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

Tag: jerry garcia (Page 47 of 139)

Dammit, I Forgot The Rosicrucians

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AunQSK4DaNQ

“Freeman, it’s a well-known fact that all of the Grateful Dead was in the CIA.”

“Texe, I know I keep asking, but are you positive that’s your name? Seems like a typo.”

“That’s what they want you to think.”

“Ah. Yes. I see it now.”

“Circles within circles, Freeman. Getting back to the Dead–”

“I followed them for years.”

“Is that right?”

“Well, my hair did. My ponytail gave Bobby’s ponytail a tugger in ’86.”

“Was it under some kind of mental control, possibly by HAARP technology?”

“No. Bobby’s ponytail asked. Said please, so my ponytail dipped its hand in the humus and got to work.”

“Great story.”

“My ponytail wrote and performed a one-ponytail show about it. Good reviews.”

“Getting back to the Dead: as I said, it is known that they were CIA members.”

“Aw, Texe, that ain’t the half of it: CIA, NSA, PBS. You know that show The Americans? About the Soviet spies in America With the girl who cut off her hair?”

“Keri Strug.”

“Yeah, her. Anyway: that show was based on the Godchauxes.”

“I did not know that, Freeman. The world holds so many mysteries; maybe that’s why it’s hollow.”

“Communist spies working directly under the KGB. They were raised in one of those secret Soviet town where everyone spoke English and trained to go undercover.

“This explains the lack of childhood photos of Keith.”

“Right. And it has been revealed on many internet sites and once in an actual book that Phil was an alien.”

“Still is.”

“Well, yeah.”

“Once and alien, always an alien.”

“Was he a lizard or a grey?”

“Neither. Cat Person from Felicidae IV, Throneworld to the Felis Empire.”

“Right. Also CIA, though.”

“Texe, to say Phil Lesh was a CIA agent and a bored, galaxy-hopping, shape-shifting alien is just scratching the surface. All the evidence points to Mr. Lesh being a high-ranking member of at least seven global conspiracies.”

“Illuminati?”

“Obviously. Plus: the Philluminati.”

“How many people were in that, Freeman?”

“Just Phil. It was a very secret society.”

“Wow. What about the Knights Templar? How do they fit into this?”

“The entire band were Knights Templar, but they couldn’t be trusted with the swords.”

“I could see that. How much devil worship was there?”

“What you’d expect. Not too much. Not excessive.”

“Freeman, all our global masters like to leave clues out in public like they’re the Riddler.”

“I have noticed that about conspiracies, yeah.”

“How has the Dead advertised their affiliation with their various secret societies?”

“Texe, when you finally realize you’re living in a clockwork world managed by aliens, Jews, re-animated Hitler, and super-intelligences from eight trimensions over, you start to see signs everywhere.”

“I’ll bet.”

“The Dead advertise their occultism and connections to otherworldly power in many ways. For example, the Steal Your Face logo reveals their thrall to the Babylonian god of mischief Enki.”

“Thrall, Freeman?”

“Thrall, Texe. In return for their loyalty and Jerry Garcia’s finger, Enki granted them special abilities and watched over them and gave them lesser demons to use as the road crew.”

“How does the logo figure into it?”

“Enki thought it was cool.”

“Fascinating. Let’s get back to our original point: the CIA. How involved were the Grateful Dead and the CIA?”

“For six months in the 80’s, Bill Kreutzmann was the interim deputy-director of the CIA.”

“That high up?”

“That we know of, Texe.”

“Wow.”

“Are you sure–”

“It’s my name, man.”

“–that’s your name? Okay, okay.”

“Leave it alone.”

“Sure.”

(With thanks to the well-educated and dignified Chris Jennings for the video. His award-winning book can be purchased from the sidebar. Go do so.)

Jerry Garcia: Jew

Signs That Garcia Was, In Fact, Jewish:

  • Big bushy beard like a rabbi.
  • Sang for a living like a cantor.
  • Though I have no evidence to back this claim up, I am certain that Garcia preferred his French toast made with challah bread.
  • Jews are the Chosen People; Garcia enjoyed choosing things.
  • Garcia went to many Dead shows, which is a very Jewish thing to do.
  • Engaged in dialogue and made peace with Egypt.
  • Not a button nose.
  • Nor particularly athletic.
  • Could understand Bill Graham’s Yiddish instantly, like Harry Potter speaking the snake language.
  • (The snake language was called Parseltongue. I did not have to look it up, and I didn’t say it at first out of shame for knowing it. Stop looking at me that way.)
  • Sometimes in the middle of the night, Garcia would sit bolt upright in the chair he was already upright in and need a Dr. Brown’s cream soda.
  • Top two Garcia crushes: Kat Dennings and Lizzy Caplan.

Jerry Garcia: Not A Jew

In the Comment Section, Corry (whose new illuminations of the Dead’s secret history can be read over at Lost Live Dead) mentions the rumor/gossip/idle speculation that Garcia–who was raised Roman Catholic–was in fact Jewish.

This belief may be plausible, if a bit far-fetched and semantic.

It may shock to you to know this, but Jews occasionally wake up one morning and can’t be Jews anymore. Or they can be Jews, but over there. With this many data points, it can be said that sporadic but intense spasms of societal violence pointed at the Jews is not a bug in humanity, but a feature.

Spain in the 1400’s was  a terrible time to be a Jew, as opposed to the 1300’s, when it was just mostly shitty. First of all, due to the accent, you were Yewish, which just sounds ridiculous. Second, as I mentioned, you couldn’t be a Jew anymore. Many left, and the rest became conversos, which means exactly what it sounds like.

Problem solved, right? Of course not: these are humans we’re talking about. It turned out that even though a Jew might say he was a Christian, he was probably lying because, you know: Jew. Conversos were also known as marranos, except the latter term had a much nastier connotation: a marrano was a secret Jew, simply pretending to be a decent Christian.

As is the usual course of events, people were dragged from their homes and murdered in the streets by their neighbors.

Getting back to Garcia: it is alleged that he is the descendant of one of these conversos or marranos and therefore Jewish. This theory would need about a dozen running starts to approach dumb, for many reasons. I enumerate thusly:

  1. It was 500 years ago.

That’s it. There’s also the questions of identity, ethnicity vs. race vs. religion, “Who is a Jew?”, “Who’s not a Jew?”, “Who’s kind of a Jew?*), etc.

But mostly the 500 years ago thing.

 

*Italians. Italians are kinda Jews. Not the real Italians, the ones from Jersey.

Thoughts On Language, Math, Hitler, And Smurfette

Webster’s dictionary defines the word speech as “A prepared talk that should not begin with the words ‘Webster’s dictionary defines,'” and that’s good advice, even though it breaks a rather fundamental rule of set theory.

If the name of a fern plant were spelled “furn,” people wouldn’t take it seriously.

Due to the fluctuating membership of the band, if you were to turn the history of the Grateful Dead into a math equation, “Grateful Dead” would be a variable.

Smurfette. Rockette. Cigarette. They were originally made and marketed to women.

If you wrote out all of the cardinal numbers–one, two, three, etc.–then the first time “B” would appear is when teens approached you to see if you will buy them beers.

The movement known as counter-clockwise arose after clockwise began cracking down on political opponents and siphoning money out of the economy. Up and down are staying out of it.

Garcia had a teddy bear made in his image, but Billy did not. Though, if you’ve seen the movie Child’s Play, you know how it would’ve turned out.

As with so many other lists he tops, Hitler is the worst person to not have an opinion on. You’re not allowed to be on the fence on the Hitler question. Most people think Hitler was very bad. A few people think he was very good, and that is a sub-optimal opinion, but it’s still better than a “no comment.”

They should try doing plays in 3D.

Can’t Film Festival

I just can’t with you anymore.

It was a mashup.

Yeah.

Movie plus a band plus a book.

I understood it. The premise was understandable.

I was working with time-old tropes, but I feel I subverted them.

How so?

I made the stuffed guitarist hump the spaceship. Very subversive.

zhhWOMPF

SCHNIFT

FEEeeeeeump.

Thumpity thumpity thumpity PLORP

Did you just cut off your own head with a lightsaber, and then your head rolled down a flight off stairs onto a linoleum floor?

Yes.

Where’d you get a lightsaber?

Same place you got a time machine.

You really can find anything in Little Aleppo.

Fanciest Guitars On The Block

bobby jerry phil singing 78

1978 was a self-actualized year, as far as pictures go. Sometimes you’ll see a Baby Dead photo and think, “’69? ’70?” or one from the 90’s and not care, but when you see a picture from 1978, you say, “That picture is from 1978.” 1978 was more 1978 than, say, 1984 was 1984, if that makes any sense.

Also: this picture is Texas Hold ‘Em, but with Dead shirt-wearin’. Three cards up, and the drummers are down. There could potentially be three humans in the same band wearing the shirt of the band that they’re in. (I am not including the Godchauxes because they have never clicked the Donate Button.)

A question for the researchers: what is the greatest number of Grateful Deads Dead shirt-wearin’ at one show?

Issues to consider:

  1. Are we asking about raw numbers, or are we concerned with ratio? If every Grateful Dead wore a Dead shirt to a show in the summer of ’70, that would be fewer than most of the band donning stolen merch in ’77.
  2. What counts as a Dead shirt? Billy wore a shirt with a big Garcia face on it one time: does that count?
  3. Speaking of Garcia: does the black t-shirt count as a Dead shirt?

The answer to this question is within our grasps, Enthusiasts.

Hand Me My Old Guitar While It Gently Weeps

Portland, Oregon, is known for many things: its rare-cheese district, the Space Needle, and its indigenous Itruca people. (In accordance with the progressive politics Portland is known for, the Itruca and their culture is scrupulously protected, and they run around in loincloths shooting at monkeys with blowdarts. Several people have noted that you can either be indigenous to Oregon or you can shoot at monkeys with blowdarts, but not both; the people that pointed this out were all Twitter-shamed.)

The Rose City is also home to Mr. Completely, who passes along this piece of truly trivial trivia for the discerning Rock Nerd/Gear Fetishist: though the Dead and the Beatles* don’t have many connections, Garcia (briefly) shared a guitar with George Harrison (kinda).

Garcia and rosewood Telecaster 2

Garcia (surely at least half-drunk, since this is the Festival Express) stumbled onstage to jam with Delancy & Brewster (or maybe Daffodil & Booboo, I can’t bring myself to care) and was given the Telecaster he’s playing in the above picture.

Delacroix & Bingbong were some sort of folk-rock duo that George Harrison hooked up with after his wife broke up the Beatles. (That’s the true story: Yoko was a patsy.) Eric Clapton was also in their band for a minute, too, which makes you wonder if the combo was nothing but the least interesting members of British bands – a reverse supergroup. John Deacon on bass, I suppose.

The guitar–a 1968 rosewood Tele–has a rare pedigree: it was one of two custom-made by Fender (the other was for Jimi Hendrix) and was used at both the Let It Be sessions and the rooftop concert they ripped off from U2. Other than the exotic lumber, it seems to be a stock Tele.

Look:

[PDF] George Harrison's Fender

So here is the question: why was Garcia–the fussiest man alive about his equipment–playing a strange guitar? This was the Festival Express tour: he had his stuff with him, the sunburst Strat and whatever acoustic this is:

jerry acoustic festival express billy hat

Hey, Billy. Nice hat.

“Stay on target.”

Sure, right. SO: here’s my thesis. Garcia wanted to play the Beatle’s guitar. There’s no way he’s more than five feet away from his guitar; no matter how rushed the jam session, he could have grabbed it. Garcia knew that was George Harrison’s old guitar and wanted a crack at it.

Also to be remembered: that was a new guitar. ’68 was two years ago in this photo. Not a vintage guitar.

Also to be mulled over: the Grateful Dead was the least telecaster band there was. Factually and spiritually, the Dead were anti-telecaster. (Bobby has a couple now, and it just doesn’t look right.)

Also to amuse you: George’s 1968 rosewood telecaster was re-acquired by the Harrison family, and they shipped it to Fender, where it was taken apart and measured scientifically to be reproduced by the Fender Custom Shop for $13,500 a pop. They made one hundred. Family paid half-a-mil to get the sucker back. You can do math.

(A STERN WARNING: that last link is to a Rolling Stone article and those fuckers autoplay videos. If Trump promised to execute people who autoplay videos in their sites, I would vote for him. That’s my key issue.)

*I am expecting I shall be apprised of the Marin/Liverpool links in the Comment Section.

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