Musings on the Most Ridiculous Band I Can't Stop Listening To
In this photo, we see Mickey and Phil doing their version of the classic comedy routine “Dave’s not here,” except Phil always lets “Dave” in the door after the first knock and offers him some coffee and a cookie. It’s not funny, but it really speaks to Phil’s hospitality.
Also, I’ve figured out why Mickey wears those sweatbands all the time: stigmata.
Hey, Ramrod: who’s the new guy in charge of stacking things on top of one another?
“Oh, that’s Precarious Lee. Great fellow. Not super-awesome with engineering principles or even basic spatial relationships. Also, he smells like a slaughterhouse’s asshole. But an optimist, and well-read.”
Well, can’t we give him another job, man? He’s gonna kill somebody.
“Oh, people have already died: you were in the bathroom.”
And we have no way of setting these monitors other than strapping their naked, unpainted husks to random road cases in the most unaesthetic fashion possible?
“Oh, there’s am almost infinite variety of ways, but every one of them would take more time and energy. We chose to do the bare minimum and had to be physically threatened and bribed with cocaine to do even that, if I’m honest.”
And Keith’s piano has a heat shield on it because…?
“Are you aware of what re-entry temperatures are?”
We’re done here.
When they got bored and loopy on cognac and Twinkies, the road crew would play Jenga with the equipment.
The Grateful Dead dealt with Daylight Saving Time in an idiosyncratic and varied fashion. Mickey, for example, once hauled off and decked a distressingly old man, turned to the others in the outing (they were on a trip to the bowling alley) and said “Guess that grandfather got clocked,” and then he put on his sunglasses and strode off purposefully. He came back right away, though, because it was his turn and Mickey was real competitive about bowling.
Phil took it seriously. He declared himself DST Marshall and put out a series of pamphlets about the “chronometric rejiggeration.” (That was what Phil called it and everyone made the cheap and racist joke that I won’t repeat here.) He changed the clocks at Front Street assiduously, and when Phil had a family of his own, he instituted a strict policy of drills that everybody had to do–even the dog– and no one is happier than Jill that most everything just updates the time on its own now.
The pilot was a big Deadhead, so when Mickey asked if he could fly the plane for a little while, the captain thought, “What could go wrong,” and the plane crashed and everyone died and the summer tour was cancelled.
Phil welded together three or four regular-sized pairs of sunglasses to get those things.
Mickey, who is wearing a Grateful Dead shirt, bonked his head on the light fixture behind him and flew into a rage, attacking all the sconces, crown moulding, and especially the wainscoting in the room. The wood paneling didn’t stand a chance.
Bobby played the “whose elbow gets to be on top” game with Mickey for a moment, then let him win out of fear that Mickey would fly into a rage and attack the non-load-bearing features of the room.
Holy shit, Garcia invented The Shocker, didn’t he?
“Hi, there! My name’s Mrs. Donna Jean and I want to be your next state senator. I believe in deporting the unborn, creating terrorism for the middle-class, and ruthlessly hunting down all the Cat People of Felicidae IV, Throneworld to the Felis Empire, currently infiltrating our government, media, and jam bands. Thank you, and get out the vote!”
Billy’s expression, plus the fact that he is–no joke–being restrained by two men, is news of the poorest sort for the photographer. What has he done to arouse Billy’s ire? Been in the wrong place at the wrong time? (With Billy, the “wrong place” is in front of him, and the “wrong time” is when he is conscious.*)
Keith’s dead.
*It should be noted–for safety’s sake at the least–that Billy has punched dick in states of awareness that were other than fully conscious such as, but not limited to: sleepwalking, napwalking, blackout drunk, blackout…maybe cattle tranquilizer?, infected with the mindworms of Ceti Alpha VI, turned into a zombie slave via arcane Houdon means, deep hypnosis, activation of his sleeper personality, rabies, enslaved by love, made the earthbound host of Abbadon the Unforgiving.
There are three Grateful Deads in this picture. (There is one more Grateful Dead concealed behind a Phish: Billy, whose head you can barely see cresting over Mike Gordon’s head and whose hand you cannot see grabbing onto Nancy Pelosi’s ass.)
Mickey, as always, is prepared for a drum circle to break out at any moment. Later on, he will tell the Senator that he picked out the patriotic sweatband in her honor. Enthusiasts will recognize this as a blatant lie, as Mickey has been wearing that thing since, like, 1970.
Bruce, also as always, looks like a Founding Father. The man is so white he gets the Sunday Edition of the New York Times every day. Bruce is also not that tall: he is standing on a busboy named Carl. Luckily for all involved, getting stood upon by keyboardists is Carl’s fetish; everybody wins.
Bobby’s shitfaced.
“Pew! Pew!”
Upon being introduced to Garcia, the birthday candles flared up and lit ablaze the shirt of the woman holding the cake, which was not the worst thing in the world, to be honest.
OR
Mickey wished for $600,000 to finish his record Out of Towner, in which he seduces Mormon dudes into doing gay stuff–really gay stuff, stuff straight people won’t hear about for at least 18 months–and then records the sound of their confused weeping afterwards. There are also timbales.
OR
The cake is from Carvel and is called Junkie Puss.
OR
Garcia isn’t actually a stupefied and filthy mess, no: he is workshopping his new improv character, The Grumph.
OR
They jammed Happy Birthday for 15 minutes and Bobby forgot all the words even though there are only six.
OR
You could say anything–quite simply anything–to Garcia at this moment and he would counter with, “Right, man, sure” and scurry back to his dressing room.
OR
It’s tough to see, but the cake is an erotic one depicting a man having sex with a cartoon turkey, which you wouldn’t think would be erotic, but totally is due to the artists at the bakery, Doughy Pete’s. The shop advertises itself as “making cakes you could actually jerk off to” and they’re not lying: security guards have to chase middle-schoolers from the sidewalk out front or else the little pervs start gawking and they get ahold of themselves and you just can’t have that going on on Main Street.
OR
“Cake!”
The expressional dichotomy in this photo is jarring: it’s boggling that one species can produce such dissimilar mindsets.
This isn’t like the difference between “amused” and “enraged,” no: it’s like the gap between “mildly interested” and “about to rain,” which is a common feeling among the sentient Cloud Monsters of Flooof, the gas giant moon that orbits Shmordo, The Living Planet, whom people have stopped visiting because he’s into CrossFit now and won’t fucking stop talking about it.
“Dude, do you know how much weight I’ve lost? Guess?”
“I have no idea.”
“Well, honestly, me either: I’m a planet. How would I even weigh myself? I don’t even think that’s a thing.”
“Listen, I gotta go.”
“But just look how tight my equator is!”
Mrs. Donna Jean is, in almost every way, standing behind her man. She was a traditional Southern woman, so she was loyal to Keith, no matter how many luggage carts she threw at him or Bobbies she humped.
In an interview a long time ago, Mrs. Donna Jean refers to Keith’s first six months or so in the band, when she sang nothing at all, and the rest of ’72, when she cameo for her little part in Playin’ as being in large part her choice. She had wanted Keith to have–and this is the phrase that stuck with me–his “pride of place” in the band.
Weird little phrase: Southern, deeply so. But poor, too. It refers to the spot in the home where the most cherished family item goes. You never see it in rich folk’s homes; you never don’t see it in poor. It’s where the eye stops naturally upon entering the house: the mantle, the living room wall, over the bed. Sometimes, it’s remains, a diploma, a Bible.
Pride of place. When what you have to offer is respect, then the respect is more highly valued. All of us have our currency in this wicked world.
Keith is trying not to puke.
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