Thoughts On The Dead

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

Tag: Grateful Dead (Page 24 of 25)

The Big Retcon

January 29, 2012 / / 0 Comments

I am now retconning the Grateful Dead. All thirteen of you know that I have, up until this momentous occasion, unofficially declared everything post-Brent to be only dubiously existent. Yes, there’s scattered evidence here and there, but–and I say this impartially–doesn’t it just make more sense to believe that the band mysteriously disappeared in a 1979 plane crash? Well, their plane didn’t crash: a plane crashed into their tour bus. Six of one, half-dozen of another.

But as of now, I declare all of the Land of Welnickia barren and off-limits. Vince is no longer in continuity. He has ceased to be canon: Vince is the Dead’s version of the Expanded Star Wars Universe. (You know the Expanded Star Wars Universe, right?  The place where everybody had Jedi babies and the Emporer had hidden so many clones of himself in so many places that by the time they were four novels in, every 13th person on Coruscant was named Not Secretly Palpatine’s Clone. Then a moon fell on Chewbacca.)*

Isn’t life easier now? No more nonsense hype about the 91 Boston Garden shows, no more having to pretend that the oakland ’92 Dark Star was as good as a ’72.  ANY ’72. Five less years taking up space in your head.

You’re welcome.

*That really happened, the Chewbacca thing. These guys whose galaxy is even far, farther away than the one our heroes live in, attacked Luke and them and Luke and them fought back or something and then Chewie was helping to evacuate a planet –like  you do–and the bad guys threw a moon at him. So now, Chewie’s dead. Except he’s not really, because he was only ever just a pituitary case in a Space Monkey suit

Shit Grateful Deads Say

January 28, 2012 / / 1 Comment
  • I spent a million dollars on this thing.
  • Hey, Healy? Could you turn me up a bit? I can’t hear myself over Lesh and Weir.
  • You smell like Heineken; let me have your liver.
  • Fuckin’ Weir.
  • Fuckin’ drummers.
  • FUCKIN’ DONNA!
  • Healy, if I still can’t hear my bass 60 seconds from now, I’m going to stab you. I will physically stab you with an actual knife. You need to bring it up at 800 cycles…that’s it: Ramrod, bring me my knife.
  • No, Ramrod: to ME my blade.
  • Bring everyone their knives, Ramrod!
  • Would someone pull Mickey off that cop? Just grab him, but be careful…OOH, I should have told you that Billy was probably gonna punch you in the dick. He does that and other human beings seem to just accept it.
  • Jerry, get out of the bathroom.
  • No, not “I need a million dollars.” I told you that I have already spent a million dollars and now the million dollars is gone forever and we will almost certainly never get one cent of it back. What did I do with it? Stop hassling me, man.
  • Yes, of course  it seems perfectly logical that we allow the crew to have a full vote on everything we do. How can that be anything but a sound business practice that will, in no way, end in numerous deaths. Why do you ask?
  • Who the fuck bought a harpsichord?
  • Yeah, they call me Captain Billy; I’m kinda the captain. Would you like to touch the captain in a sensual way? Come! Let Captain Billy practice his sensuality all over you, my zaftig nightchild!
  • Soooo…you should just assume that every single thing you see  is just absolutely drenched with acid. All of it, even on the insides of things in defiance of all laws of nature. We encourage a culture in which is acceptable to drug one another at any time with any amount of any drug. Some workplaces have fantasy football; we have chosen to amuse ourselves through poisoning one another. We have almost definitely poisoned you already.  Enjoy your backstage passes, Congressmen.
  • Healy, can you–
  • –Healy, you turn him up and I’m gonna buy, raise, and train attack dogs–like Michael Vick-type shit–and then I will set them on you and fucking LAUGH.
  • –you’re just, like, mean.

Turn On Your Light

January 23, 2012 / / 0 Comments

I don’t know who the audience for this nonsense is: in my previous post, there was a joke that literally only makes sense if you have seen one specific picture taken at Mickey’s ranch. I am betting, somehow, on the fact that someone else in the world has, filed in the same mind they keep the location of their keys and childrens’ birthdays, a memory of a photo featuring John “Marmaduke” Dawson.

Planet Dumb

January 23, 2012 / / 0 Comments

Mickey once convinced his father to retool a music store into an all-drum extravaganza named Drum City. Mickey once made an album called Planet Drum. Mickey was not well-rounded.

The unholy spawn of Oates and Baba-Booey, Mickey Hart was the Other One of the Dead’s rhythm section. Astonishingly, he also manages to be the silliest man in a group full of deeply, almost constitutionally silly people. There are no stories concerning Mickey in any of the multitude of books about the Dead that do not end one of two ways: with fortunes disappearing in exceedingly foreseeable ways, or Mickey attacking another human being in public.

Money was allergic to Mickey, in the sense that anytime he got near any appreciable amount of cash, it would flee into the night, generally after gathering up any other money that just happened to be in the area. If Mickey had gone on a tour of San Simeon, it would have burned down immediately. We can only assume that, even though he grew up in the Bay Area, Bill Gates never happened upon Mickey Hart. We know this because had it occurred, Gates would today be gulping dongs to get paint to huff. Such is Mickey’s magic, because he thought big.

Rick Wakeman once took a book of finger-limbering exercises, renamed it after King Arthur, and rented a hockey arena so otherwise unemployable 35-year-old former Olympic ice dancing hopefuls could salchow their way through three hours of arpeggios played by a man in a spangly cape. Mickey thought Rick Wakeman was a piker. In 1984, Mickey spent 2.5 million trying to get all of Hands Across America to clap along to a 15-beat bouzouki rhythm. The album was never released.

As for the random–yet entirely predictable–violence, perhaps you’re saying, “But rock music has always been fraught with explosive personalities.  What about the fights between the Davies brothers or Daltrey and Townshend or Metallica and their reputation?” Yes, yes: all true. Except you will notice that the examples, and all the other fightin’ twosomes you’re thinking of are basically long-running personality disputes. Sure, the Gallagher brothers are, statistically speaking, punching each other as I write this, but if they weren’t rock stars, they would be doing the same thing. If they were Liam and Noel’s Plumbing Service and you called them, your house would be rapidly filling with feces as they rolled around on the floor biting each others’ necks and using their adorable Brummie accents to transform the word ‘cunt’ into something that sounds like a pet name.

That wasn’t Mickey. Mickey tackled producers in studios. He choked crew members in delicatessans. Accountants in auto-supply shops. Florists in winnebagos. The only person, I believe, he didn’t attack was his good ol’ pop. You know his dad: the guy that stole so much money from the Dead that instead of precisely calculating the figure, the FBI just rounded it up to “all of it.” The rat in the proverbial drain ditch.

Every time I see a picture of Mickey at his ranch, all I can picture is the guy raising his camera and Mickey going, “Wait!  Let me get my serape!”

The Other One

January 22, 2012 / / 0 Comments

Who was the most useless member? Musically speaking, obviously. In a serious crisis, like a fire or a cruise boat disaster, you would want precisely none of them around. Garcia might keep a cool head, but that’s it. Bobby’s presence would result in a vast increase in casualties due to the time expended by having to explain over and over, in increasingly simpler language, what was happening and why it was a bad thing. Brent would lose the will to live immediately and just walk into the flames.

Which brings us to Tom Constanten. TC is no one’s favorite Dead member, but he is also not anyone’s least-favorite. No one puts on a tape of 1969 and admonishes his friends, “Dudes, listen to the Bach-flavored calliope noises way in the background. LISTEN TO TC TRILL FANCIFULLY!” TC seems to have been included in the group for three reasons: to make Lesh seem like less of a pretentious dick, his clothes, and mustache. Let us examine these things:

Phil Lesh is unbearable, we all know this. If you can read an interview with the man where your hand does not involuntarily start making the jerk-off gesture, then you’re a more tolerant man than I. If Phil were a modern-day hipster, he would work the fact that he didn’t own a television into the first 30 seconds of every conversation he ever had. Phil’s one of those New Atheists that likes to start internet arguments. TC demanded that the group buy him a harpsichord. We have a winner.

As for attire, the only thing to be said is that TC thought he was dressing to play Hippie at a Dinner Party #2 in the flashback scene of a random ThirtySomething episode. TC owns a cape. It is not his first cape. In fact, TC has a “cape guy.”

But the Fu Manchu was pretty sweet.

Hulk vs. Superman

January 22, 2012 / / 0 Comments

1977 is something that must be dealt with; its little brother is ’73. Speak to me not of 1974, when Billy decided that they were gonna be a damn jazz band if he had anything to do with it. Leave ’76 in your pocket, when tempos dragged and everything was a dirge. Yes, the Beacon shows were outstanding, but they were still figuring out what to do now that they were less of a fighter jet and more of a bomber.

You’re going to bring up the Old Shit, the Primal Dead Shit. The before-they-learned-how-to-write-songs Dead. The Dead that had, like, four riffs that went with three different sets of lyrics, each more ridiculous than the last, and would just trip their balls off while holding instruments in front of audiences really loud? We all love that Dead. You can’t not love that Dead. It’s like the Baby Jesus. We love the Baby Jesus simply because he’s gonna be Jesus, but right now: he’s a baby! Yay, we love babies! And that’s what the Pigpen era was: Baby Jesus.

If the Dead hadn’t learned how to write songs, they would have ben the Quicksilver Messenger Whatever. Or Jefferson Airplane. Just endlessly jamming with some nonsense lyrics about The Man, or the Shire.

So we must leave Primal Dead, to refocus on 1977 and 1973.  1977 and 1973. They are the Batman and Robin of the Grateful Dead’s output.

Some will say it is the historic availability of the high-quality Betty Boards that bias the long-time Grateful Dead listener: these shows were taped so well that they were invariably the best sounding thing in anyone’s collection. Huge bass, crisp separation–these tapes were a joy to listen to, as opposed to the murky 4th and 5th gen Maxell’s cluttering up your basement. No matter how “warts and all” your stance, you couldn’t help appreciate the sound that rivaled some of the Dead’s official releases. (I’m looking at you, Skull & Roses.)

Perhaps ’77 is so esteemed simply because listening to it doesn’t give you a headache? This would have been a valid argument years ago, but after 32 Dick’s Picks, two dozen Road Trips and Digital Downloads, we have fearful amounts of Dead available, all at a sound quality that any one of us would have once killed for. Yes, you can quibble over the “punchiness” of this release versus that, but these are, when it comes to using the Dead to feed the hunger of your burgeoning OCD, light years beyond what we used to deem acceptable

We have not mentioned any year past 1977. There is a reason for that. (We’ll get to Brent later, you can be assured.)

Spinal Dead

January 22, 2012 / / 0 Comments

One of Nigel Tufnel’s guitars–a sunburst Les Paul Custom–reportedly produced the greatest sustain of any guitar in the world. The Dead fired Keith and hired Brent in order to–among many other reasons, most notably the booze, heroin, and protracted “I know the chords!” comping–bring more sustain into the band. Nigel just took care of an object in his search for this almighty, mysterious sustain, but the Grateful Dead threw an entire goddamn family off of their payroll to hear certain notes decay slower.

These were deeply, almost frighteningly passive-aggressive men. This is the a transcription of the final conversation between Keith, one of the various criminals “managing” the band, and Phil, who is the only band member there. Garcia is hiding in the closet, having accidentally burned down both his hotel room and, against all reason, a Burger King he hadn’t even been to. Weir is at a local tailor’s shop, screaming at the poor immigrant, “I’ll tell you when they’re short enough, Giuseppe!” Mickey has found a new percussion instrument in Mongolia called the Ggggggggggggg and he is now spending $1.5 million of the band’s money to create a drum-opera around it. This album will never be released. Billy’s down at Old Salty’s Tavern; look for him at the corner of the bar, his captain’s hat pulled low and throwing back Tequila Sunrises.

This exchange  was recorded by Betty Canter and only recently made available to the public when she couldn’t make the rent on her bus terminal locker. Things have not been just exactly perfect for Betty in quite some time.

“Keith, there’s something we need to talk about.”

“Glorfabooble makka makka,”

This was pretty much all you could get out of Keith at this point. It didn’t matter all that much because even fucking Bobby told Keith what to do. They didn’t treat Keith right: they got him hooked on drugs, slept with his wife, and pretended like he didn’t look like a hairy Eric Stoltz from Mask. Every time Keith started feeling his oats, Mickey would throw his drumsticks down and  scream, “You’re not my REAL keyboard player!  I hate you!” Then he would run upstairs and slam his bedroom door and cry.

(Honestly, you can see Mickey doing that, can’t you?)

“Keith it’s about the playing. We really need to hear more sustain, so…”

“You’re gonna buy me a Hammond B-3?”

“No, we’re going to fire you and your wife. And within the year, we’re going to sabotage your car so you die in a fiery car crash that everyone will think is an accident, but WE’LL KNOW! Because you KNOW TOO MUCH, Keith Godchaux! Mwah-ha-ha!”

There are two things you should have gotten from the above exchange: 1: Phil Lesh is a diabolical mastermind who once launched the Baxter Building into space; and, 2: That is the only instance on the internet of the phrases “Keith Godchaux” and “knows too much” getting that close together.

Spinal Dead #2

January 22, 2012 / / 0 Comments

Tap built a set for their song, Stonehenge, but of course things went wackily awry: the crew built Stonehenge too small and it was famously in danger of being trod upon by a dwarf.

The Grateful Dead also built a Stonehenge, the difference being that they made it out of the largest speakers on Earth and it weighed 85 trillion tons. (I am estimating that precise tonnage.) In ’74, something called the Wall of Sound came into existence. This happened because the Dead’s policy of nearly spending themselves bankrupt on obviously retarded shit was a sacred one. This band policy was taken even more seriously than other Dead policies such as, “Please wear the most comfortable clothes you own at all times no matter how absurd you look,” and, “Only hire criminals to look after the payroll.”

In high school bio class, my friends and I would play a game to see who could break the most glassware during the period without it becoming obvious that this was the intention. It required timing–you couldn’t just break a smash a beaker every two minutes, it would be obvious. You couldn’t smash too many things or it would become apparent that you were destroying things that other people were trying to use to better themselves on purpose. Too few…well, what’s the point? The men who put together the Wall of Sound were clearly playing this game.

“So, how many speakers do we need?

“400,000. Plus, they must be the most expensive, heaviest speakers ever built. If they are not heavy enough, we will fill them with concrete. It must be such that it requires more man-hours to prepare to rock Cleveland than it did to conquer Poland.”

“So, 400,000 speakers, then?

“Well, if we’re being precise: 800,000. Because it’s so ass-kickingly heavy and complicated, we’re going to build two so we can play on one while the other’s being set up. In fact, we might very well build three and just set the third on fire for no reason whatsoever.”

“This sounds like a plan! What do you call this thing?”

“The Wall of Sound.”

“Brilliant! It’s not as if one of the defining characteristics of a wall is that it stays in one place no matter what. One question, though: will it be so electronically complex that keeping it running for more than an hour straight will defy the very laws of physics?”

“What do you think?”

My Second Sets Are Shorter Than Yours

January 22, 2012 / / 3 Comments

I’m not listening to space. Definitely not drums. Never. This part of the second set irritates me on a deeply personal level. When I download a show and throw it on the iTunes, the first thing that happens is drums/space gets jettisoned. This is how space sounds to me:

“Ooh, Garcia just went ‘blorp,’ so I’m gonna go “fleep.” For ten more minutes. Man, those people going to the bathroom are missing some good shit! Squizzle glop! Nah-nah-nah WANG! Ba-DOOM fwop fwop gTUNk”

The only reason people didn’t go to the bathroom during space is because they had just gone during drums.

We indulged these men, you and I did, by letting them fuck around for a good half-hour a night. We should have elected an audience captain to tell the band, firmly but politely, that this kind of nonsense must stop. No more MIDI-fueled Ornette Coleman-offs. Play something, anything. One of Bobby’s cowboy songs. One of Brent’s tunes. Fuck, man, play Wave to the Wind. Just stop doing whatever it is you think you’re doing.

And don’t think I’ve forgotten about you two in back. Here’s every single drum solo you two–or any other drummer ever anywhere–have ever played: whacka-whacka-whacka-whack. That’s it. It’s a drum: it only makes one goddamn sound. You do not need to make that sound over and over and over and over while Garcia is doing whatever he does in the bathroom for two hours AGAIN.

Mistah Garcia? He Dead, Suh

January 21, 2012 / / 0 Comments

You might ascribe a karmic tint to the fact that, by naming themselves the Grateful Dead, these men had brought about an inevitable and unenviable ability to defy the odds and die really early and predictably. Like the universe just did that to them.

Others might see their rock held belief that in order to jam on an E minor 7 for, like, 20 fucking minutes again (while Keith nods off and no one–not a single one of those hirsute bastards–can remember the lyrics to the song he’s been singing for 11 years) they must stuff every single drug they see anywhere at any time directly up their own asses. This was a poor long-term strategy.

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