Musings on the Most Ridiculous Band I Can't Stop Listening To
The latest exhibition at MoMTDA (Mom: taDAA!) is Just The Facts, Ma’am, a collection of art that fails to get easily-researched details right.
In this stand-out lent to the museum by a Twitter friend, we see Garcia with his guitar from ’77, his jacket from ’75, his hair and muttonchops from ’68, and an audience from ’67. He is also bearing a braid in his hair that seems like it will be ritually cut off at either the end of his training or should he humiliate himself in the Trials.
“Swiggity swoobie, Phil’s coming for that doobie!”
Back then, you could just sit on the crates and no one got hurt. (Soon after this photo was taken, the crates collapsed and everyone got hurt.)
…the man was part koala.
A rarely-visited wing of the MoMTDA houses Don’t Tell Me This Town Don’t Have No Art, a show comprising Dead murals, inspirational posters, banners painted for sick children, etc. The sentiment behind the art obviates any criticism on any level, aesthetic included. Making fun of stuff like this is like being the guy who points out how much more efficiently the money invested in the whole Batkid thing could have been spent: you’re right, but also, shut the fuck up.
When Phil started throwing his imaginary giant penis at the photographer and Garcia began loudly demanding “special, grown-up hugs,” the photo shoot was over.
One time at a pool party, Garcia and Bobby were drinking mai-tais and thinking about doing some titty-fucking when they saw Hunter talking to John Perry Barlow by the grill. John Perry Barlow was in control of the fire; he had also brought the meat, which he had killed with a rifle made out of liberty and butchered with a knife made from freedom. Hunter wanted a burger and a frank because he had been eating healthy and he deserved a treat.
“Mine can beat yours,” Bobby said
And that was probably true, mostly because John Perry Barlow is a big farm dude. And because he was waving his pistols around to emphasize a point he was making at the time, but to John Perry Barlow’s credit, he had only fired the guns two or three times, which he would argue was “the absolute fewest times I could have discharged my weapons at a pool party with children present.”
Garcia mulled it over.
“How would we even…,” Garcia said. “Would we poke them with sticks?”
“Well, that’s how we race the groupies. So: yeah, sure.”
Except Hunter heard and got insulted, so he moved somewhere they speak the wrong language and didn’t call anyone for seven years.
Among the paintings at the MoMTDA (pronounced: Mom: taDAA! like you just did a trick) is this chalk-on-flat-thing entitled “Flowerbeard: the least intimidating pirate.”
It is housed in the show called Flores Para Los Muertos or “Again with the Roses?” This curation of the seemingly innumerable pieces of art (Dead, terrible) that have, like, Phil getting eaten by a venus flytrap, or Bobby in a bush, but mostly Garcia and a bunch of roses runs until June in the Main Hall.
The Museum of Modern Terrible Dead Art was founded in 1976 and moved into its current facility in ’89. The iconic building was designed by someone the band thought was I.M. Pei, though the guy’s lack of math skills, insistence on being paid in cash, and the fact that he was clearly a Puerto Rican woman should have tipped them off to the ruse. That building was sketched to occupy eight dimensions at once, but didn’t meet code in any of them.
The band then brought the famed Frank Gehry to create the space, but while they’re utter nincompoops with money and a good caper, they always did have, you know: fucking aesthetic taste, so they recognized Gehry as a faddish hack whose buildings were ugly and instantly dated and empty of heart and basement and why do they all have to be so damn shiny and, like, 20 seconds into the first presentation, Billy punched him, not just in his dick, but in his load-bearing dick, and that’s structural damage there.
At this point in the process, things broke down even further, as it was learned inadvertently that Brent had–at some point–been turned into a Jason Bourne/River Tam type super-badass and his operating code was the word “Guggenheim,” which obviously came up a whole bunch, especially after Bobby heard it and had a giggle fit. So, every time Bobby would say Guggenheim, Brent would take off full-tilt boogie for the nearest food court and start cracking skulls and then get a hot pretzel. It was the opposite of helpful.
The plans changed to housing the collection in an old warehouse off the 101 near Sausalito and things ran smoothly once the band was left out of the decision-making process.
Hey guys. Where’s your facepaint and fireworks and stage moves?
“We don’t need that shit.”
“Bobby’s wearing a little eyeliner.”
“SHUT UP, GARCIA!”
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