Q: Is Garcia a jazz guitarist?
A: No. No, he is not. (Start around 14 minutes in.)
[youtube http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IQBBRAHDIxk&w=420&h=315]
Musings on the Most Ridiculous Band I Can't Stop Listening To
Tag: Grateful Dead (Page 12 of 25)
Kids, pay attention: this is how your parents were raised. Now, if your baby is onstage with the Grateful Dead (and that’s a big “if” because nowadays, babies are not allowed to be on stage with the Grateful Dead, metaphorically speaking), but anyway, if your baby was right now on that stage, you would give him those horrible little baby earmuffs, In the 70’s, if your baby was on stage with the Grateful Dead, you gave him a tambourine.
(Those baby ear protectors are the worst. It’s a baby. Don’t bring it the show, huh?)
P.S. I stole this picture fair-and-square from some loser-breath monster pants.
Sorry to rail on about this Ronnie Tutt fellow, but first off, he’s just a massive drummer who gives my wiener worries; second, he played with Garcia AND Elvis. That is an odd cross-section of the Twentieth Century there. Supposedly they never met, but this of course begs the question: why not? Garcia must have been interested in the King, and Elvis was up for any stupid bullshit after enough pills and sandwiches.
Ronnie mentions it off-hand one night, and Elvis jumps on it like a steel trap.
YUR WURKIN FER THAT HAIRY GARCIA?
“Yeah, Elvis. He wanted to meet you, so I thought he could come on down to Vegas and catch–”
VEGAS? HAIRY GARCIA AIN’T COMIN TA NO VEGAS. I WILL RECEIVE HIM IN THE THRONE ROOM. I WILL RECEIVE HIM UPON THE SEAT OF MY POWER.
“That’s Graceland, King?”
YEAH, I WILL SEND THE LISA MARIE.
So, Garcia and the boys show up at Graceland. A red-headed porter in a modified Elvis suit/apron answers the door and shows them in, stopping at the entrance to the Jungle Room.”
“King, I present–”
Bang.
HEY, GRATEFUL DEAD: AH JUST SHOT THAT WHITE BOY. THE FUCK YOU THINK ‘BOUT THAT?
This time, even Billy had nothing: he was just as impressed and terrified as anyone else. There was a silence; no, not a silence: there were birds birding and branches creaking and creeks branching and cars starting 300 yards away. It was actually a sound that, like the smell of a dominatrix decaying in a bathtub in a row house just north of the 7-11 on Santa Monica Blvd in West Hollywood, hit your primal nerves–it was a sound that your reptile brain recognized long before your dumb ass put a name it: the sound of everyone shutting the fuck up and listening to the guy with the gun.
AH’M JUST SHITTIN YOU NOW, BOYS: GET THE FUCK IN’ERE. STEP OVER THAT DEAD CRACKER FUCK.
So they did and a good time was had by all. They talked a bit, ate bacon. Dr. Nick stopped by and declared them all very, very sick so they needed medicines of all colors and shapes; the proper dosage of these pills should be “a handful”. The Dead, of course, had dosed everything and everyone in the room, as well. The combination of LSD and the three champagne glasses full of pills Elvis dry-swallowed (which would have been a great party trick except for the whole “saddest thing you’ll ever watch another human being casually do right in front of you” thing) hit the King a bit funny.
TIME FOR KARATE: AH’M GUNNA KARATE THE GRATEFUL DEAD!
With that, the King jumped off the couch (there are many shades of jumping, from vaulting or leaping to whatever it was that Elvis did that day). He ripped off his robe, expecting–I believe–that in an attack situation, he would just grow a karate suit like he was Super Man or something. But he didn’t: he just ripped off his robe and stood there, naked and confused for a good long moment and then someone came and brought him up to his bedroom to change.
The Memphis Mafia was thrilled by this; they took the time away from the King to smoke doobies with the Dead, since Elvis did not allow doobies to be smoked in Graceland.
“Is he really gonna karate out when he gets back? said Bobby.
“If he–PHWOOOOO (doobie)–remembers, yeah. And if he goes for it, we gotta join in. Sorry, Grateful Dead,” said Joe Esposito.
“Does anyone need towels or water?” said Charlie Hodge.
“Y’know, Charlie,” said Garcia. “My brow is sopping, but my throat is bone-dry.”
“I got the solution, chief: towels and water.”
Another two hours or so went by, and everyone was having a great time. They were high as kites, and girls showed up, and Red broke out the guitars, and everybody had just the right amount of towels and water, and they had a hootananny right there in the Jungle Room. The thick shag was sown with pills, like a qualude farm and–
KARATE TIME!
Elvis was back. As promised, the Mafia had to pretend to fight, but the Dead were just giggly at that point, perhaps due to all the velour. Even Billy didn’t have any violence in him.
FACE ME, GARCIA. FACE YOUR KING.
“Well, y’know man, it’s just that you’re kinda being a rude sort of host here and–
YOU LEAD THESE MEN. YOU ARE THEIR KING. NOW FACE ME, FOR IN THE THRONE OF KINGS, HE DIES WHO…SHIT. IN THE KING OF GAMES, YOUR BEER IS…NO, FUCK, NO.
“We’re gonna split, man.”
NO! KARATE WITH ME, HAIRY GARCIA!
The door shuts on the loud group of men, leaving relative quiet in the Jungle Room.
“I’ll karate with ya, King.”
SHUT THE FUCK UP, CHARLIE.
…
I WANTED TO KARATE WITH HAIRY GARCIA.
This is how it always happens: a nice stranger on the internet pays you a compliment and BOOM: listening to the fuckin’ Jerry Band. (And don’t give me any guff about “Legion of Mary,” or “Reconstruction,” or whatever: it was always just the fuckin’ Jerry Band. And what that was, was Garcia and John Kahn making dope money.)
The Jerry Band mostly sucked, except for the times when, coincidentally, people like Merl Saunders or Ronnie Tutt were in the band. Odd how that happened. Otherwise, it was ponderous, unmemorable Dylan covers.
My main memory of The Jerry Band was my Dead Bodhidharma, Glenn. He dug the ’90 live CD, the one with Simple Twist of Fate on it, in which John Kahn takes an eight-minute bass solo (strike three) in the wrong key. Or for the first time on a fretless. Or with a number of head wounds and contusions. these are only some of the excuses he might have for whatever it was I was forced to sit through.
P.S. Speaking of intonational follies, check out Second that Emotion from 4/13/71 at the Catholic Youth Center in Scranton, PA. The intro answers the question “Could Garcia be so out of tune, he actually becomes in tune the long way around?”
P.P.S. Seriously, go find this recording: Jerry Garcia Collection vol 1: Legion of Mary.
My usual feeling about Dead-related side projects (BURN IT WITH FIRE) aside, the Legion of Mary, with Ronnie Tutt on the drums, kinda rocks. Ronnie also played for Elvis as part of his powerful Vegas show band. Ronnie was a bit of a Motherfucker.
Merl is, of course, Merl: no matter where merl is, when he walks in the room, people say: The keyboard player’s here. It might be the hat. Martin Fiero is on the saxophone, which is ususally a death knell, bit he’s killing it AND he was in the horn section of my beloved horn shows, so he gets a lifetime pass from me.
John Kahn remains a drug dealer who owned a bass.
Now,we know what would have happened if the Dead had taken over a hospital, but what if they all got jobs at a school? Wokka wokka?
Phil taught music, obviously. His decision to include the uncut Einstein on the Beach as the centerpiece of the Fall Music-alooza was hotly contested by some before the show, and by all about three hours into the show. Also, Phil threw a tuba at a kid once. In his defense, that kid’s a well-known dick.
Garcia went in the Teacher’s Lounge and it’s been a while since he’s come out and if you try to go in, Parrish punches you really hard in your face and head.
Keith taught geometry. Not algebra or trig, nothing but geometry. Sometimes, he could be harassed into teaching another subject, but he would do it so deliberately poorly, accidentally injuring so many students and mascots that he would be asked to stop before October got there, even, and he would go back to teaching strictly geometry, which it should be said, he was unbelievably good at. He is also heavily addicted to heroin and, to be honest, was rather mumbly before the Persian. Opiates are not the natural friend of diction
Bobby coached soccer and basketball and track because:
…and Bobby don’t do pants.
Mrs. Donna Jean was the art teacher. Because she looked like your art teacher, right: crunchy and maybe gay and in-retrospect high all the time and predictably liberal. But she wasn’t. Mrs. Donna Jean liked to get shitty on pills and whiskey and fuck Bobby and crash her BMW into things in the parking lot and sing off-key for eight years. (Now, you know I’m a Donna Defender, but if the old canard about “not being able to hear the monitors” were true, wouldn’t you have worked hard to fix that? Shouldn’t the Dead’s crew–for all the mockery, they could never be accused of being bad at their jobs; lethal, perhaps, but thoroughly competent in the face of disaster–have been able to set her up lickety-split? Things to think about.
The parents caught one glance of Billy leering at the 15-year-olds and chased him, reviling his good name in utter besmirchment and giving the dogs the lash to catch the natty minge. The parents rousted Billy into a boiler room, which they boarded him into and set ablaze! Now, with a scarred face in the shape of a mustache and drumsticks sloppily taped to his fingers, he haunts the dreams of hot, sexy teens doing hot, sexy teen things as…Billy Kreug-etz-mannger. (I did not think this through beforehand.)
Look at those hamhock arms: he’s just so adorable.
Mrs. Donna Jean is crossing her arms and not looking at Bobby as hard as she can.
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