Musings on the Most Ridiculous Band I Can't Stop Listening To
“WHERE ARE THE JEAN SHORTS?!”
“What jean shorts, man?”
“Wanna play dumb, huh? Parish: put your dick in his ear!”
“Yeah…I’m not gonna do that, Bob.”
“You’d do it if Garcia asked you to.”
“Yes. Of course I would. Are you just figuring out the chain of command?
Keen-eyed Enthusiasts will note: Billy in his finest Sammy Miami cabana wear, Parish is Dennis the Menace, and a whole bunch of goobers staring at Garcia like he had a dick growing out of his neck.
After the show, Phil had the backdrop cut up to make hundreds of hideous t-shirts.
Something about this photo reminds me of Caravaggio. The staging, your eye starting at the upper left and following the shaft of light down, stopped and redirected by the denim workshirt of the rando. Another turn at the coffee cups–horizontal stripes against a vertically-oriented motion to the portrait–and then up to Garcia’s eyes. Nothing there, so a glance at the sweaty glow of his forehead and finally down to the image’s centerpoint, the flame of the Bic lighter.
Is he at a dinner? There are wine glasses. How many people are behind those two waiting so casually? He’d sit there and sign things and bullshit all night unless Parish came and so rudely dragged him away. Garcia would always protest, and then thank him.
And a TotD bonus: Things Bobby Ate At The Fair!
Hot dog, corn dog, cheese dog, lost dog, Nate Dogg, cotton candy, wool candy, lifesaver he found in pocket of jean shorts, astronaut ice cream, cosmonaut borscht, giant turkey leg, deep-fried candy bar, deep-fried hamburger, deep-fried deep fryer (they dip the whole thing in,) fried dough, fried ray, fried me, Italian ice, French fries, Swedish Surprise (the surprise is that it’s Finnish,) every variety of chimichanga (there are only two varieties,) unidentified pills given to him by fans, Cheeto pie, Frito pie, Jared Leto pie, a whole watermelon at once by unhinging his jaw and swallowing the thing, Phil’s dust (there was a footrace at one point.)
Upon being introduced to Garcia, the birthday candles flared up and lit ablaze the shirt of the woman holding the cake, which was not the worst thing in the world, to be honest.
OR
Mickey wished for $600,000 to finish his record Out of Towner, in which he seduces Mormon dudes into doing gay stuff–really gay stuff, stuff straight people won’t hear about for at least 18 months–and then records the sound of their confused weeping afterwards. There are also timbales.
OR
The cake is from Carvel and is called Junkie Puss.
OR
Garcia isn’t actually a stupefied and filthy mess, no: he is workshopping his new improv character, The Grumph.
OR
They jammed Happy Birthday for 15 minutes and Bobby forgot all the words even though there are only six.
OR
You could say anything–quite simply anything–to Garcia at this moment and he would counter with, “Right, man, sure” and scurry back to his dressing room.
OR
It’s tough to see, but the cake is an erotic one depicting a man having sex with a cartoon turkey, which you wouldn’t think would be erotic, but totally is due to the artists at the bakery, Doughy Pete’s. The shop advertises itself as “making cakes you could actually jerk off to” and they’re not lying: security guards have to chase middle-schoolers from the sidewalk out front or else the little pervs start gawking and they get ahold of themselves and you just can’t have that going on on Main Street.
OR
“Cake!”
“That guy right there, he looks sick, it could be Ebola, let’s not take any chances. Parish, bring me the flamethrower: I’ll burn everyone in this building to death if that’s what it takes to save them from Ebola!”
…
“Parish, do we even have a flamethrower?”
“Garcia, for purposes of plausible deniability, I did not hear you ask me that question.”
No one told Parish about “prop chairs”and he nearly fucking killed Bobby.
The Dead experimented with many formats before settling on the Two-Set Solution that finally brough peace to the long-embattled region. Some of them were good ideas, and others the drummers came up with, but since Lost Live Dead refuses to return my phone calls and texts and frowns upon my climbing into his window, I’ll have to illuminate these dark corners of Dead history:
The “All-At-Once” Approach was Phil’s idea, and it wasn’t really his idea so much as it was Charles Ives’ idea, and it was completely awful. Ned Lagin loved it, which should tell you something.
Backwards Day was a spiritual cousin to Opposite Day, I suppose, but instead of just turning their guitars around, the Boys (and Mrs. Donna Jean) turned the whole show around, opening with U.S. Blues, doing the drum solo in the first set, then closing with Promised Land or Bertha, and then just standing there smoking for a while. It was, as you would presume, anti-climactic.
Inside-Out Day might also be considered a spiritual cousin to something, but it was just weird. The band would jam backstage for an hour, then take the stage and smoke, get high, get beejers, get more high, check their gambling losses, poo, and yell at the road crew. Then they would return to their dressing rooms and jam for two hours. This approach angered people.
Karaoke Night with the Dead was a poor attempt to ride a 90’s trend, as was Macarena Night with the Dead. In the former, lucky audience members were allowed to sing with the group until they wandered too close to Garcia and Parish punched them in the head. The latter was exactly what it sounds like and I’m not gonna lie: it caused a suicide or two.
The Wheel of Rock and Roll Fortune is an idea recently dusted off by Elvis Costello, a longtime Deadhead, wherein a large wheel of chance with various song titles is spun and Fata Morgana herself chooses the set list. Except Bear built the Dead’s and he was, you know: utterly mad, so it ran on lukewarm nuclear fusion and the first time it was spun, it generated an EMP burst that took out half of Palo Alto. Also, the Wheel of Fortune, like most things around the Dead, quickly gained sentience and it and the Wall of Sound fucking hated one another.
The Dead in the Round only happened once, and for god reason: Bobby got immediately and violently unwell upon taking the rotating stage. It wasn’t moving that fast, but all those people who got drenched don’t care about details. They got Bobby-juice on ’em.
Parish was a man of the working class and, therefore, insisted on a uniform of vest and no sleeves at all times.
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