Musings on the Most Ridiculous Band I Can't Stop Listening To
Mickey was doing well, coming off pretty cool, until his lack of current pop knowledge betrayed him and he asked, “And where would Lord Gaga be this evening?”
Bobby called him just to mock him the next day.
(Seriously, though: I’m not cool with the body language in this picture. It looks like Mickey’s meeting Kate Middleton or something. C’mon, Mickey: she went to Art School.)
Play ALL the drums!
Seriously, Mickey: Billy handled his shit with, like, a tambourine and a cardboard box. Last time that many drums were in one place was April 20th on the Quad at Swarthmore College.
An interesting lesson for all of us in lighting and composition and the like: under favorable conditions, Billy can be the handsome elder statesman we all profess publicly to wishing that he were.
Secretly, however, most of us are happy Uncle Billy’s still the craziest, sweatiest fuck south of a polar bear’s dick.
If you twerk in front of Mickey, he will hit you with a cattle’s skull. Fair warning.
PLUS Hey, look: Mickey’s wearing a Dead shirt. Shocker.
Phil Tesh – John’s brother, stays in the guest place out back. Watches the kids, takes care of the house when we’re gone. Good guy, glad to have him around, good guy when he’s not drinking. 4 months, knock wood: we’re proud of him. Oh, damn, is it 3 o’clock already? I have to get Simon to soccer practice. Nice talking to you. Wait: who are you? How did you get in my backyard? JOHN! COME HERE! COME HERE AND PROTECT YOUR LAND, JOHN TESH!
Donna Bean – Cousin to the lima, pinto, refried, Mexican jumping, and the Funky Winker.
Drums/Spade – That time in 79 when, after the drum solo, Phil, et al, sat at a card table Parrish had set up and played Spades for a good 35 minutes, which is impressive when you realize that Bobby didn’t know the rules, Brent was losing on purpose to get people to like him, and Garcia had snuck back into his dressing room two or three hands into the session.
Winterhand – The nickname of the groupie with poor circulation who liked giving tuggers.
Sex Luthor – All of his elaborate plans involve Superman’s butt, and doing weird stuff to it. Supes has had it up to fucking here, man.
Wall of Hound – One time, Billy got high as fuck and piled three or four dogs on top of each other and made people come and look, repeating the joke all afternoon, and then he got bored and punched one of the dogs in the dick, and I’m gonna tell you something about dogs: they have no concept of the proper deference due to a rock star, so no matter what band you’re in, if you punch a dog in his dick, he’s going to completely lose his shit on you, plus the other dogs were mildly annoyed with Billy anyway, so they joined in and all of them chased Billy around for an hour or so; he was bitten repeatedly, and let’s face it: he simply could not have deserved it more.
Knob Weir – What Bobby calls his dick sometimes.
Cob Weir – What he calls it other times.
Throb Weir – Bobby also calls his penis this.
Mickey Fart
I’m as stymied as you on this one. Sure, Phil’s signature is a bit cramped and inward-directed, but the measurement is a weird thing. Did someone need to know who in the Dead had the biggest signature?
Billy’s signature was displayed at a picnic, no matter how many times he promised he wasn’t going to do that shit anymore.
Mickey’s was nice and plump, but curved to the right.
Keith’s signature was too big, actually: it never quite got hard, instead taking on the consistency of a Nerf football left on the lawn through the storm.
Mickey’s new album Superorganism is based around sticking Mickey’s head in an EEG machine and taking inspiration or samples or perhaps just, you know, the general vibe (I have, as usual, done no research) from the rhythm of his brain waves.
Bobby tried this years ago, but after John Cage threatened a lawsuit, the album was shelved.
Sorry, gang.
Here’s a weirdo show for a weirdo day: the Rambler Room on 11/17/78. I can barely figure this one out, and the internet is no help: some folks say this was a Bob Weir Band show, but the Dead are on tour (they play great shows at the Uptown Theater the nights before and after this.) Bobby wouldn’t have a solo tour co-booked with the Dead, so they probably just called themselves “The Bob Weir Band” because promoters get cranky when you play a surprise show in the same city where they’ve engaged you for the weekend.
Was this a favor? Was Bobby trying to get laid? He was Bobby, for fuck’s sake: surely this was too much effort, even for a college girl–he was a rock star, after all, and there were so many young women who wanted to sleep with rock stars that a special name had to be thought up for them.
Billy’s not there, but that doesn’t really matter: Acoustic Dead was always only Garcia and Bobby and Phil standing in the back with the treble on his bass turned all the way down.
It’s a fun show: Garcia sings Knockin’ On Heaven’s Door, even imploring the small, but friendly, crowd to sing along. Great high harmonies from Bobby, who acquits himself with his slide when not permitted by the design of the guitar to place the thing all the way up the neck to make screechy noises.
It’s a homey show: you know they sent Parrish to steal the stools from the student union cafe ten minutes before the set.
PLUS a great Big Boy Pete, complete with goofy back-and-forth between Bobby and Garcia and you can hear the smiles on their faces.
Getting close to closing the book on the whole Dead/Phish thing, but I will tell you this: the GD tried that trampoline thing once. Mickey bounced twice, picked the tramp up, beat the shit out of a roadie with the thing, walked out of rehearsal, and no one mentioned it ever again.
Mickey doesn’t do trampolines.
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