Musings on the Most Ridiculous Band I Can't Stop Listening To
That night, Mike forgot most of the lyrics
“It spreads SKIN to SKIN!” he proclaimed, for all this time, Mike Gordon had secretly been a doctoral candidate in epidemiology from UC Santa Cruz (Go Banana Slugs) studying whatever the hell’s going on with Bobby lately.
This find did it: he had tenure!
He had it, he had it.
Trey was, and is, a rather polite guy: parents did a good job with him, so he felt it was’t his place to musically cut in when Bobby was soloing.
Unfortunately, for 30 years, the way Bobby knew it was time to stop soloing and go back to playing chords with that pinky-trill thing was when Garcia ran out of patience and started playing over him real loud.
When this didn’t happen, Bobby doubled down and just kept playing and it got weird. 35 minutes in, the bass player snuck off, ostensibly to pee but he didn’t come back. The audience was confused and a mood overtook the room that can obly be described properly in the German language. Bobby was crying at the end: he just wanted his Garcia.
I’ve been thinking about the Tahoe Tweezer from that improvisational group, The Phishes, and I want to see it as its own thing, to not compare, to not demand a referent, but it just happens: certain stars are binary. Peanut butter goes with jelly; Yankees with the Sox; toilet activities with shame. The Phishes will always be compared to the Dead, because like the Dead, they’re not special: White guys playing Stones covers in hockey arenas; iconic guitar-god frontman with a penchant for opiates; unpleasant-looking, half-Jewish rhythm section.
Getting back to this immense Tahoe Tweezer: the only thing I could compare it to was a ’72 Dark Star. When they got long, and deep, and mystical. In ’72, sometimes you can’t tell whether they’re going to make it back. Will they paint themselves into a corner while painting their masterpiece? Would they have to cheat and just SLAM another song up against some abstract doodlings? That was the Dead’s way of admitting defeat in a jam, that they had neglected to take a left turn in Albuquerque and each of them had subtly suggested a number of options for songs, but no one could agree, so Bobby (always the most quietly obstinate onstage) would just Leroy Jenkins them all into Sugar Magnolia.
After listening to a few Dark Stars, I realized why I’ll come back to the Dead. Why this music is good and should be shared and kept and treasured.
It was after Dark Star, actually: they had gone into Wharf Rat and I listened to these men (and Mrs. Donna Jean) sing a song about two men on opposite sides of a story, and I have been both of those men and that has been my story and that has not been my story.
It’s the songs, it was always the songs. I grew to love the men who sang them because of the songs that they sang. I’m a first-set guy. Tell me a story.
Tell me the one you told me last night: it’s the only way I’ll sleep.
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.
It’s Thoughts on the Dead, not on the Psychedelic Sound or whathaveyou. I actively dislike most of the Dead’s contemporaries: I once saw Grace Slick in an airport and farted on her, just on general principle. Ditto for San Francisco and hippies and Woodstock and all of that self-congratulatory suckjob circus. One of the problems with liking the Dead is that you also like reading about them, which means you will inevitably read an article with a sentence in it that starts:
Joan Baez and her sister Mimi Farina…
Murder sprees have started with less potent words than those.
Neither is this any sort of location for information on the jam band scene. Those festivals are not my land, nor are those dirty-soled fuckers pooping into a bucket any kin to me at all. First off, I am the opposite of Bear Grylls (What would that be? Truman Capote? Wendy Wasserstein?) when it comes to tents and sleeping bags, and if we’re going to be completely honest, I am one crying jag away from complete agoraphobia.
So, no festivals.
It is the Dead I love: their interplay, their evolution, their patently false mythology, their utter humanity. I can’t compare them to any other band because I don’t have the relationship with any other band I have with the Dead.
And I certainly won’t compare them to Phish, definitely not on the internet.
There’s three things I don’t argue about on the net: the existence of God, how many pictures of my dong I’m going to send you, and Dead v. Phish. (The correct answers, by the way, are: if He does exist, He’s got a lot of explaining to do; you will receive seven pictures of my dong; and, Dead rules, Phish drools.)
But there’s this:
[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2eBibggCibE]
Listen to it. Do you trust me by now? I mean, not when I tell you about how Brent used to hunt Beluga whales with an explosive harpoon in between tours because he insisted on using ambergris as a sexual lubricant, no: when I tell you to listen, to take a break, close your eyes. Get real high: so high your lips just fall the fuck off.
And listen to these four men (and Mrs. Donna Jean) at the absolute height of their powers. I’m going to listen, too, again.
p.s. Brent actually did that shit, The Cove-type shit. Yes, it was massively fucked up, but on the other hand, his B3 playing and high harmonies added so much to the sound.
p.p.s. I apologize for the title of this post, but lawdy miss clawdy, did it make me giggle when I thought of it.
PLUS at 21 minutes in, they tease Goin’ Down the Road. Go listen.
And here’s the security-cam footage of the incident.
Phil throws all the punks off of his lawn starting at six minutes in.
[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lAi_hZ64YWI]
“You young hottentots and roustabouts think you can have all the fun? NO! PHIL WILL HAVE SOME FUN, TOO!”
“YAAAAAAAAY!”
“FINE! I’ll jump on your stupid trampolines just this once!”
“What I’m saying is, you guys are Phish, I’m Phil Lesh: why don’t we do the Phlesh Tour?”
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