Thoughts On The Dead

Musings on the Most Ridiculous Band I Can't Stop Listening To

Tag: mickey (Page 1 of 5)

Fightin’ Words

August 11, 2015 / / 13 Comments

Image result for tony iommi 1970Hey, Tony Iommi.

“Hullo.”

You’re scary.

“This is me most frightful satin kimono. Dinna mean tae scare ya.”

Just a little.

“Well, ‘old yer ‘ead up, me son.”

You accent seems to be all over those rainy islands you people call home.

“I am being written by someone who has no idea what a Northern accent sounds like.”

That’ll do it. Anyway, Tony Iommi: you’ve most likely got an open schedule Why didn’t you get an audition for Dead & Company.”

“We’ve got such different styles of music. Also, and I don’t like to speak badly about anyone except Dio and Ozzy and Bill Ward and Geezer Butler and Ozzy’s wife and Meatloaf, but the Grateful Dead are…”

Yes?

“Well…”

Out with it?

“They are intimidated by my mustache.”

mickey mustaches young“WHAT THE FUCK DID YOU JUST SAY, IOMMI?”

pig scruffy porsche
“That scurvy dog start flapping his gums ’bout mustaches? We gots to show the man some American muscle!”

bpbby crazy official
“Bring that limey fuck to me. He kicked the puppy and now he gets the Weirwolf.

Tanned, Rested, And Ready

May 15, 2015 / / 0 Comments

bobby mickey schmuck
Hey, Bobby.

“Oh, hey.”

Nice watch.

“John Mayer bought it for me.”

Interesting. Not surprising, but interesting.

“I think he wants to be my Benjy Eisen.”

No. He wants to be your Garcia.

…

“That ain’t happening.”

Duh.

“Garcia was a lot of things, but he was never a douche. He could be a prick. Occasionally, he was a real turd. Sometimes, he was just an asshole, y’know? Never a douchebag, no.”

…

What’s Mickey doing back there?

“I’ll answer that question the same way I’ve been answering it for half-a-century: not a fucking clue, man.”

Haze, Craze And Dazed

November 9, 2013 / / 0 Comments

The guys hazed the new members a lot. Nobody got called a half-of-any-words, especially not that one, mostly because it wouldn’t have made any sense, even in the backstage’s loose handshake with reality. It would have been funny if one of them had called another one a–

Stop. No. Nothing’s funny about that word.

Which word?

If you just move on, I’ll do the Najinsky, for you, tonight.

…

Mickey shook Brent down for fifteen grand early in the third keyboardist’s tenure, and it was also for a trip to Vegas, but instead of carousing, Mickey planned to go to Caesar’s Palace and synchronize 64 slot machines’ cha-CHINGs together. He had some vague idea about chess and gambling and India, definitely India, but Brent didn’t have nearly enough money for India and the office had started locking up at night, so Vegas it was. Unfortunately, this sort of thing is against, like, 47 different state and federal laws, and Mickey hadn’t, you know, called ahead or anything, so when the large men came galloping around the corner, Mickey ran like fuck, but Brent got his long, luxurious beard caught in the slot machine handle and he got tackled like fuck. The album would never be released.

Billy punched Vince in the dick a whole bunch of times at first. But no more or less than he did later in Vince’s stint with the band: Vince was in Billy’s presence; Vince had a dick; Billy punched Vince in his dick.

Phil once drunkenly left a voice-mail full of ethnic slurs that didn’t quite fit for Keith, who never got it because he died in 1980. (Seriously, what the fuck is a Godchaux?)

Interns had to run The Gauntlet, and Billy was at the end of The Gauntlet, and Billy kind of was The Gauntlet? And also, there was an actual gauntlet that Billy wore that was just horrible. People came out changed, the ones that came out. Others learned to blossom in the shade, to worship the filth of the NECROMANCY OF RA-MEMTOP.

Buddy?

…

Yeah?

Maybe time for bed?

Getting there, yeah.

…

Garcia never hazed a living soul, but he did call everyone who sat at that piano “Johnny Keys” until his death. Which hurt much more than any prank ever could.

Nice recovery.

Lexington Stealie

July 18, 2012 / / 0 Comments

Which brings us, again, to 4/21/78 at the Rupp Arena in Lexington, Kentucky. This tour is something of a Rust Belt/Appalachian Trail theme and, yes, there were two shows I’ve neglected, but my versions sounds as if the recording device had been keestered in and then never un-keestered, to be found post-mortem and released in a macabre recreation of Betty Canter-Jackson’s storage locker incident.

So, I went to the Rupp show, which I’ve written about before: it  with this weird, wired energy that isn’t just the coke singing. Listen to the Playin’>drums. All of them stay up there for drums and listen to it climax 12 minutes in with a Donna-led call-and-response chant that makes this one of the only drums I’ve ever listened to on its own.

And then, right after that, Mickey starts playing the Knight Rider theme.

Two Of A Kind

July 16, 2012 / / 0 Comments

I have moved onto 4/11/78, also at the Fox Theater, which is in downtown Atlanta, on Peachtree. There are, apparently, 140 Peachtree streets, boulevards, avenues, lanes, roads, byways, thruways, terraces, ways, places in Atlanta and this joint may or not be located on one of them. It matters not.

There’s a reason this show isn’t on anyone’s top ten list. Still: better than not listening to the Dead AND listen to Terrapin, ten minutes in: something blows up, cutting off Phil and Bobby, so it’s left to Garcia and Keith to slowly wind the show the show into what will be the first of a number of full-band  (or at least more guys than just Billy and Mickey) Drums.

 

On A Spring Roll

July 16, 2012 / / 0 Comments

Now, as you know, Blair Jackson and the rest of Big Dead are keeping things from you, important things: the keys to the Vault, the fact that “Mickey Hart” was played by different actors before and after the hiatus, etc. Why is this? Why does Blair Jackson hate the Dead?

No. You’re not going to do this.

Is it because he’s from Kenya?

Please: not again.

Is it because a mere TEASPOON of his liver, eaten, would produce TREMULOUS LUBICOSITIES OF THE UTMOST in the recipient?

Are you going mad or insane? There is a difference, and I can live with mad for now.

Ah, right: Blair Jackson is Yog Soggoth, the Ancient Anus with many Eyes!

Good, just mad.

Anyway, Blair Jackson is doing this thing over on Dead.net about listening to ten shows in a row so I’m going to beat him by doing the entire Spring ’78 tour because god help me, I need a girlfriend. We join in progress with 4/10/78 from the Fox Theater in Atlanta, GA.

Listen to the way Garcia snaaaaarls Los Angeles? Gimme Norfolk, Virginia. Tidewater 4-10-0-9…

And then stick around for the off-kilter BEW. Both drummers have  been exploding with goodness and syncopation and tomfoolery this tour. And Keith is fucking killing it, but then, on a dime, his playing turns awkward and overpowering and there is a reason they rarely played It’s All Over Now.

And then check back in for Music Never Stopped which is such a train wreck that Harrison Ford is leaping in front of it.

P.S. After full listening, I give this show 3/2 thumbs up and a pat on its ass: “Good job,” I would say to it, were it here, even though it was goofy and sloppy and all over the place–they rocked the Fox with a crackling, coked-up energy. Proud of you!

Boo

July 13, 2012 / / 0 Comments

Oooooh. OOOOOooooooOOOOOOooooh. (What’s weird is that if you use two ‘h’s, it’s no longer spooky. Well, yeah, it’s spooky, but in an unclean way: Ooooooohh.  Right? Just got fifty shades of creepy in here.) It’s Friday the Thirteenth. Oogie-woogie.

The origin of our dreadful fascination with the date arose when Jesus was 13 and Joseph came in from a hard day of being a fictional character offscreen and said “Thank God it’s Friday,” and Jesus leapt up and screamed “You’re not my real dad, I hate you.” and stormed–well, I was going to say into the other room, but the Christs* probably had more of a loft thing, right? The open floor plan was big in Judea in, well, I guess it would have been 13, wouldn’t it have been?

So, then Jesus opened his religion and after that there were Knights Templar, who liked to roam around Europe building hospitals and having gay orgies. That got the Pope mad so he killed them all and, even though none of this really happened, it took place on Friday the 13th which is why on this date, we kill black cats on sight with impunity.

(There is a good possibility that none of that is true.)

So, tonight is filled with horror and foreboding (totally out of context, check out Bobby’s slide solo in Werewolves of London). Jason would have cut a swath through the Dead like Mrs. Donna Jean through a Holiday Inn, as would Michael Myers, mostly because Jason is a blatant rip-off of said Mr. Myers.

Freddie Krueger would have had no luck with the boys; there was nothing he could conjure up in their dreams that was scarier than things they had seen while awake.

Draculas of all sorts were known to avoid the Dead for fear of catching something. Or, more likely, catching everything. The weird, quickly evolving bacterium and viruses that followed each tour did some wonderful things (from a science point of view). There was one pathogen that caused a nearly 80% result for an incurable disorder called Total Nipple Refraction. TNR, man! So, like pretty much anyone with three or four brain cells, the draculas stayed away from the tour blood.

Werewoofs also would have been no sweat. A guy who turns into a raging beast once every 28 days? So, like, half-a-Billy?

It doesn’t matter anyway: Bobby still demands his nightlight to sleep.

* Until the age of 25, I thought that Christ was his last name. Like, “Hi, we’re the Christs. I’m Joseph, and this is my wife Mary.”

Ebony And Ivory

July 11, 2012 / / 3 Comments

The Dead had so many options after Brent’s all-bullshit-aside tragic death and they went with the worst. They apparently had this weird did-you-call-me/should-we-call thing with Merl that is far too Mean Girls to relate in good conscience and more’s the pity because maybe Merl would’ve kicked Garcia’s ass just a little, being a straight-laced man and proud deacon of the Mt. Holy Oak of Zion First Macadamia Church of the Redeemer in Christ. Plus, the Dead would have had a black guy in it. And as commercials have taught us, people hang out exclusively in carefully diverse groups.

There were others they could have at least auditioned. Elton John was hitting a rough patch at the time, perhaps he could have helped out. Something tells me Bobby would love to play Crocodile Rock. The flaw in the plan is that the first time Sir Elton threw one of his legendary tantrums, Billy would punch him in the dick, because this time I’ve gotta stand up for Billy: grown men throwing tantrums deserve a thorough dickpunching.

Rick Wakeman was also in a bit of a fallow period since wasting all of the money in Britain on an ice show to play arpeggios to. I have a feeling that the first time Rick opened his spangly cape to play two of his army of keyboards at the same time, Garcia would freak out and think he was a dragon and set him on fire. So, that’s a no for Rick Wakeman.

Stevie Wonder wouldn’t have worked because Phil still owes him $60 from a poker game and is ducking him.

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