Thoughts On The Dead

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

Tag: Grateful Dead (Page 17 of 25)

Dave’s Nit-Picks

June 20, 2012 / / 1 Comment

So, the new Dave’s Pick going to be 10/22/71 from the Auditorium Theater in Chicago, IL and it’s a hell of a show. They announced it, like, hours ago and the whining has commenced. Here is how you do not get me on your side of the argument: “Why haven’t we seen more releases from ’84?” Because of the amount of awfulness. There was, good sir, too much awfulness in 1984 and all the grown-ups knew this years ago. There is no groundswell; no one clamors.

It’s a good choice: go check out the powerful Comes a Time and then LISTEN TO 3;05 WHEN GARCIA GOES INTO HIS FALSETTO! In fact, listen to every single thing Garcia sings and plays on this all-time performance.

Then hit the (half-hour) Other One where Keith whips out his piano dong and shows everyone the sheer magnitude of it and everybody’s like: nice piano dong, meaty; and Keith doesn’t say anything, just keeps donging away and then remember that it’s his THIRD SHOW. Kneel before Zod.

The Strangest Of Places

June 18, 2012 / / 1 Comment

1975. Weird year. Weird shows, with an “everybody in the pool” type of vibe to them.  “Who showed up? Ned? Umm. Does he have any weed? Well, give him a keyboard, I guess.” Merl and  Matthew Kelley (pre-dickpunching incident) sit in; Sammy Davis, Jr. comes out for a number. And each set begins the only proper way a Grateful Dead show can: with an intro by Bill Graham.

The drummers weren’t quite together yet, and the sound is cluttered, but it’s HUGE and it just doesn’t sound like any other year. Garcia sounds like it’s ’72, laying down long, ropey lines and just soloing throughout pretty much every song, expecting the other 97 musicians on stage to carry the actual song. Due to the ad hoc nature of most of the Hiatus show, having a grand piano on stage was impossible (said the road crew before pantsing Keith, forcing Donna Jean to shoo them away. “You have to stand up for yourself, baby. Can’t let the bigger boys bully you. Look at me, Keith: it gets better.”) so Keith was confined to the Fender Rhodes

Did they ever really retire? Were they ever serious about it? The fake-out retirement is a classic show-biz move: Sinatra retired at least 17 times, the Stones have done five straight farewell tours, Tupac became a hologram for some reason. They certainly needed a break from playing Atlas with the Wall of Sound, there was way too much coke and the Persian was creeping into the scene.

So, they took ’75 off, playing only 4 shows, all of them backyard gigs in the Bay Area. The most well-known (justly) is 8/13, the One from the Vault release from the Great American Music Hall. The S.N.A.C.K. benefit was certainly the weirdest: the human brain hadn’t evolved for a pre-noon Blues for Allah. The Winterland show in June is the most overlooked.

But the Secret Hero show is 9/28/75–Lindley Meadows in Golden Gate Park. Check out the Franklin’s, where Mickey and Billy chase each other around with their cymbals and Garcia lets loose a roaring solo right after “…if you get confused, listen to the music play.” AND THEN THE END OF FRANKLIN’S HOLY SHIT which is like the end of He’s Gone with the long a capella call-and-response and it’s just remarkable.

Aaaaaaand then the intro to Big River, which is a mess.

P.S. Thank you to the tapers, to the archivists, to the digital cleanup artists, to the uploaders. Thank you to the scribes and the safekeepers. After all, if Bobby forgets he words to Truckin’ and it is not preserved, then did he really forget the words? (Most likely, yes. Bobby forgot the words to Truckin’ so much it was on his to-do list: hair, squats, tickle-time with Garcia, slide guitar lesson (cancelled), forget words to Truckin’.)

P.P.S.  As I was writing about my gratitude for the archivists and digital Jawas that keep everything running, Archive.org went down.

All Hail Kezar!

June 18, 2012 / / 8 Comments

Hey, kids! want to start your week off in just the weirdest goddam way possible? Try 3/23/75 at Kezar Stadium, where Bill Graham put on a benefit for the underfunded schools of the Bay Area called S.N.A.C.K. (Students Need Athletics, Culture, and Kicks.) (Kicks? Wow, the 70’s were weird.)

Anyway, it’s not like any Dead set you’ve heard before: it’s just a 40 minute Blues for Allah jam, but with Merl and Ned on the back up keys and Keith on the heavenly Fender Rhodes.

Wondering how Bobby’s hair looked?

Play ALL the keyboards!

And you can come up with your own fellatio-related caption here, I suppose.

And, holy shit, just listen to Garcia lead the transition back into Blues from at 30 seconds in to the fourth track. That’s why he doesn’t get called by his first name

We Could Be Heroes

June 15, 2012 / / 2 Comments

The Dead neither dated nor married for effect. There are no reports of Phil squiring, say, Joyce Dewitt into the Whiskey while wearing an enormous trenchcoat containing Mickey and Billy for some reason, I don’t know, it’s just a funny visual: the two of them LEAPING out from within the coat like that was Phil’s mutant power, to be able to generate two rampaging cashfuckers at will from his vestments. Phil was actually an X-Man briefly, but chafed under the authority of Professor X and got Colossus killed again, so…

He had to transfer to Garcia’s School for Exceptional Youngsters. Garcia was a benevolent presence that infused the grounds with his personality, riding around in his Alembic-made $400,000 wheelchair; he wasn’t crippled, just lazy. His mutant power was to bring people together and spread love and cheer so that everyone in the room was having such a good time that no one saw him sneak off to the bathroom, which he would invariably burn down.

Bobby takes down villains and keeps the peace with the power of his muscular thighs.

Donna is capable of emitting a banshee wail powerful and strident enough to paralyze an enthusiast at ten paces away from a good ’74 Playin’. (Wait, she’s not a mutant? She just sang like that? Huh.)

P.S. Despite my general distaste for most of the dirges of ’76, here’s a goodie from this day in Dead history: 6/15/76 at the Beacon Theater in money-making, heart-breaking Manhattan.

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