Thoughts On The Dead

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

Tag: mickey (Page 4 of 5)

The Horse’s Name Was Snorter

February 9, 2012 / / 1 Comment

Mickey used to give his horse acid. He would dose his horse and his dog and they would trek around his ranch for hours while Mickey pretended he was the Jewish cowboy hero, the Lone Kvetcher. Mickey said that he was careful to figure out the horse’s body weight so he could calculate the proper dose.

THE PROPER DOSE OF LSD FOR A HORSE IS NONE, MICKEY. EVERYONE KNOWS THAT. That’s some Michael Vick-type shit right there.

(Please don’t take this as coming from a man with a fondness for horses. Horses are like giant, creepy aliens and they are scary dumb and I openly advocate a cull of the pointless beasts. We could turn it into a holiday: Pull the Trigger Day. Anyone who wanted to could bring a gun, or rent one, or just use a fungo bat, whatever, and at the stroke of three Eastern Standard Time, everybody makes all the terrifying horses go away.

Now, I feel this way about remarkably many species: there is a bird outside, around 16 inches tall. Grey body, white head. Long, tapering beak pointed straight down at his belly. (His? Why not ‘hers’? THESE BLOGGINGS ARE SEXIST TOWARDS BIRDS.)  He also has the posture of Richard Nixon: shoulders up and in, head thrust forward, saying horrible things about the Jews. I like that bird a lot. He can stay. As for the rest of the animals: exterminate the brutes.

And yet, I also know that I might in fact be a complete psychopath on this issue. Probably not: I cannot see a logical or ethical problem with a massacre on the scale of such that it would almost certainly summon Chthulu, or at the very least, Chthu-Lou, who was not quite an Old God, more of a God Who’s Not A Kid Anymore, Let’s Face It, but he looked like the Big C and so would do parties and such.

What I do object to is Fucking With Animals. Getting them high, fighting them, doing sex stuff on them, pure-breeding them, dressing them up in Star Wars costumes: for Christ’s sake, hasn’t anyone heard of dignity?

White Lovelight, White Heat

February 7, 2012 / / 2 Comments

The Velvet Underground thought the Dead were sexist and homophobic and probably imperialist and definitely goofy. Most of the thing can be understood nearly instantly by realizing that the VU was made up of over-educated New Yorkers, with all the connotation that “over-educated New Yorker” entails.  Yeah, I went there.

Were the Dead homophobic? I’ve never read any stories about them acting untoward. Although–and I always thought it was odd for a band from San Francisco–there were never any stories about the Dead vis-a-vis gaiety at all.

Now, sexist?

From September of ’79 to March of ’83, Billy invoked the ancient rite of Prima Nocte over the backstage area, but luckily for all involved, Billy usually just wanted a rubdown and a tugger. And he would always share his coke: Billy was good like that.

The Dead were kind of hairy and macho. Sure, they had Donna in the group, but she was really just Keith’s old lady that Bobby was banging. She was incidental. No one ever made a mix tape called Donna Jams, nor has anyone ever sold a bumper sticker with a clever Donna-inspired pun.

“Who’s your favorite member of the Dead? Garcia? Phil?”

“No, man, it’s the chick who looks like Sacheen Littlefeather who caterwauls nine or ten times a show. She’s all the Dead I need!”

They did employ more women than most rock outfits of the time, and in creative positions: Candace Brightman and Betty Canter come to mind.

Apparently, the Dead had appeared on the same bill as the Velvet Underground and, of course, both bands brought their entire scenes with them and it turned into a full-fledged hip-off. The VU sat there in their leathers and sniffed condescendingly at the hairy baboons from San Francisco. (It was probably condescending: there was an enormous amount of sniffing going on.) Instant utter hatred.

Which is not surprising: a good hate requires a bit of reflection. Who can hate something alien properly? To truly hate, we need to recognize ourself in the person, place, or thing that has so struck our ire. Both bands played songs for 45 minutes while deliberately declining to make eye contact with anyone in the room. Both had a weird rich benefactor, a pretentious bass player, and a drummer with a vagina.

(That’s right: Mickey has a vagina. In the womb, he ate his twin sister and the ‘gina just showed up on his shoulder. It is fully-functioning and Mickey introduces it into love-making by asking if his partners would like to go to “ninth base.”)

The story also might be colored by the fact that, at the time, both bands were made up of raging drug addicts. The VU, notably, preferred to intravenously self-administer amphetamines constantly. Literally constantly: if they were not actively shooting up, they were helping you look for the money that they had stolen from you. The Velvet Underground liked to stay up for six days straight turning tricks and accusing each other of things. The Velvet Underground were just the worst fucking people in the world.

So, I’m not taking their word for it.


ADDENDUM: Rereading this post, I am ashamed to see that I have not linked to the essay that inspired it. My apologies to the author and to people in general and also ducks.

Is Very Bad When Drumming Stop…

February 1, 2012 / / 1 Comment

Billy was the engine, even though he has never been seen in the same room as Brian Doyle-Murray. In between tours, Billy would yell and yell at those damn caddies to make something of themselves but they never listened. Billy had a Hawaiian shirt thing going on, and he spread it like a virus to successive keyboardists. Billy looks like he might have enjoyed starting fights. Billy is an Uncle: the ‘stache, the smirk.

But listen to ’73. No Mickey forcing everyone to sit there while he learns to play the kshdbviyus, the new percussion instrument he discovered in the village of extraordinarily foreign people, people so foreign that you secretly hate them because you sense they’re intentionally trying to be so foreign but whom Mickey will invariably refer to as “my brothers in drums.” Mickey was always saying shit like that when he wasn’t flying into rages and tackling business associates in restaurants. Mickey sounded like a lot of fun.

Now, when the two of them were on, they were unbelievable–this churning graceful giant. But, listen to 1973 when it’s just Billy out there. That motherfucker earns his mustache night in and night out.

My Favorite Things

January 31, 2012 / / 0 Comments

Have I been negative? Probably. Almost definitely. What about the positives? What is lovable about this band?

  • The black leather jacket Garcia used to wear.
  • Mississippi Half-Step. When it gets real quiet and they sing about the Rio Grand-ee-o.
  • The little songs they play during tuning–Funniculi, the Itsy Bitsy Spider, Stayin’ Alive.
  • Billy playing the drums all by himself.
  • Billy playing the drums with Mickey.
  • The proto-version of Brown-Eyed Women from 8/24/71 (Dick’s Picks 35). The beat is turned around and the melody sounds like a children’s playground taunt and IT’S AWESOME.
  • Bobby forgetting the words.
  • Garcia forgetting the words.
  • Phil never knowing the words in the first place and just making shit up as he went. (I’m looking at you, Tom Thumb’s Blues.)
  • The Celtic jacket Mickey wore in the Touch of Grey video.
  • Touch of Grey.
  • The AUD of Touch of Grey from the comeback show.
  • Garcia with his hair in pigtails.
  • Pig.
  • Branford.
  • Bobby’s Chuck Berry tunes.
  • Brent’s long, lustrous hair.
  • Terrapin Station.
  • Bobby’s wise-guy routines (“Turn around real slow, we gotcha covered.”)
  • April Fool’s Day 1980–opening up the show with Promised Land on each others’ instruments. (Garcia on drums!)

Magic Beans

January 30, 2012 / / 0 Comments

I present you with a partial list of the reasons the Dead again and again faced financial ruin:

  1.  Lenny Hart. This might not have been the Dead’s fault; they were the most goyish band on the planet and I am including Ladysmith Black Mambaza and the Mormon Tabernacle Choir in there. These were laid-back Catholics and Protestants from Northern California and they could not possibly be expected to recognize the clear and present danger inherent in a Jewish guy screaming about Jesus. Any time a Jewish guy starts screaming about Jesus, that guy should be watched carefully, because he is up to something. There is a secret list of Jews that other Jewish people all secretly despise, and those guys are pretty close to the top. Also on the list is the family from Hardcore Pawn on TruTV.
  2. The Wall of Sound. The Dead answered George Carlin’s agnostic riddle, “Could God make a rock so big that he himself could not lift it?” with a resounding, “Yes, if He made it out of 20,000 fussy, cutting edge tube amplifiers, He could.” The people who built the Wall were immensely clever, but why did they not take an hour to sit down with a list of gas prices and some scratch paper and figure out how much it would cost to drag that techie-version of Hoarders around the damn Midwest? Think of it this way: the Grateful Dead built the Heaviest Thing in the World and then kept moving it. That gets pricey. Especially if you do it in 1974. You know: during the GAS CRISIS.  THEY BUILT A SOUND SYSTEM THAT REQUIRED 20 TRUCKS TO MOVE DURING THE GAS CRISIS.
  3. Ron Rakow. Someone tell me why I know who this man is, please. You should feel as ashamed as I do for knowing that.
  4. The Grateful Dead Movie. Garcia labored over this thing for 4 years. The animation–the fucking cartoon–cost half a mil. When he decided to include the Nitrous scene, was he thinking, “This is my Citizen Kane?”
  5.  Egypt. They played in Egypt to an audience of 32 Egyptian tour guides, a hundred rich white kids in tie-dye, 13 camels, and the monkey from Raiders of the Lost Ark. Bill Walton was also there; he and the monkey became besties. This is the box score for Egypt: two junkies, at least three full-blown alcoholics, one drummer with a broken arm, a fucked-up piano. Plus everyone was doing the Ol’ Cairo Hotstep, if you know what I mean. (I am talking about diarrhea: foreign places give you diarrhea because they are foreign.)
  6. The White Slave Trade. You probably don’t know about this, reading all those Dead sites that don’t want you to know THE TRUTH, but the Grateful Dead were heavily, heavily invested in the international sale and distribution of top-of-the-line white slaves. Men, women, children–it did not matter. If you were white, the Grateful Dead would snatch you up (Billy did the actual snatching) and sell you in shady backrooms for purposes best not delved into. Rest assured there was butt stuff involved.

I Need To Stop Buying Dead Books Off Amazon

January 30, 2012 / / 6 Comments

Did you know Bobby wrote a children’s book? He did, in 1991. It was called Panther Dreams. Because of course it was. It had an environmental theme. Again, because of course it did. (Were the Dead that fucking famous in ’91? Children’s books are some high-level Regis and Madonna famous person bullshit.)

Tarot. Do you remember Tarot? It was the play TC left the Dead to score. Did you know it was a mime musical? This is a fact: I am not making it up.  Tom Constanten was the Crispin Glover of his time.

Bobby’s looks were becoming a problem. The problem was, Bobby was a pretty young man. Which meant he could essentially wear clown clothes and make them work, but when a man gets older, dignity should take the forefront. The pretty do not learn dignity.

Robert Hunter recorded an album called Amalgamalin Street. It was described as both an “audio novel” and a “rock-opera.” It was about a guy named Chet. WHAT THE FUCK IS WRONG WITH THESE PEOPLE?

Sweet heavenly hosts, I’m sitting here listening to them, while I read and write about them. These baboons have infiltrated my very Essence. they have befouled me like worse than Billy did that Holiday Inn that time in Des Moines when he got bored. No, not that time: the other time. No, the other time.

Mickey spoke in front of the Senate? The real one, not a bunch of dogs wearing human shirts Steve Parrish wrangled in the parking lot? The actual human Senate of the United States? In this reality? Not in some Quantum Leap type deal? (Billy could totally play Dead Stockton.) The same year he also produced an album called Honor the Earth Powwow? What a world we created.

The American Book of the Dead by Oliver Trager is awesome.

By the way: Mickey spoke in front of Senate about the benefits of drum circles for the elderly. Because of course he did.

Can You Pass The Test?

January 25, 2012 / / 0 Comments

Grateful Dead imbibing game. Pick a show at random. Not from 1995: have more respect for yourself, would you please?

The rules:

  • If Phil plays an unaccompanied bass solo, drink a Heineken. If, somewhere in the solo he hits a note that makes no sense whatsoever, drink another Heineken. If you rationalize it by telling yourself that Phil is a musical genius and means every single note, so therefore you just didn’t understand what Phil was laying down, then drink the rest of the case and imagine Phil playing in Puerto Rico and giving the donor rap in halting, old white guy Spanish.

“Me llamo Philipe. Tiene oído absoluto. Dame tus hepáticas. DAME TU HEPATICAS!”

  • If Billy’s the only drummer, bet $50 that the Smails kid will pick his nose. If Mickey’s there, give your horse one hit of acid every time you can name the thing that Mickey’s hitting during drums. If he is hitting Ramrod, two hits. If he hits an executive from the record company, take the horse outside and free that majestic steed, who won’t survive two or three hours wandering through a town, especially after you fed it all that acid, you MONSTER.
  • They play Might as Well and you think about watching Festival Express again–take a shot and demand your local diner give away their food “to the people, maaaaaaaaaan.”
  • They play New Speedway Boogie and you feel like watching Gimme Shelter again–take a fistful of LSD and seconal, put on a bear hat, and beat Marty Balin half to death with a pool cue.  (Who brings a pool-cue to a concert?  Shouldn’t that have been, you know: a clue? “Sorry, guys, you can’t come in: I think you might be looking to cause trouble.  Just a guess.”)
  • If they play Dire Wolf–drink red whiskey for dinner. Then realize there’s no such thing as red whiskey so how did my whiskey get redOMIGOD SOMEONE BLED IN MY FUCKING WHISKEY.
  • If Bobby screws up a lyric–do nothing. Mentioning that Bobby screwed up a lyric is like mentioning that Billy played drums: it’s not a bug, it’s a feature.  If Bobby gets every single word to Truckin’ right, go buy yourself the tightest, Izod-iest shirt you can find and pop that collar, baby.
  • If they tune for one minute–hit of Persian. If they tune in the middle of the song–burn yourself with a cigarette while you sleep. If the play a song in the middle of tuning–burn someone else with a cigarette while they sleep.
  • If Pig’s in the band and they play Lovelight and you still can’t figure out what the hell “Box back nitties, great bigging on the vine,” means–get drunk off a pint of cheap whiskey you keep in the back pocket of greasy Levi’s, have shouty drunken sex with Janis Joplin, and then wear a series of ridiculous hats, but actually look really cool in them.

Playing To The Tide

January 24, 2012 / / 2 Comments

Seven individuals with disparate backgrounds get thrown together by chance, fate, and poor map skills to find themselves eternally stuck in a paradise that is beautiful, but also quite inescapable. Has the cast of Gilligan’s Island actually been the Grateful Dead all along? Did they merely intend to go on a 3 show tour of Guam, Diego Garcia, and Midway and get hopelessly shipwrecked, an occurrence almost definitely attributable to choosing to combine marine navigation with cocaine.

Obviously, Garcia is the Skipper. Same body shape, same propensity to pick an outfit and stick with it, same love of hammocks. Phil is the Professor. We know who Bobby is, don’t we?

This week, Phil the Professor has lashed together 20 palm fronds, 9 coconuts, some vine, and 85,000 of the largest amplifiers ever invented by man.  He will not tell anyone else where he got these things. His plan is to drop the biggest Phil Bomb ever and use the fronds as rudimentary surfboardsto ride the giant tsunami wave to civilization. Then he will eat all the coconuts. However, Skipper Garcia thinks there is more to the story. Plus, he knows this: to be in the Dead is to choose the most expensive option, always and eternally. Will I supersize that? I’m in the fucking Dead, what do you think?

Skipper Garcia tells Bobbigan that Phil has had the amps shipped in, meaning that there’s a boat somewhere on the island.

“Do you know what this means, Little Bobby?”

“Yeah, Skip! We gotta find that boat so we can…

“So we can?”

“…ask the crew for drugs! And to cook us brown rice. Skipper, no one has cooked me my brown rice in, like…forever. I miss it, Skipper. I miss my brown rice.”

Hat!

Professor Phil is trying to explain the plan to the Billy the Millionaire and his wife, Lovey Hart. Billy is wearing the blue jacket and little sailing cap that Jim Backus used to wear. You can totally see him in it, can’t you? Like now you can’t unsee it, right? It’s kind of fucked up. I hope I didn’t just ruin Billy for you forever.

Lovey Hart is recording a song cycle based on the Polynesian pookapooka drum that requires thirteen drummers playing 19 drums apiece. Prime numbers are very important to the Polynesians. Each drum is situated on its own island, so the drummers must helicopter from island to island at staggering expense, costing $800,00 and the lives of two drummers and a dog named Colin. Colin was also a drummer. The album will never be released.

And then in walk…Keith and Donna. As Ginger and Maryanne. Okay, the conceit breaks down at that point.

Turn On Your Light

January 23, 2012 / / 0 Comments

I don’t know who the audience for this nonsense is: in my previous post, there was a joke that literally only makes sense if you have seen one specific picture taken at Mickey’s ranch. I am betting, somehow, on the fact that someone else in the world has, filed in the same mind they keep the location of their keys and childrens’ birthdays, a memory of a photo featuring John “Marmaduke” Dawson.

Planet Dumb

January 23, 2012 / / 0 Comments

Mickey once convinced his father to retool a music store into an all-drum extravaganza named Drum City. Mickey once made an album called Planet Drum. Mickey was not well-rounded.

The unholy spawn of Oates and Baba-Booey, Mickey Hart was the Other One of the Dead’s rhythm section. Astonishingly, he also manages to be the silliest man in a group full of deeply, almost constitutionally silly people. There are no stories concerning Mickey in any of the multitude of books about the Dead that do not end one of two ways: with fortunes disappearing in exceedingly foreseeable ways, or Mickey attacking another human being in public.

Money was allergic to Mickey, in the sense that anytime he got near any appreciable amount of cash, it would flee into the night, generally after gathering up any other money that just happened to be in the area. If Mickey had gone on a tour of San Simeon, it would have burned down immediately. We can only assume that, even though he grew up in the Bay Area, Bill Gates never happened upon Mickey Hart. We know this because had it occurred, Gates would today be gulping dongs to get paint to huff. Such is Mickey’s magic, because he thought big.

Rick Wakeman once took a book of finger-limbering exercises, renamed it after King Arthur, and rented a hockey arena so otherwise unemployable 35-year-old former Olympic ice dancing hopefuls could salchow their way through three hours of arpeggios played by a man in a spangly cape. Mickey thought Rick Wakeman was a piker. In 1984, Mickey spent 2.5 million trying to get all of Hands Across America to clap along to a 15-beat bouzouki rhythm. The album was never released.

As for the random–yet entirely predictable–violence, perhaps you’re saying, “But rock music has always been fraught with explosive personalities.  What about the fights between the Davies brothers or Daltrey and Townshend or Metallica and their reputation?” Yes, yes: all true. Except you will notice that the examples, and all the other fightin’ twosomes you’re thinking of are basically long-running personality disputes. Sure, the Gallagher brothers are, statistically speaking, punching each other as I write this, but if they weren’t rock stars, they would be doing the same thing. If they were Liam and Noel’s Plumbing Service and you called them, your house would be rapidly filling with feces as they rolled around on the floor biting each others’ necks and using their adorable Brummie accents to transform the word ‘cunt’ into something that sounds like a pet name.

That wasn’t Mickey. Mickey tackled producers in studios. He choked crew members in delicatessans. Accountants in auto-supply shops. Florists in winnebagos. The only person, I believe, he didn’t attack was his good ol’ pop. You know his dad: the guy that stole so much money from the Dead that instead of precisely calculating the figure, the FBI just rounded it up to “all of it.” The rat in the proverbial drain ditch.

Every time I see a picture of Mickey at his ranch, all I can picture is the guy raising his camera and Mickey going, “Wait!  Let me get my serape!”

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