Last time, Garcia: put that goddamn reminder of human fragility away.
PLUS: Contrary to a previous post, if you check Mickey’s collar, you will see that he is indeed participating in Flannel Friday!
Also: Joan Baez sucks.
Musings on the Most Ridiculous Band I Can't Stop Listening To
The Dead experimented with many formats before settling on the Two-Set Solution that finally brough peace to the long-embattled region. Some of them were good ideas, and others the drummers came up with, but since Lost Live Dead refuses to return my phone calls and texts and frowns upon my climbing into his window, I’ll have to illuminate these dark corners of Dead history:
The “All-At-Once” Approach was Phil’s idea, and it wasn’t really his idea so much as it was Charles Ives’ idea, and it was completely awful. Ned Lagin loved it, which should tell you something.
Backwards Day was a spiritual cousin to Opposite Day, I suppose, but instead of just turning their guitars around, the Boys (and Mrs. Donna Jean) turned the whole show around, opening with U.S. Blues, doing the drum solo in the first set, then closing with Promised Land or Bertha, and then just standing there smoking for a while. It was, as you would presume, anti-climactic.
Inside-Out Day might also be considered a spiritual cousin to something, but it was just weird. The band would jam backstage for an hour, then take the stage and smoke, get high, get beejers, get more high, check their gambling losses, poo, and yell at the road crew. Then they would return to their dressing rooms and jam for two hours. This approach angered people.
Karaoke Night with the Dead was a poor attempt to ride a 90’s trend, as was Macarena Night with the Dead. In the former, lucky audience members were allowed to sing with the group until they wandered too close to Garcia and Parish punched them in the head. The latter was exactly what it sounds like and I’m not gonna lie: it caused a suicide or two.
The Wheel of Rock and Roll Fortune is an idea recently dusted off by Elvis Costello, a longtime Deadhead, wherein a large wheel of chance with various song titles is spun and Fata Morgana herself chooses the set list. Except Bear built the Dead’s and he was, you know: utterly mad, so it ran on lukewarm nuclear fusion and the first time it was spun, it generated an EMP burst that took out half of Palo Alto. Also, the Wheel of Fortune, like most things around the Dead, quickly gained sentience and it and the Wall of Sound fucking hated one another.
The Dead in the Round only happened once, and for god reason: Bobby got immediately and violently unwell upon taking the rotating stage. It wasn’t moving that fast, but all those people who got drenched don’t care about details. They got Bobby-juice on ’em.
Garcia was not usually a jealous man: he always had nice things, or no things, to say about his rivals and contemporaries. He was not vain, nor did he generally covet others’ women.
But he always wanted straight hair. How he envied Mrs. Donna Jean’s rapunzelian locks, geometry-class straight and swaying in time with her white-girl easy skank. To and fro it went; Garcia’s big bush just sat there. It would wiggle a little. Vibrate along with speakers.
It was coarse and low-class hair, Garcia cried at night. Dammit, it was Dollar Store hair, two-week extension on the utility bills hair! His hair had no privilege: it had clawed and scraped its way up the dark and bloody streets of the Tenderloin, down the hungry back alleys of the Wharf. His hair could never be presented to society.
Someone called Garcia’s hair “nappy” once, and Garcia hit him, meaning Garcia had Parish hit him.
Sometimes late at night in a hotel room still smoldering, Garcia would tie a white towel around his head and fend off imaginary suitors for his blonde charms.
No. It wasn’t the Gr8ful Ded. Garcia didn’t spell things wrong on purpose, and he certainly wouldn’t do that Prince thing with the numbers for “to” or “for.”
He also wouldn’t wear his hat at that angle: far past rakish, that tilt says its wearer is headed down to the mall to try out the new racial slur he learned from his father. Garcia wasn’t a hat guy in general, and I hardly think the waffled-quilted baseball cap is gonna be his chapeau of choice.
Also: Built 12 Last? Because if “2” can mean “to,” then the lightning bolt can be a “one.” Anything can mean anything, apparently. Letters=numbers. Fuck, let’s just have some hieroglyphics up in this piece.
Huh?
I was being “street.”
Go inside.
The Grateful Dead and Groovy Show was commissioned in 1975 about the Dead by popular makers of poorly-drawn cartoons, Hanna-Barbera.
In it,the Dead traveled around the country solving crimes with Groovy, their pet dog who could speak. It was never explained whether all dogs could speak in this universe or whether just one dog, and they happened to have it, and instead of making billions of dollars pimping out this super-dog, these fuckheads were washing their underwear in sinks because they lived in a van and played Hardy Boys.
Each of the Dead had superpowers that they displayed on occasion: Phil had super-hearing; Bobby was super-handsome; and Garcia had an alter ego, Captain Trips, whom he would hide in the bathroom and turn into except he never came out of the bathroom and now it smells funny.
The show was never aired.
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