Can't Stop Listening To
Of note: Billy’s shirt, Garcia’s face, a shopping bag for some reason (though, in a strictly photographic sense, the bag helps the shot out).
Also notice Mickey and Billy’s snare drums, how they’re angled away from them. This was the jazz style and how nearly everyone who strapped into a trap set did it for a half-century.
And, Phil is standing in the back because he was bad.
I feel like I need to reiterate this: do not make Hologram Garcia and take it on tour. No one wants to see translucent Garcia glitching and shimmering and 18 feet high, backed up by live musicians with dreams that did not include accompanying a film strip.
Every bad decision in history was, in the end, made by one person. Invading Russia, New Coke, the Maginot Line–all these things were subject to one man’s say-so, and so is this choice: to Hologram Garcia or not to Hologram Garcia. Would the buck stop with the Estate? The band? Could Hunter have a veto? (And if he does, then the point is moot: I think we can all safely assume this shit would be the definition of ‘not okay’ with him.)
What I’m getting to is this: the person that is ultimately responsible for allowing Hologram Garcia to exist will be beaten with a shoe, by me, no mercy, and not so much a shoe as boots.
As long as no one makes Hologram Garcia, everything’s gonna be cool.
The bad old days of the City.
For my next trick, I’m going to accidentally set my hotel room on fire.
Though the man who owned the farm was a huge Deadhead, even he had to admit that the new scarecrow was just not working.
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.
4/16/78, West Virginia. Holy shit, they must have been broke, although it seems like WV would be pretty in the spring. Check out Garcia’s solo in Peggy-O, the way he leads the chord changes. Just listen to Peggy-O: this version is astonishing.
In fact, Garcia has been on fire the entire show and for most of the tour, but sweet Sally in the alley, would someone take that slide from Bobby. For the children, if nothing else.
And then listen real careful to Ship of Fools, where Garcia implores us to “Looky here,” before he tells us how late it was when he got around to believing.
P.S. in the New Orleans tradition, when the body is brought to the church, the Second Line follows, playing traditional funeral dirges. IKO IKO IS NOT ONE OF THEM, GENTLEMEN. Hop to it, guys: you’re killing me.
And how about 4/14/78 at the Cassell Coliseum at Virginia Polytechnic University? Most of the show is a complete mess, but like the rest of this tour, its sheer energy pulls it through, and then LISTEN TO GARCIA do his George Benson thing and start singing along with his guitar during Black Peter.
Next up, West Virginia.
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