Thoughts On The Dead

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

Tag: mickey (Page 2 of 5)

On The Bus

July 6, 2012 / / 1 Comment

I think no more Jerry Band for me. These bloggings started with the express rule: no Jerry Band, which of course encapsulates Ratdog and Seastones and drunkenly narrated slide shows from Billy’s scuba trips. (“Punched that fish in the dick, punched THAT fish RIGHT in the dick. Swimmin’ over here and takin’ our jobs.”)

There is something, a gestalt (a Jungian would say that) that exists between four men and whomever else they let on the stage that creates the Grateful Dead. It’s like Voltron, except it now takes up to three hours to form the Voltron Robot because one of the lions–I’m not going to say which one, but it’s Garcia–has locked himself in the Space Lion Bathroom again and we can’t really force him out of there because he’s in an 800 ton warp-capable lion mech; outright aggression would be counter-productive.

I say four because it was four who were necessary: Garcia, Bobby, Billy, Phil. Mickey came and went; keyboardists plowed under as if stage right was the Somme. It was the four of them that made the sound that was the Dead: that lazy lope, that leonine lurch, that lupine lambada and they checked one another’s bad habits.

The worst thing to happen to Garcia–or any of them, really–was being the guy in charge of the band. Because Garcia wanted to play this next number for 23 minutes. Doesn’t matter what song, but it’s probably Dylan or a reggae tune he has de-reggaefied, and it’s gonna be 23 minutes. So, if Garcia’s the one signing your check, you comp under him for 23 minutes. Also, it’s going to be slow.

Billy wouldn’t put up with that shit, though. Billy was the guy who, when the group needed to buy a new truck in the early days, instead demanded they buy him a Mustang that he promptly wrecked. If Billy wanted a song to be over, it was going to end.

Phil didn’t really do any solo stuff; he could be a bit lazy. And surly. All of the Evil Dwarves. And, of course, when Bobby gets left to his own devices, this happens:

[youtube http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dWscxdleZzI&w=420&h=315]

Top Of The Pops

July 3, 2012 / / 0 Comments

Bands the Dead was better than:

And I’ll just tell you upfront that I’m leaving Phish out of this entirely. I have as much interest about arguing Dead v. Phish as I do with getting involved in internet arguments about atheism: none.

Pink Floyd – Quick: what was the Pink Floyd sound? (Yeah, yeah.) Imagine Floyd jamming on, say, Summertime Blues. What would it sound like? Right.

Jefferson Airplane – The whole two singers just kinda standing there annoyed me. If you’re singing on a stage, you either stand tall with thrusted chest holding a libretto or you rock the fuck out and end the show by laying your enormous wang on a PA speaker, allowing the audience to watch it vibrate to the feedback of the guitars. That’s a lead singer. Being curly-haired and singing part of shitty Airplane jams makes you just a guy standing there singing occasionally.

Van Halen – Eddie and Garcia were both virtuosos, I suppose. Eddie could play a lot more notes. Both were known for their custom guitars, although Eddie made his in his garage for $40, and the creation of Garcia’s guitars always included, somewhere along the way, the phrase,”Well, it costs what it costs, man.” These are some of the most dangerous words in the English language, and when you hear them, you should stop letting the person who spoke them have anything to do with your money ever again.

The Sleigh Bells

[youtube http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=roTsrA-0Rxs&w=560&h=315]

Where is your drummer? You fuck right off back to Brooklyn and get yourself a drummer. We understand that the Marshalls are ironic, but Leggy Von Bangsinhair, an Ibanez guitar, and an IMac do not a band make.

Queen – And that pains me to say, because I love Queen. When the Wembley ’86 double-CD live album from the legendary–yes, legendary: like Dunkirk–Wembley Stadium Show came out, I ditched school for an hour to go to the mall and pick it up immediately: I wanted to show enthusiasm in my purchasing so perhaps Queen would do another tour in America. Freddie was dead within weeks.

But still, it was a good album.

Freddie did this a lot. No one in the Dead ever did this, except maybe after chimichanga night at Club Front. So, points: Dead.

U2 – Because every band is better than U2. It’s music for people who don’t particularly like music.

The Beatles – You couldn’t dance to the Beatles. Could you make sweet, sweet love to them? You could certainly make drugged-out love to Revolver, but the rest of it? Piffle and bosh. Plus, Revolution #9 was, pound-for-pound, every bit as annoying as Seastones, but y’know what: Seastones wasn’t on the album in the middle of the all the other stuff, the stuff you actually wanted to hear but now you had to sit through these dicks futzing around with their recording desk or, since it was 1970, get up and walk across the room the move the record needle, which is barbaric.

The Who – The Dead and the Who had a friendship/friendly rivalry thing starting at the Day on the Green in ’76. It was only an equipment loan from The Who that turned the Egypt excursion from “economically infeasible” to simply “ruinously expensive.”  Also, Daltry, Townshend, and the dead one behaved badly after Keith Moon’s death: they should have retired the name, at least. Instead, they carried on with a drummer so boring he was called Kenny Jones.

Imperfect Pitch #3

July 2, 2012 / / 0 Comments

Okay okay okay: what if the Dead were mattresses? Garcia would be soft and fluffy, Phil would be firm and ungiving, Vince would be blood-stained and lying by the side of the road in an industrial section of town.

Are you mocking your own tropes are have you genuinely just run out of gas?

80/40.

That is not a thing.

70/40?

Nor is that. Look, I’m going to need the ball. We’re going with the lefty.

Wright?

Yes, yes: Lefty Wright.

Doesn’t he also switch-hit?

Yes and no.

KNOCK IT OFF WITH THE ABBOT AND COSTELLO ROUTINE.

Sorry, boss.

Life is short: listen to ’73!

You are just the worst kind of suck-ass that there is. What you do is shameful and whether or not you feel wrong about that like normal humans have evolved to do over millennia doesn’t matter: your actions have shame attached to them and will hound you not just here, but in all the worlds to come.

How about the boys as olde-time comedian? Bobby could be Lucy and get into situations because Garcia don’t wanna take ‘er to da show. Garcia, Ricardo, same shit, right.

BILLY!

NOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOthump0000000000000000thump00000000.

Audition time!

Imperfect Pitch

July 2, 2012 / / 0 Comments

Hey, what if the Grateful Dead were Secretaries-General of the United Nations? Obviously, Garcia is Boutros-Boutros Ghali (which my spell-check says is spelled wrong, therefore: racist devil). Phil is clearly U Thant, and if you can’t see Trygve Lie’s baby blues staring out at you from behind the drums stage right, well…I don’t know what’s wrong with you, pal.

You got nothing, do you?

Not as such, no.

It really is going to be sad to see you go–

Dead as the A-Team? With Garcia as Hannibal and he’s like, “I love it when a jam comes together.” And Billy is Murdock and Bobby is Face and Merl is B.A., because they tried it with Mickey in black-face and even he saw the problems, so they called the only black guy they knew.

I’m going to pass.

Merl was the Dead’s Billy Preston

Nice observation, but still gonna pass.

Can I just go workshop some stuff, rub it up some flags, get it back to you in a much more proactive paradigm?

If you admit that what you just said doesn’t mean anything, then: yes.

Complete bullshit. All of it.

Get back to me.

 

 

Emergency Crew

June 29, 2012 / / 2 Comments

Breaking news, my fellow Enthusiasts: the Hiatus was a lie! Well, not that it occurred: the Dead played only four shows in 18 months. That’s fact. What’s not fact is the reason why. We were all told it was because the Wall of Sound and the Wall of Drugs were driving them into bankruptcy and insanity. True, but not the only reason. In fact, not even the MAIN reason.

In the Summer of ’74, the Dead played a gig that appears in no database. They appeared as ringers in a local Anal Creek, WV, talent show to raise money for Li’l Possum, whom the city doctors had proclaimed was, “just as fucked up as you can be and still be alive. You want me to kill it? Let me kill it: I’d be doing everyone involved a favor.”

Well, they won, and raised that money. To thank them, the townspeople gave them a hospital, short on staff but long on love: St. Stephen’s Medical Center.*

Billy became Chief of Staff and immediately improved the hospital’s standing, financially and medically. From the top brain surgeon to the lowest psychiatrist, everyone respected Billy’s simple management style. He had one rule: “Y’sure you wanna do that?” And only one punishment. You knew where you stood with Billy. And sometimes, you knew where you lay in the fetal position, tenderly cupping your battered banana while puking.

Phil immediately went Phantom of the Opera: like, during the very first walk-through. Not only was Phil skinny, but he could dislocate his hips to the point where he could shimmy through an 18-inch pipe and he ran away from the group right when they got in the door and SHHOOOOOOP right into a duct and no one saw him for a month or so.

Garcia became the pharmacist and then four minutes later he threw up on himself and passed out, so the road crew instinctively put him on a plane to Milwaukee.

Vince would wander the halls convincing people to let go and follow the light, but he wasn’t all that good at judging how sick people were, so he would end up with a lot of 12-year-olds getting their tonsils out and 55-year-olds getting their knees replaced. Vince would clutch them tight (otherwise, they would squirm away) to his chest, and whisper, “Stop fighting. Be with your ancestors. THEY CALL TO YOU. Succumb. Succumb!” People lodged formal complaints; it was the kind of thing you filled out paperwork about.

Keith “would fuckin’ thank people to stop mistaking me for a corpse, please. I’ve had CPR administered on me four times today. Stop it: this is just the way I look.”

Bobby was the crusading internist/trauma doc/diagnostician (which is not a thing) of the hospital. He could heal anyone…but himself: Dr. Bobby, M.D. He battles with the suits, makes love to Nurse Donna Jean and tries to find a lead in the case of the disappearing livers.

Brent was a male nurse. He was gentle and kind and shaved all the ding-dongs.

*Yes, we’re all quite aware none of this makes sense and this bit makes no sense in particular. You’re very clever to have noticed.

Fire Up A Colortini

June 28, 2012 / / 1 Comment

[youtube http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uwZIUSfGo40&w=420&h=315]

Two of my favorite dead guys. I used to watch Tom Snyder religiously, especially when Robert Blake came on. He was on that show frequently, if I recall, crazy as a shithouse rat each time. Tom would also have the TV writer David Milch on a lot. Milch had some sort of neck thing where his head would just loll to the side and then Snyder’s eyebrows would start to do some outlandish bullshit; it was some great TV.

Watch the pictures of the Boys as they fly through the air. They’re their usual charming selves. (Seriously, they–mostly Garcia–bitched about being on TV, but were suspiciously good at it.)

And then go listen to Dick’s Picks 13, with the He’s Gone for Bobby Sands, because that’s what they’re referring to when they say last night was “good”.

Drum And Drummer

June 26, 2012 / / 0 Comments

Listen to the drummers–the two of them back there–from a perfectly recorded show when they HAD IT: when they do those long fills down every tom-tom they own and the beat starts all the way on the left and just whips around your skull at 90 mph, that’s just the best thing in the world, isn’t it? Those duk-a-duhs and when they got those rolling, the band sounds as if someone rolled a Medieval army down a cliff and recorded the clangor. (Bear did that once in 1971, to test out the specs on a new harmonica mike he was thinking about using if and when Slim Harpo showed up. Bear was nothing if not thorough.)

I’ve posted this show before, but it deserves a revival: 5/13/77 at the Auditorium Theatre in Chicago, Illinois. Chicago! Badger City, Home of Shufflin’ George, those brusque but lovable Chicagoniacs! (I an not a geography buff and I made that clear when I applied for this job.)

Just keep typing, buddy.

The two of them are just monsters on this crisply recorded show and, quite frankly, it is best for the world that these two took up drumming. If Billy and Mickey ever got in a competition to see who could start the most fights, World War III would ensue within days. These coked-up conga hobbits were possessed of a rage that, were it e’er loosed, could bring us the brink of doom.

An intern* once suggested that perhaps the strategy of shooting speed into one’s eyeball while being shuttled between Des Moines, IA, and Normal, Il, like a piece of hairy luggage in some way exacerbated certain tendencies and then Billy burst into the room drunk and naked and accidentally shot the kid in the face, like 8 or maybe 9 times. Billy didn’t even know what the kid was talking about, it was just, you know, “time to kil the intern.” Like it is every full moon.

*The Dead had interns: college kids from UCSC, Hal Kant’s niece, at least three baby-faced drifters, S.E. Cupp, and Planchette. Don’t mention Planchette around the guys: his skill set was almost entirely concentrated in the field of looming ominously. Planchette was good at finding out addresses and he always dressed in very dark green, with nothing shiny or jingly on him. You know how in the vast majority of pictures of Keith, he looks like he just saw a ghost? Planchette. They should have gotten rid of him years before the incident, but he was the only one who ever got the coffee order right consistently.Don’t mention Planchette.

The Strangest Of Places

June 18, 2012 / / 1 Comment

1975. Weird year. Weird shows, with an “everybody in the pool” type of vibe to them.  “Who showed up? Ned? Umm. Does he have any weed? Well, give him a keyboard, I guess.” Merl and  Matthew Kelley (pre-dickpunching incident) sit in; Sammy Davis, Jr. comes out for a number. And each set begins the only proper way a Grateful Dead show can: with an intro by Bill Graham.

The drummers weren’t quite together yet, and the sound is cluttered, but it’s HUGE and it just doesn’t sound like any other year. Garcia sounds like it’s ’72, laying down long, ropey lines and just soloing throughout pretty much every song, expecting the other 97 musicians on stage to carry the actual song. Due to the ad hoc nature of most of the Hiatus show, having a grand piano on stage was impossible (said the road crew before pantsing Keith, forcing Donna Jean to shoo them away. “You have to stand up for yourself, baby. Can’t let the bigger boys bully you. Look at me, Keith: it gets better.”) so Keith was confined to the Fender Rhodes

Did they ever really retire? Were they ever serious about it? The fake-out retirement is a classic show-biz move: Sinatra retired at least 17 times, the Stones have done five straight farewell tours, Tupac became a hologram for some reason. They certainly needed a break from playing Atlas with the Wall of Sound, there was way too much coke and the Persian was creeping into the scene.

So, they took ’75 off, playing only 4 shows, all of them backyard gigs in the Bay Area. The most well-known (justly) is 8/13, the One from the Vault release from the Great American Music Hall. The S.N.A.C.K. benefit was certainly the weirdest: the human brain hadn’t evolved for a pre-noon Blues for Allah. The Winterland show in June is the most overlooked.

But the Secret Hero show is 9/28/75–Lindley Meadows in Golden Gate Park. Check out the Franklin’s, where Mickey and Billy chase each other around with their cymbals and Garcia lets loose a roaring solo right after “…if you get confused, listen to the music play.” AND THEN THE END OF FRANKLIN’S HOLY SHIT which is like the end of He’s Gone with the long a capella call-and-response and it’s just remarkable.

Aaaaaaand then the intro to Big River, which is a mess.

P.S. Thank you to the tapers, to the archivists, to the digital cleanup artists, to the uploaders. Thank you to the scribes and the safekeepers. After all, if Bobby forgets he words to Truckin’ and it is not preserved, then did he really forget the words? (Most likely, yes. Bobby forgot the words to Truckin’ so much it was on his to-do list: hair, squats, tickle-time with Garcia, slide guitar lesson (cancelled), forget words to Truckin’.)

P.P.S.  As I was writing about my gratitude for the archivists and digital Jawas that keep everything running, Archive.org went down.

Night Of The Living Dead

June 14, 2012 / / 1 Comment

I will soon be decamping for human climes, back to the only land a mutt-mix of Irish and Russian Jew could tolerate. Brown hills, grey skies, no goddam monsters in the Sadd Lake my concrete development abuts. Everything has to be concrete down here; the wood rots instantly. The humidity is–do you remember the Celestials? They were Marvel Comics characters drawn by Jack Kirby that were so big that they dwarfed even the mighty Galactus and his heralds, amongst them the tragic Norrin Radd, who–

Stop that.  Or we sauce the goose.

Please don’t sauce–

Then: Schnell! Schnell! I have bolded and italicized, so you must take me seriously! Don’t make me play with the fonts, because I simply don’t know how, I lack that skill set and maybe it’s been holding me back in my search for fortune and a woman who’s just crazy enough, y’know?

May I?

Ja.

Why are you German now? How did–the point being that I’m going back to where mammals are at the top of the food chain; and seasons, instead of “a little bit too goddam hot,” and “living in a giant’s ass.” Which is where I was going before, with the Celestials: I just needed an enormous man with a relatively enormous ass. Right now, Boynton Beach, FL, is the precise moisture level as inside the rectum of a being made up of a stuff to challenge wielder of the Power Cosmic himself, the Silver Surfer!

And I say this to get to my point: maybe you’ve heard of the Zombies. They have infested these swampy marshes and fetid fens, possibly due to the malodorous Bath Salts that are sweeping the nation.

The Dead would have been awful in a Zombie Apocalypse. Garcia would be the first to go, let’s just agree on that: he wasn’t the most…aware…of people at times, but he might have had a good defense against the ghouls: accidentally setting them on fire as he nodded off.

Vince would immediately Stockholm Syndrome out, campily rolling his eyes back while moaning a little off-key, “MRAAGH,” and chomping down on random people’s arms, except that zombies, like Enthusiasts, see through Vince’s bullshit rather quickly and then it’s just shreds of flesh and Dad’s Vacation Shirt.

The Crew would do well, managing to do the load-out in only 14 hours, and thus escaping out the doors of the arena just as the hungry zombies crested the ridge. Unfortunately, the trucks were so laden with gear that could not have been left behind, because Denver is in two days and Zombie Apocalypse or not, the Dead don’t cancel shows, man, that to lighten weight and distract the fiends, the Crew had to give them Phil off the back of the truck, like that Russian family in that painting giving the baby to the wolves.

Mickey and Billy go down swinging.

P.S. Bobby is left alone by the zombies, as they only eat brains. (CHEEEEEEEEEEAP! BOOOOOOOOOO!)

Trouble Behind

June 9, 2012 / / 0 Comments

Things that would get you thrown out of the Grateful Dead’s backstage:

  • ****ing Phil. I’m using the asterisks to denote the universality: eyeballing, grab-assing, mounting. Just assume anything you do that involves Phil will lead to a thrashing, then a quick exit.
  • Even looking at Garcia’s ice cream.
  • Not splitting Aces and Eights.
  • Any Game of Thrones spoilers whatsoever.
  • Any sort of ninjitsu whatsoever. Not since the last time. Brent dressed in the traditional Japanese racist pajamas and, using “ninja tools” that were almost certainly fashioned from the cutlery on the catering table, climbed halfway across the ceiling, which was quite impressive, until the ceiling fan sucked Brent’s wizard beard into the rotor and he nearly died, mostly ’cause the other guys just left him there for four or five hours. Mickey just couldn’t stop laughing.
  • Demanding to meet Ringo.
  • Introducing what were known internally as “pernicious thoughts” into Bobby’s head. There was no firm definition of such, more of a Potter Stewart vibe to the whole thing, but past concepts deemed inappropriate for Bobby include: spandex, hair dryers, mesh, Garcia is stealing your soul from you when you switch off singing during Jack Straw, platform shoes, platform boots, platform anything-of-any-kind, Last Tuesdayism (Holy shit, the next person who mentions any sort of solipsism-based paradoxical view of reality to him is getting stabbed with a knife), and everyone’s favorite: “monkey gonna getcha.”It took two hours to drag him out from under the trailer that time, shrieking the whole way.
  • Any kind of keening, ululating, glottalizing or hooting.
  • Wearing eyeblack for a game in a domed stadium. You’re just wearing makeup at that point.
  • Saying the letter ‘L’ around Billy. It wasn’t so much that you would be thrown out afterwards, it was that you would probably like to leave, having been punched so thoroughly in the dick. But, you should give it to Billy: the “L” thing did make it sporting. One clever fellow made it a good six minutes into a conversation before Billy got bored and just punched him in the dick anyway.
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