Tag: ramrod (Page 1 of 3)

Regardless of what Grand Funk Railroad might have asserted, the Grateful Dead were the most American Band.

Grand Funk didn’t make any claims to their level of American-ness. They stated that they were “an” American Band.

Fuck you and your centrism.

I’ve grown tired of your bad attitude.

Took you much longer than most people. Anyhoo, the Dead were as American as diabetes, cheating in baseball, and having a solid-but-not-perfect grasp of geography. 97.3% of all Dead shows took place in the States–you can check my math if you want: 65 foreign gigs out of 2356 total–and half of that remaining 2.7% was Canada. Yet the band did not spread its love, and love-related infections, evenly.

Five states (not four, like I said Without Research) saw no Grateful Dead shows whatsoever: Delaware, North and South Dakota, Wyoming, and Arkansas. The middle three make sense, as those locations are a million miles from anywhere, and they’re not on the way to someplace decent, and no one lives there, anyway. Skipping Delaware and Arkansas is more puzzling, though. Delaware is tiny and pointless, but there is a big-ass college there that, by all rights, the Dead should have hit in 1971; Arkansas was such a reliable rockyroll tour stop that anthems were written about the local chicks. Grand Funk wrote one. Remember Grand Funk? We were just discussing them. You forgot? It was, like, 200 words ago; how could you forget? Are you taking your medicine?

Please stop harassing your readership.

FUCK THEM AND THEIR CENTRISM.

You’re making no sense tonight. It’s worse than usual.

Furthermore, the Dead played five states only once, but you could also count it as six. To wit: the band played one-nighters in Montana (74), New Hampshire and Mississippi (both 78), Idaho (83) and South Carolina (85), but they also only went to Alaska once, in 1980. While on the tundra, they played three nights in a row, but I think it should count along with the other five.

And, as long as we’re talking Dead-related confusion, here’s that fucking Les Paul Junior that pops up throughout the 70’s:

WHOSE FUCKING  GUITAR WAS THIS?

The second bidet was installed in the bathroom like normal, and after Billy was appraised of how foreign an object it was (“You mean even the name’s French? I’ll pass.), the band was free to launder their nethers to their hearts’ content.

The road crew began using it as a drinking fountain immediately; Phil and Bobby beat them back with truncheons and chair legs.

“Back! No! Not for you, beast!”

“Not beast,” the road crew said. “Always to walk on two legs. Never to walk on four.”

“Drink from your bowls!”

And then Ramrod started licking himself. It was a weird afternoon.