“We can’t both do big hair, Ram. We look like an ad in High Times.”
“So, what do you suggest? A schedule? Should we flip for it?”
“Yeah, or I could just accidentally light your hair on fire while you sleep.”
…
“I’ve got a hat.”
“Awesome. Good talk.”
Musings on the Most Ridiculous Band I Can't Stop Listening To
Tag: ramrod (Page 2 of 3)
Parish was a man of the working class and, therefore, insisted on a uniform of vest and no sleeves at all times.
When the Solstice came, there would be a reckoning. This is what the message claimed: build it and there will be a need. It is your destiny that has been written.
Where was it written? Excellent question. Many books. Many. It’s written all over the damn place.
Originally, you’re asking. Huh. Well, buddy: that is a superior question. In the sky, and on the wind, and on the lips of children, and…you ain’t buying this, are you?
Fine. You need to keep this under your hat: the Wall built itself a little bit maybe.
It sounded crazy to everyone. Ramrod came in early most mornings: he was a farm kid and could never sleep much past first light and he would grab donuts on the way in and open up the office and one morning in late ’72, there was a hum….
Those speakers hadn’t been there before. They were on the manifest and battered in the same way that the other speakers were, and festooned on every side with a Stealie or a lightning bolt like the other speakers. but they hadn;t been there before.
Soon a new amplifier arrived, and another. They hadn’t been ordered, certainly not paid for, but there they were and the fucked up thing, the thing that Ramrod couldn’t get his mesh-backed skull around, was that they weren’t new. They had, according to his notes and the purchase orders and even according to Hoyle supposed to be there.
But they hadn’t been there before.
The PA system got larger and larger and soon there was this idea going around: “the wall,” “we could have a big wall,” “what about a whole wall of sounds,” and finally “not A wall of sounds, THE Wall of Sound.”
No one had the idea: all of them had the idea. It cam from nowhere, like those speakers. It hadn’t been there before.
But soon there were more speakers.
“Ramrod, can you move it a foot to the left?”
So that’s why Bobby wore his shorts all those years: it was acceptable within his in-group norms. Ah.
Also: WHAT THE FUCK’s up with G.A. Pornstache there? Ramrod, sure: he was just a wiry little quippie with some Merck up his nose, but WHO IS ROCKIN’ RICKY RAMYOURBUTT? Is he from Finland? Is he named Tom? How much longer those shorts gonna hold up? The only way this guy could be more of an 80’s gay porn star is if he died of AIDS.
WHY!? Why do you have to make things weird?
You did make it rather weird.
This was Bobby’s ponderin’ face, and it meant trouble. There were going to be follow-up questions and Bobby might need Ramrod to fetch the white-board and at least six different-colored markers. Now, after the show: fine. In fact, people would save up topics for Bobby to go ponderin’ over after the show.
Sometimes, though, Bobby got to ponderin’ before the show and the evening was as good as ruined. Bobby only knew 65% of the lyrics the Truckin’ when he was concentrating, so when he was making the expression in the photo?
Because they were professionals, the Dead banned the following topics from being mentioned anywhere near Bobby anywhere near showtime:
- The infield-fly rule.
- Icing.
- Were the Romans nothing more than re-branded Etruscans?
- GIF with a hard “G” or soft?
- Water: sentient, semi-sentient, or a duck’s best friend?
- How would you have played Han Solo, Bobby?
- Why are we so casual and imprecise with language? For example: why do we say “I want to stick it in your butt” or “I want to stick it up your butt” when both of these activities are physiologically implausible? We should say ” I want to stick it within your butt.” What say you, Bob-o?
- The World Cup from a fourth-wave sex-positive proto-cis-queer-feminist (of size) perspective.
- Who’d win in a fight: Freddy vs. Jason; Hulk vs. Superman; Hunter vs. John Perry Barlow; Mickey vs. Billy; the Pyramids vs. the Pentagon (the buildings); pyramids vs. pentagon (the geometric entities); Tastes great vs. less filling; lion vs. grizzly bear (fight); lion vs. grizzly bear (spelling bee–the judge was eaten almost immediately); your mom vs. my balls and/or dong.
- Bobby, these shirts are $17.99 originally and are on sale at 20% off. If the sales tax is 7.5% and I only have a $50, how many shirts can I buy?
- Show your work and stop cheating off Bear
If the Dead were playing more than one night, they would leave the Wall set up and the road crew would draw straws to see who would stay with it; a member of the crew was always onstage with the gear, no exceptions. Ramrod drew the short straw on the first night in that February ’74 run. He had curled up under the piano for a little pre-dawn nap when he head a voice coming from the Wall.
“Feed me,” the voice said.
.
Listen, I don’t know which one of you it was that got here via the search term why do men stick a ramrod in their penis, but it amuses me to think that you might have stuck around once you saw how much dickpunching there was.
And it’s because we’ve lost the toothbrush we usually use.
Most rock road crew types were anonymous, but a few bubbled into the Creem magazine every now and then. Was there a Skydog? (People were allowed to be named Skydog back then, kids.) He was a famous roadie/road manager. Richard Cole, he was a road manager, but he started as a roadie. Lemmy famously carried Hendrix’s amps around. Yet, we can all name at least three of the Dead’s crew.
First off, they all had great, biker-dude names: Rex, Laird, Ramrod, Boogedy-Boogedy-Shoop, Monsterfishfucker, Ethelred the Unready, the Hmong Hmadman–names you could swing a bike chain to.
Secondly, they weren’t roadies, man, they were part of the family, man. And they were paid and treated as such. They had a vote. Once, a roadie for Bon Jovi spoke up at a meeting and Jon had that man’s children brought to the studio to be repeatedly tased in front of him.
The Dead’s crew didn’t want to hop from tour to tour with other bands. They would have been paid the actual going rate, not the “take this pile of money” salary the Dead was giving them, plus they would have been, you know, told what to do. That wasn’t going to work for Parrish and the boys, so when the time came for decisions, the clear path forward was always more shows, more shows, more shows.
If you overpay the roadies and let them vote, then they are sending you to Wisconsin, no matter what kind of shape you’re in, Mr. Just Out of the Coma.
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