Thoughts On The Dead

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

Tag: grateful (Page 1 of 4)

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.

Random Thoughts On The Dead

July 11, 2012 / / 4 Comments

The Timi’i people have only five words for colors, which seems odd until you realize that they live in a triple canopied rainforest and the colors are Green, Really Green, Thing That’s About To Kill Me, Sun’s In My Eyes, and Night.

In Phil’s secret language of dreams, his word for “roadie” is the same as his word meaning “one about to be chastised.”

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I sometimes need to hear five or six versions of the same song in a row. Part of that last sentence was a lie: I sometimes need to hear Mississippi Half-Step  five or six versions in a row.

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Bobby was never more than two or three feet away from the note he intended to sing. Sometimes, this was an exciting musical choice–listen to Sugar Magnolia. Sometimes. Garcia’s voice was too fragile and sweet for the rockers, but it was in tune far more often than Bobby’s. Phil’s voice had a weird barbershop quartet thing to it, plus Phil’s larynx had not been informed of the fact that Phil had perfect pitch. At shows in the ’80’s, Enthusiasts hoisted signs reading Let Phil Sing. Note that these signs did not say Let Phil Continue to Sing: it was clearly seen as a one-time thing.

Pig wasn’t so much good at singing notes as he was at singing songs.

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I’ll give the Dead this: they wouldn’t have put up with that My Little Pony shit at all.

The Dead did not subvert gender roles: they rejected your post-modernity and replaced it with a system that encouraged calling your wife “your old lady,” out loud and in public and getting away with it, which if you think about it, is a pretty good trick the guys played on their old ladies.

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Could it be a coincidence that Roe v. Wade occurred in 1973? Is it chance that the landmark reproductive rights decision took place the VERY SAME YEAR that the Dead was just, y’know, killin’ it?

Starts And Stops

July 7, 2012 / / 0 Comments

The Dead could end songs. And by that I mean they had the requisite musical knowledge to properly end a tune, not that they knew when to do it. Also, rock songs only end one of two ways: sudden stop or big loud noise.

Starting songs was a little more difficult. That first riff, the one that most bands labor over to get your attention immediately, that says that this band is a professional band made up of professional people? The Dead weren’t good at that. They figured they had at least four or five bars to get the tempo together, and eight to ten bars for the key. They had, however, all been playing the same song at the same time since the “someone just walk over and tell Keith what we’re playing” policy was implemented.

For good or for ill, the songs were precisely as long as they wanted to be (which means, until Billy got bored). The tempos wandered all over the place, from the glacial ’72 Sing Me Back Home to the skittering, out-of-control ’85. ’85 was like the first ten minutes after you slam crystal, right? And you’re just like UHHHHHHH and then you’re like YEEEEEESSHfuck and–

I’m gonna step in here turn down his volume just a touch and say to everyone out there that Thoughts on the Dead supports living clean, waking up early, and smoothies of all sort.  Under no circumstances should any of you shoot crystal meth. Let’s check back in. 

–and your cock’s like–

Oh, for Christ’s…

Fire Up A Colortini

June 28, 2012 / / 1 Comment

[youtube http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uwZIUSfGo40&w=420&h=315]

Two of my favorite dead guys. I used to watch Tom Snyder religiously, especially when Robert Blake came on. He was on that show frequently, if I recall, crazy as a shithouse rat each time. Tom would also have the TV writer David Milch on a lot. Milch had some sort of neck thing where his head would just loll to the side and then Snyder’s eyebrows would start to do some outlandish bullshit; it was some great TV.

Watch the pictures of the Boys as they fly through the air. They’re their usual charming selves. (Seriously, they–mostly Garcia–bitched about being on TV, but were suspiciously good at it.)

And then go listen to Dick’s Picks 13, with the He’s Gone for Bobby Sands, because that’s what they’re referring to when they say last night was “good”.

Drum And Drummer

June 26, 2012 / / 0 Comments

Listen to the drummers–the two of them back there–from a perfectly recorded show when they HAD IT: when they do those long fills down every tom-tom they own and the beat starts all the way on the left and just whips around your skull at 90 mph, that’s just the best thing in the world, isn’t it? Those duk-a-duhs and when they got those rolling, the band sounds as if someone rolled a Medieval army down a cliff and recorded the clangor. (Bear did that once in 1971, to test out the specs on a new harmonica mike he was thinking about using if and when Slim Harpo showed up. Bear was nothing if not thorough.)

I’ve posted this show before, but it deserves a revival: 5/13/77 at the Auditorium Theatre in Chicago, Illinois. Chicago! Badger City, Home of Shufflin’ George, those brusque but lovable Chicagoniacs! (I an not a geography buff and I made that clear when I applied for this job.)

Just keep typing, buddy.

The two of them are just monsters on this crisply recorded show and, quite frankly, it is best for the world that these two took up drumming. If Billy and Mickey ever got in a competition to see who could start the most fights, World War III would ensue within days. These coked-up conga hobbits were possessed of a rage that, were it e’er loosed, could bring us the brink of doom.

An intern* once suggested that perhaps the strategy of shooting speed into one’s eyeball while being shuttled between Des Moines, IA, and Normal, Il, like a piece of hairy luggage in some way exacerbated certain tendencies and then Billy burst into the room drunk and naked and accidentally shot the kid in the face, like 8 or maybe 9 times. Billy didn’t even know what the kid was talking about, it was just, you know, “time to kil the intern.” Like it is every full moon.

*The Dead had interns: college kids from UCSC, Hal Kant’s niece, at least three baby-faced drifters, S.E. Cupp, and Planchette. Don’t mention Planchette around the guys: his skill set was almost entirely concentrated in the field of looming ominously. Planchette was good at finding out addresses and he always dressed in very dark green, with nothing shiny or jingly on him. You know how in the vast majority of pictures of Keith, he looks like he just saw a ghost? Planchette. They should have gotten rid of him years before the incident, but he was the only one who ever got the coffee order right consistently.Don’t mention Planchette.

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