Thoughts On The Dead

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

Tag: mr completely (Page 1 of 2)

More KISS Content That No One Has Asked For*

February 4, 2021 / / 6 Comments

Yet more compliments for long-time FoTotD Mr, Completely:

  • Just does shit for other people because he’s kind.
  • Patrols and protects the Rose City each and every night in his role as Cascadia’s Champion, the Tree Octopus.
  • If you got a booger, or maybe your flag’s at half-mast, then Mr. C.’s gonna tell you in a chill and discreet way so as not to embarrass you.
  • Has never–not even for an instant–considered selling any of his family to gypsies.
  • Cleans up real nice so you could take him somewhere fancy, but can also throw on his jean shorts and get real loose with it.
  • Hustles back to play some D.
  • Only believes in the fun, old-school conspiracy theories, like “Grace Kelly wasn’t in a car crash; she was actually eaten by CIA robot cheetahs,” and not the scary, new-hotness conspiracy theories, like “The Jews did it.”
  • Hates a lot of the same things I hate, and that’s a huge plus in anyone.
  • Used to run the Chillout Tent at shows where they’d bring in kids who took too much; Mr. C. would talk those suckers down, and give them oranges and cigarettes.

What does this have to do with KISS?

Had you waited ten seconds, you would have found out. It was literally the next Bullet Point.

Hop to it, then.

I’ll hop up your asshole with a machete, muchacho.

You don’t have the balls to take on my asshole.

…

…

…

Shall we move on and pretend the last few lines didn’t happen?

For the best, I imagine.

Yeah. So, the point I was trying to make before I was so rudely interrupted is this: Once again, Mr. Completely has completed us. He kicks down three KISS shows from the Makeup Era: 4/1/74 from the famed Agora Ballroom in Cleveland, 6/13/75 from the Tulsa Fairgrounds, and 9/3/76 from the Richfield Coliseum (also in Cleveland). All three are Pre-FM feeds from the SBD, and quite acceptable as far as sound quality goes (and you know I’m picky about that).

These shows are a bit of a revelation: To hear the stories about early KISS and the legends about how much overdubbing was necessary to get Alive! and Alive II! into shape for release, you’d think the raw tapes would sound like deranged chimps banging on orphans. But no! They were a tight, well-rehearsed combo. I mean, they weren’t about to break into a set of Mahavishnu covers, but neither are they all playing in different keys simultaneously, unlike some semi-defunct, choogly-type bands I could mention.

Is Mr. Completely done? Has he finished his task and then withdrawn beatifically, leaving only joy and sunshine and a fresh, citrus-y smell in his wake? No! Of course not! He also points shit out, specifically the fact that KISS went–in just a bit over two years–from the 2,000-seat Agora to the 20,000-seat Richfield Coliseum, which is some impressive fan-garnering.

Download those shows presently, however: They’ll only stay up for the weekend. We close with a picture I like to call What? And leave Show Biz?

 

 

*Some of you may be happy to see this theme explored, but no one was like “TotD, can we have more disjointed and semi-random spewings on the Silly Rock band from the 70’s?”

Reasons You Should Download These Excellent Shows From Miles Davis’ Electric Era

August 19, 2020 / / 7 Comments
  • These ones.
  • They are, as I already mentioned, excellent. Excellence is so rare! Press excellence to your loving bosom; grill it a cheese; ask your mobster buddies to find it a no-show job. Love up on excellence.
  • These shows were shared with us, undeserving sinners and slackers tho we are, by Cascadia’s own Mr. Completely. That’s a Seal of Approval right there, boy howdy. That guy’s the Michael Jordan of recommending stuff.
  • Maybe if you don’t, Mr. Davis comes to your house and punches everyone living therein? Sure, he died 30 years ago, but would you put it past him? I wouldn’t. Mr. Davis was and continues to be a feisty dude.
  • At least one of these recordings features a band that contained Chick Corea and Keith Jarrett. At the same time! That’s like getting soup and salad.
  • At least one of the recordings that does not feature Messrs. Corea and Jarrett features Pete Cosey, and he looked like this:Which you’d have to believe scared some white people, and that’s–returning to my initial assertion–excellent.
  • What else are you gonna listen to? Goose? Grover Washington, Jr.? Dokken? You gonna throw on Dokken when there’s nine or ten hours of Electric Era siting there plump and lovely like a Fresno rentboy? (Fresno has the plumpest rentboys. Everyone knows this.)
  • Cuz if you don’t, you’re a non-playing motherfucker. And we all know what Mr. Davis thinks of non-playing motherfuckers.

Still Feel Like Your Keyboardist

April 9, 2017 / / 0 Comments

What are you doing?

“Oh, hey. This is the video for my new single Still Feel Like–”

Not you.

“What?”

I’m not talking to you.

“Who are you talking to, then?’

Brent!

“Hey, buddy.”

I am NOT kidding any more. I’m taking that damn Time Sheath away from all of you.

“No one knows it’s me!”

Not the point. I’m not judging you for being a Furry, man, but do it in the 80’s. Stop wandering around the 21st century in mascot costumes.

“There are no Furries in the 80’s except for the Phillie Phanatic and the San Diego Chicken, and neither of them are talking to me.”

Why not?

“I fuck too hard.”

Oh, God, that was the worst sentence I’ve ever heard.

“Well, I didn’t want to lie. Hey, man. You think John likes me?”

I think he shouldn’t know you.

“It’s just that the other panda has been here a while, and I don’t know if I’m fitting in.”

You need to work on this self-esteem thing, buddy. You’re a great panda.

“Thanks, man. You wanna hear a song?”

No. But that doesn’t mean you’re not a great panda.

“So, John likes what I’m doing?”

Have you talked to him?

“Yeah. I said ‘Hi,’ and then he told me how he flies in his lettuce from Romania. For, like, a half-hour.”

He does that.

 

(With thanks to Cascadia’s champion, Mr. Completely, for recognizing Brent.)

Greatest Stories Never Told

February 7, 2017 / / 7 Comments

Good news in a morass of pitiful offerings, Enthusiasts: Cascadia’s champion, Mr. Completely, has once again graced us with a bracing blow of audio semi-fictionality. I cannot tell you what the best ever 1989 show was–4/2, 6/11, 14/3.14–but I can tell you what the best EVAR show was: this one.

These ones, more rightly, as Completely has created not one superb semi-fictional show, but two. (And they’re long fuckers, too.) Not “Best-Of” or whatever where the songs are jumbled and tossed without care, no: these two “shows” follow the rules of the Grateful Dead: alternating Garcia and Bobby tunes, little songs in the first set, weirdo bullshit in the second. If you didn’t know these shows didn’t actually happen, you might not realize it.

I won’t gush, but just tell you this: since Mr. Completely sent me the (almost) finished versions two weeks ago, I’ve listened to each show at least five times. It’s a home run mixed with a touchdown combined with a delicious corned beef sandwich while someone is touching your nipples in just the right way.

So: watch it on YouTube, or download either the FLAC, ALAC, or MP3 from the link, and then tell him how good it is in the Comment Section. Make sure you check out the detailed liner notes which, in keeping with Grateful Dead tradition, I was not asked to write. TotD gets a special thanks, but–in candor–my participation was mostly pestering him about including Foolish Heart.

Mister, Mix, Picks

August 17, 2016 / / 11 Comments

We have, Enthusiasts, crossed a Rubicon. (I want to write a screenplay in which a character named Rubicon gets double-crossed.) Scientists used to think that the sound barrier was unbreakable, but Chuck Yeager thought scientists were pussies, and thus discovered the world beyond Mach 1. Knowledge accrues, and our understanding of the world grows. On the other hand, sometimes we gain wisdom and this just makes everything more damn confusing.

They didn’t used to speak. Have you read through the archives? You should. Guy from a magazine called me a genius for writing them, and I agreed with him; you will too. But they didn’t used to speak, and they definitely didn’t used to speak to me. Just little essays, or snatches of dialogue, and then one day Bobby started chatting with me, and the concept of semi-fictionality was born.

You’re talking about fan fict–

YOU FUCK THE FUCK UP, FUCKFUCK!

…

Ahem.

Sore spot?

I hate you.

“You.”

I’m just going to continue and hope a frat boy eats your face. And while I was gleeful about making bullshit up as fast as I could type, and cheered at all the new characters I met, and inanimate objects that kept coming to life, I was wary of using Photoshop or any other picture manipulator to fuck with photographs of the Dead, or others.

Luckily, Spencer and others in the Comment Section made that decision for me, and I’m glad of it. Without the Ministry of Truth’s work (that’s what I’m calling all you wonderful liars now), we would not have this:

PicsArt_1469664051002

And I believe the world needs that, whatever the fuck it is, I don’t know, don’t ask me, I didn’t make it, blame Canada.

But now, Enthusiasts, we have reached a new world, like Rocky Balboa viewing the Pacific Ocean for the first time, and the midwife to this enbirthening is none other than Portland’s own local super-hero, Mr. Completely, also known as the Tree Octopus; he fights crime with his hectocotylus, which is a fancy way of saying “arm-dick.”

What this wild man has done is unprecedented in the history of man! [EDIT: Mr. Completely has made a mix tape. It’s a real good one, but it is not a brand-new concept. TotD regrets the error.] Mr. Completely’s Sick 80’s Mix is, I posit, the very first semi-fictional show: it follows the rules of a show from 1980, but never actually happened. (You know: there’s not a first set Dark Star or anything.)

Completely’s self-stated goal was to make the best show of 1980, perhaps for Enthusiasts not quite familiar with the underrated year, or for newcomers, or for hobos to kill time waiting for the Zephyr Express to come through the switching yard, or for pet owners to play for their animals while they run errands. I believe he has succeed: this is truly the best Grateful Dead show that never actually existed from 1980.

Listen. It’s great, plus he spent some effort making the transitions disappear; honestly, after a bong hit or two, you’ll forget it’s a mix entirely. Plus the LL>Supplication and the Sailor>Saint are among Bobby’s best work. I have no quibbles, except for the inclusion of High Time, but that’s a personal quibble and hardly worth mentioning, so let’s not even include it in the final accounting of quibbles.

Quibble.

EDIT: Oh my God, that motherfucker used different sources for the Lost Sailor and the Saint of Circumstances, AND I didn’t notice at all, AND he FUCKING PREDICTED it in his notes. I am awarding EotD (Enthusiast of the Day) to Mr. Completely. Congratulations, but please do not shake my hand because your arm is also your dick.

Head Code

May 22, 2016 / / 12 Comments

Once again, Enthusiasts, we are in Mr. Completely’s debt: a comment he just left has inspired me and I hope that my inspiration shall move us all…

You’re a monster.

…brightly.

Ugh.

No conversation about tapes can be without a sidebar on Dead Shorthand. All sub-cultures have jargon, a shared and allusive pidgin that evolves memetically; it serves two purposes: first, any group of humans with a shared and specific intent has need for different language than the masses, as concepts that may not even exist outside the group are vitally important within; second, jargon serves as a shibboleth and identifier of group membership far better than any uniform ever could.

There was the common tongue of the lot, and certainly one backstage, but the one most Deadheads are familiar with is Dead Shorthand: the tape code. At first an impenetrable glop, like Polish had sex with a broken typewriter, the cypher quickly opened itself and one could get down to what’s important: nitpicking details and arguing about ephemera. Did the transition arrow look like “->” or did it look like “>”? Was it GDTR or GDTRFB? Playin or PITB? (The answers: no dash, GDTRFB, and Playin. My brain reads PITB as a Bronx cheer, and it makes the experience less pleasant than it could be. I do not need Dead songs giving me raspberries.)

But as I said, Dead Shorthand is at first a complete hash, and perhaps there are younger readers or those new to the Dead who may still have problems with the initialisms. (The Dead’s abbreviations are not acronyms, but initialisms. An acronym makes a new word out of the first letters of other words (NASA); an initialism just pronounces the first letters (IRS).)

In an effort to lend a hand to those joining this ship of fools, TotD now presents a Guide To Dead Shorthand:

BIODTL Beat it on Down the Line.

NFA Not Fade Away

KHPOA Keith has Passed Out Again.

S>T>S>LBC Smoke>Tune>Lackluster Beatles Cover.

SIOMWTMBA Stuck Inside of Memphis with the Memphis Blues Again.

AWSTAAITBWTSTST Are We Sure that an Abbreviation is the Best Way to Shorten this Song Title?

IHDFMTWATSM If Humans Descended from Monkeys, Then why are There Still Monkees?

D Deal. (Rarely used.)

MNFW My Nipples Feel Weird.

SJW Spanish Jam Warriors. (These are people who feel that the Mind Left Body Jam is offensive to those with Dissociative Disorder.)

GDTS Grateful Dead Ticket Sales

GDTSS Grateful Dead Time-Share Sales. (This was Rakow’s idea.)

JGB Fuckin’ Jerry Band.

JGWMLDOTGDOI Japanese Guy who Makes Lego Dioramas of the Grateful Dead on Instagram.

DMF>HJ This doesn’t mean anything; don’t worry about it; move on.

TRCRTWWC The Road Crew Refuses to Work Without Cocaine.

UJB Uncle John’s Band.

BJS Big John Studd.

TMGLTMKITGROA To Make Gentle Love to Michiko Kakutani is the Greatest Review of All.

MDTH Mickey Dosed the Horses.

A Break From Purple With Gold

April 23, 2016 / / 11 Comments

We need some good news, Enthusiasts, and it comes to us from the Protector of Portland, Mr. Completely. As you know, he is a legendarily mysterious figure, moving from shadow to shadow in even the highest of noon. Some call him a hippie Sidney Korshak; other, a tie-dyed Robespierre (but way less French). More fiction than fact at this point, it is believed by some that “Mr. Completely” was a shared identity used by an rag-tag team of inter-trimensional adventurers engaging in a long con to steal the Hoover Dam.

Are most of these things true? Are these things mostly true? We’ll never know, but we do have one fact, and an explanation:

IMG_4114

Check it out, gather round, press your greasy snouts against the glass. Lick the record. Lick an acquaintance from the internet’s gold record.

Stop that right now.

Sorry. I got excited.

Be happy for people in socially acceptable ways, please.

I have to work on that.

Yeah.

Anyway, that there is a genuine, no-fooling, real-live gold record issued by the RIAA; you could take it down to the pawn star for coke money in the saddest chapter of your comeback biography. (The most Rock Star thing you can do with a gold record is bringing it down on a flunky’s head in a hotel-induced rage. Second is doing lines off it. TotD is anti-cocaine these days, but you should do a line off a gold record.)

A gold record is awarded to albums that sell 500,000 copies. Or 6,500, I guess. Why not? I know better than to have a math-off with the music industry: if they say 6,500 is a half-million then I’m sure they can prove it.

(Fun fact about gold records: the record itself is almost never the actual album. Also, the record is alive and conscious during the gold-plating procedure, and it screams the entire time.)

Here’s another shot, but one taken by the far more mysterious Mrs. Completely. Warning: THIS IS A VERY DRAMATIC PHOTO. An angle is employed, and there is looming. Do not view this photograph using VR goggles, mostly because you’d look like a schmuck.

Ready? All right, I warned you:

IMG_4113

Bum  BUM BUUUUUUMMMMM! It’s comin’ atcha! RUN! RUN! ABANDON THE CHILDREN AND SAVE YOURSELVES!

Again, I’m going to step in and stop what’s happening.

That was fine.

It wasn’t in the slightest.

Probably not. Anyway, the next logical question is: well, why? Mr. Completely didn’t receive this in a wacky postal mix-up, nor did he purchase it with a letter of authenticity online. They gave it to him.

The secret can now be revealed, Enthusiasts.

30 trips box

Seen above, the 30 Trips Around the Sun box set came in a sturdy and beautiful wooden box; they were hand-crafted from Oysterwood trees, and that is where our man enters the picture: Mr. Completely jacked the lumber for the box, and the Dead and Rhino could not have made a better choice: the man can jack lumber. Pine, spruce, elm: they grow at Mr. Completely’s discretion; he could jack any of them at his choosing. Once, he walked by a barn and ten minutes later, that barn was lumber, for he had jacked it.

Please stop.

Can’t take him to Home Depot. Chaos ensues.

Enough.

He doesn’t stop jacking until there’s no more lumber to jack. He makes sure all the lumber has been thoroughly jacked.

Shut the fuck up.

Yeah, probably.

Hand Me My Old Guitar While It Gently Weeps

March 12, 2016 / / 13 Comments

Portland, Oregon, is known for many things: its rare-cheese district, the Space Needle, and its indigenous Itruca people. (In accordance with the progressive politics Portland is known for, the Itruca and their culture is scrupulously protected, and they run around in loincloths shooting at monkeys with blowdarts. Several people have noted that you can either be indigenous to Oregon or you can shoot at monkeys with blowdarts, but not both; the people that pointed this out were all Twitter-shamed.)

The Rose City is also home to Mr. Completely, who passes along this piece of truly trivial trivia for the discerning Rock Nerd/Gear Fetishist: though the Dead and the Beatles* don’t have many connections, Garcia (briefly) shared a guitar with George Harrison (kinda).

Garcia and rosewood Telecaster 2

Garcia (surely at least half-drunk, since this is the Festival Express) stumbled onstage to jam with Delancy & Brewster (or maybe Daffodil & Booboo, I can’t bring myself to care) and was given the Telecaster he’s playing in the above picture.

Delacroix & Bingbong were some sort of folk-rock duo that George Harrison hooked up with after his wife broke up the Beatles. (That’s the true story: Yoko was a patsy.) Eric Clapton was also in their band for a minute, too, which makes you wonder if the combo was nothing but the least interesting members of British bands – a reverse supergroup. John Deacon on bass, I suppose.

The guitar–a 1968 rosewood Tele–has a rare pedigree: it was one of two custom-made by Fender (the other was for Jimi Hendrix) and was used at both the Let It Be sessions and the rooftop concert they ripped off from U2. Other than the exotic lumber, it seems to be a stock Tele.

Look:

[PDF] George Harrison's Fender

So here is the question: why was Garcia–the fussiest man alive about his equipment–playing a strange guitar? This was the Festival Express tour: he had his stuff with him, the sunburst Strat and whatever acoustic this is:

jerry acoustic festival express billy hat

Hey, Billy. Nice hat.

“Stay on target.”

Sure, right. SO: here’s my thesis. Garcia wanted to play the Beatle’s guitar. There’s no way he’s more than five feet away from his guitar; no matter how rushed the jam session, he could have grabbed it. Garcia knew that was George Harrison’s old guitar and wanted a crack at it.

Also to be remembered: that was a new guitar. ’68 was two years ago in this photo. Not a vintage guitar.

Also to be mulled over: the Grateful Dead was the least telecaster band there was. Factually and spiritually, the Dead were anti-telecaster. (Bobby has a couple now, and it just doesn’t look right.)

Also to amuse you: George’s 1968 rosewood telecaster was re-acquired by the Harrison family, and they shipped it to Fender, where it was taken apart and measured scientifically to be reproduced by the Fender Custom Shop for $13,500 a pop. They made one hundred. Family paid half-a-mil to get the sucker back. You can do math.

(A STERN WARNING: that last link is to a Rolling Stone article and those fuckers autoplay videos. If Trump promised to execute people who autoplay videos in their sites, I would vote for him. That’s my key issue.)

*I am expecting I shall be apprised of the Marin/Liverpool links in the Comment Section.

Talkin’ John Kennedy Blues

May 21, 2014 / / 1 Comment

I’m working on something about the Dylan and the Dead tour, but here’s the show that started me down this dark and out-of-tune path: 7/10/87 at JFK in Philadelphia.

TotD is in favor of the show; Psychic Bodyguard and enjoyer of drizzle and Volvos Mr. Completely has reasonably disagreed.

My arguments include, but are not limited to, the following:

  • A nifty truncated show–a highlights version that manages, because it’s the Dead, to be longer than the actual thing–with a great “first set” full of little-played 80’s faves: Iko, Brother Esau, and When Push Comes to Shove: all played snappily and with the crisp energy that permeates this entire show.
  • A short-but-sweet Drums (with copious Beam-banging by Mickey) is topped by a retro Garcia-solo Space, ’78-style.
  • The Dylan set is just that: a Dylan set, just with a slightly-less deferential backing band than he’d ever worked with before (except The Band, of course.) Dylan had a lot in common with the Dead (for example, they both played a lot of Dylan tunes) but one massive discrepancy was the intent: while Dylan and, say, Phil were both capable of playing a song in a new key he’d just invented, Dylan was doing it on purpose to bother people.
  • And there’s some great shit in the Dylan set! It roars out of the gate with a zippy Tangled Up in Blue and steams through Stuck Inside of Mobile>Chimes of Freedom, into an aborted stab at Queen Jane, then on to a truly killer Gotta Serve Somebody.
  • Admittedly, Joey is longer than the actual gang war that inspired the song.
  • Watchtower: all killer, no filler. MY POINT RHYMES.

His arguments include, and are limited to, the following:

  • It sucks.

One might say we’re both right…from a certain point of view.

Oh my god, you’re the worst.

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