The lighting makes it look like Garcia is naked from the waist down, or as my grandpa used to call it, Porky Pigging it.
Musings on the Most Ridiculous Band I Can't Stop Listening To
Tag: mickey hart (Page 63 of 71)
Phil apologized for trying to eat the that tour groups’ livers, so they let him come out from behind the drums and sing.
Of note: Billy’s shirt, Garcia’s face, a shopping bag for some reason (though, in a strictly photographic sense, the bag helps the shot out).
Also notice Mickey and Billy’s snare drums, how they’re angled away from them. This was the jazz style and how nearly everyone who strapped into a trap set did it for a half-century.
And, Phil is standing in the back because he was bad.
I make fun of Phil a lot and he makes it easy, quite frankly, but some of his choices earn my undying respect.
For example: Phil knows we don’t want to see his feet and shods himself accordingly.
The first day of October, in that champion year of 1977. Portland, Oregon, which is tied with Portland, Maine, and That Town That Smells Like A Clown’s Asshole, Iowa, for the title of America’s least creative town names.
The next night, and its Casey Jones opener that bursts with an almost-fascistic energy (the song COMMANDS that you boogie and it has also fused government and industry into one monolithic entity fronted by a cult of personality), is better known, but the night before is spectacular.
The setlist is remarkably ’77. It’s as ’77 as you can get without folding the year into a Riemann Manifold and turning the Universe into a small kitten or an enormous kitten or any sort of kitten.
This show is in the details. Check out the Eyes>Dancin transition as Mickey defines “most cowbell.”
Those balloons? They ain’t full of air.
It’s better to simply avoid nitrous oxide, instead of the more common relationship people have with the gas, which is to enjoy it immensely until, one afternoon, they enjoy it slightly too immensely and get a dick-hair away from stroking out and never do it again. Everyone with a certain level of drug-fondness who has made it to a certain age has had that one bad time; nitrous is Latin for ‘tequila’.
A lot of the time, Billy went along with Mickey’s latest percussive obsession, but occasionally he just wanted to play his fucking drums and punch some fucking dicks: Billy liked the simple things.
I don’t know if any of you have known any drummers but this shit right here is why every band that has ever existed (except for our protagonists and one other) doesn’t let the drummer vote. If you don’t keep a sharp eye on percussionists, the amount of timbales, congas, and other hollowed out fruit/skull/animal skin combinations in your life will multiply like Tribbles on Molly.
And, obviously, the other drummer allowed a vote is Neil Peart. Which has–INEXORABLY–led to this:
Drummers cannot be reasoned with. They exist solely to play when you don’t want them to, disappear when you need them, collect noisy things, and have too much sex. They understand only the lash, and in most cases, request the lash, please and thank you.
IF YOU SEE A DRUMMER: Do not under any circumstances let him or her name the drum solo. Once a drum solo gets a name, it immediately accesses the Dungeon Dimensions and becomes NIGH-UPON UNSTOPPABLE and goes for thirty fucking minutes and it’s unbearable.
The Drummer (if male) will almost certainly remove his shirt. Do not be alarmed: DRUMMERS HATE SHIRTS. Almost as much as they hate books, but let’s be reasonable: no one hates anything as much as a drummer hates a book. If you see a drummer reading, just run. Something awful is happening.
“Garcia! Garcia!” GARCIA!”
“What is it, Bobby?”
“They look like boobies.”
…
“Yeah, Bob: they look like boobies.”
One of my college roommates was a costume designer; the house was always full of swatches and random trousers that were in fashion as recently as the Interregnum. She had a theory (college is the time when you get all your good theories together) that fashion was the Secret History of the world, which I though was silly.
The reason I thought that was silly is because it takes me a long time to realize when someone who is not me is right.
History is really big. It’s everything that has happened up until now, y’know? You need an entry point, somewhere to anchor the other end of the lever so that you can move the world.
The Dead works, too. The history of the Dead is the history of Post-War America. Is the history of show biz. Is the history of the counter-culture, the drug-culture.
Woodstock? They were there. The Acid Tests? They were the house band. Watergate? Billy was part of the burglary crew; he and G. Gordon Liddy had this routine where Billy would punch G. in the dick and G. would appear not to feel it at all.
Hell, they were even letting hippies on TV back then, albeit the friendly, Sunday School hippies that advocated working within the system and obeisance to tradition.
Sunshine Daydream, the great lost movie from three days ago, forty-one years past might have been the most lasting scrap from that world gone down, but it certainly wasn’t the most seen at the time.
[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NKdknYaSHgE]
Mama Cass seemed like a lovely woman, so I won’t make the requisite sandwich-related joke. Also, Mickey hit that numerous times.
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