- Like all great American songs, Sugaree is half-original and half-stolen from an anonymous black guy from the 30’s.
- “Please forget you knew my name” is iambic quadrameter, and also very sad.
- The first solo.
- The little shiver in Garcia’s voice when he sings about meeting you at Joo-hooooo-bilee.
- Sugaree was a tiny little biscuit of a tune when it was born, but it grew into a cake large enough to feed Atlanta. (To use a pastry-themed metaphor.)
- Playing in the Band got longer by increments, but Sugaree suddenly expanded to nine times its original length in ’76 or so.
- Although knowing the Dead, they might have just forgotten the ending the first time and decided the song sounded better if you played it for 20 minutes.
- Or maybe Garcia said,
- “Hey, guys. Let’s play Sugaree for 20 minutes.”
- And the guys said,
- “How?”
- And Garcia said,
- “I’ll solo for 18 of them.”
- And the guys were fine with that.
- Billy plays these little THRRRP noises on his snare during the pre-chorus.
- The second solo.
- Garcia was a sloppy-ass guitar player, and he clammed all the time–half-fingered notes and fumbled frettings–but he rarely played the wrong note.
- BUT HE’S DOING THE THING!
- THE FANNING THING!
- I LOVE THAT FUCKING THING!
- To his credit, he always earned it.
- Wasn’t like he would start off the solo going DEEDLEDEEDLEDEEDLE.
- He wasn’t a lunatic.
- Gotta build up to that.
- A man’s gotta choogle before he can deedle.
- The difference between a good Sugaree and an acceptable one is dynamics: there’s only two chords during most of the song, so you’ve gotta get your kicks somewhere other than harmonically.
- There is no third solo, but there might be one day.
Musings on the Most Ridiculous Band I Can't Stop Listening To
Tag: sugaree (Page 1 of 2)
Is there a God? Where did Atlantis get to? Why don’t french fries travel? These are timeless and possibly unanswerable questions, as is “What is the Best EVAR Sugaree?” (The question about the fries is a far more worthy subject of thought: if you could invent a gadget to make french fries that have gone cold edible again, then you would make a ton of money; even if there were an answer to the Sugaree dilemma, and you came up with it, no one would give a shit.)
There is no Best EVAR Sugaree, or any other Dead song, or any other anything: we all know this. (And if you don’t, play along.) You can put together a list of a dozen of the suckers, and say that those are the outstanding performances, but any finer gradation is a waste of time for everyone except the freelancer being paid to put together the listicle; as I am not being paid, I will not rank the Top Ten Harblegarble Sugabarbles.
It’s beneath us.
But, Enthusiasts, can we define the necessary essential traits of a Best EVAR Sugaree? Do a shadow drawing of the Sugaree on the cave wall? I believe we can.
A Certain Vintage No Sugaree from before 1977 can be considered. A Sugaree from 1972 is a teeny-tiny Sugaree, and wobbles about in its crib in an adorable fashion; ’73 is no better, and you know my love for that year. The song needed a couple of years to figure itself out, like a gay teen or a straight teen or any teen at all. (Teens are all fucked up.) What happens when you let sugar age? It turns into booze. A pre-1977 Sugaree is like drinking wine that hasn’t turned into wine just quite yet.
A Certain Length Get that eleven-minute bullshit out of here, Grateful Dead. You think this is a game, Grateful Dead? You get back on that stage, you turn on those amplifiers, and you play Sugaree for ten or twelve more minutes. Sugaree wants to be at least fifteen-minutes long, and not allowing it to self-actualize is racist. Do not be racist against Sugaree, Grateful Dead.
Seriously: Gotta Be Long Like a porn dong or a line of coke (both of which could be found in John Holmes’ trousers), longer is better. Is the longest Sugaree by definition the Best EVAR? No, but kinda.
And The Jams, Sir? What of The Jams? They should be mighty. Like ranging battlefields, slick with blood and victory and D chords. (It must at this point be noted that there are only two chords in Sugaree, except for the little bit before the chorus. Sugaree and Fire on the Mountain are almost mostly the same song.) The jams–of which there are two major ones–must bristle with velocity and lope with keen ferocity; make no mistake, Enthusiasts: Sugaree is Deep Choogle.
How Much Should Garcia Solo? As much as is possible by the laws of man and God.
When Should Garcia Stop Soloing? If a fire breaks out in the venue. Or when it’s time for him to sing. Otherwise, never.
What About That Thing He Does? BEEDLEDEEDLEBEEDLEDEEDLE?
Yeah, That Thing He absolutely must do that in order for the Sugaree to be in contention for Best EVAR, yes.
Other Assorted Requirements For Best EVAR
- Phil has to play that descending lick under “Maybe I’ll meet you on the run,” that he does sometimes.
- Must smell like pine.
- All lyrics remembered. (I mean: within reason. Let’s not be Lyric Nazis.)
- Song cannot break down at the eight-minute mark due to a fistfight between drummers.
- 3.6 weighted GPA, 1300 SAT score, and extra-curriculars.
- Can’t be one of the renditions in which someone (I wont mention Garcia’s name) goes in and out of consciousness several times.
- Credit score of 680, or a co-signer.
I can’t give you a show recommendation, per se: I haven’t listened to the whole show. New bunch of torrents came in, from ’79, and 5/5/79 from the Providence Baltimore Civic Center in Rhode Island Maryland has the best EVAR Sugaree.
It is declared; I have made my decision. Go listen to the Sugaree, and feel free to agree with me in the Comment Section.
Something for all of your senses, Enthusiasts: for your reading pleasure, kinda, is this appreciation of Garcia’s solo(s) from the 5/22/77 Sugaree. The author gets much right, such as the fact than any Sugaree under 15 minutes is by definition a failed Sugaree, but he adopts the Apologetic Deadhead stance I find so irritating.
“I know the Dead aren’t cool–you’re right, you’re right–but I’m not like an obsessive or anything and I shower and on and on.”
To the writer, I respond in the immortal words of Paul Stanley: Do you believe in rock and roll? Well, then: stand up for what you believe in.
Here’s that Sugaree he writes about:
[embedyt] http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fGo6fbu_550[/embedyt]
Also, your ears will enjoy Radio Busterdog live and streaming from Terrapin Crossroads, where Phil’s Phriend for the evening is Chris Robinson, who still has no hips.
I cannot help you with the other senses. Probably bit off more than I could chew with the opening. Oh, well.
Here’s a double-play for the evening: an early Brent-era gem recommended by Ministry of Information for the Cascadia Liberation Army Mr. Completely: 11/23/79 from San Diego–specifically a set-ending beginning Music Never Stopped>Sugaree that was so powerful that it temporarily de-stabilized the Deutschmark, the Franc, and the Kroner. (TotD officially misses all the old money.)
Oh, goody: they’re re-releasing all the official albums for iTunes. This marks the 22nd straight format I haven’t given a shit about Go To Heaven in.
I can understand why they keep doing things with these albums, these weak sisters: paper-thin footnotes the vast majority of them. They’re product. Nice art. Everything’s already done, and if you’re a record company guy, well, those deck chairs won’t rearrange themselves, will they?
But they made shitty albums. Even their greatest studio record American Beauty wasn’t near the league of the great and important rock masterpieces of the time. Maaaaan.
There was no such thing as a grateful Dead “song”. There was the tremendous Sugaree from Lake Acid, but there is no “Sugaree”. None is more or less true than any other. Some, however, much longer than the others, and as we’ve discussed, there is no such thing as too much Sugaree. There was a “You Can’t Always Get What You Want”: it was the last song on Let It Bleed, which is the Stones best album. There’s the bit with the French Horn and then the choir sliding into that dissonant seventh chord right before Charlie Watts tumpTHWACKtumpTHWACKs right into the double-time vamp as the children resolve the chord and that’s a fucking SONG. Maaaaan. Every other version, live or whatever, is just a comment on that actual “song”; not all renditions are equal.
One of the reasons for the Stones (among others) producing albums that maybe could almost sorta stand up as art for quite a while, but not the Dead was that the Stones records were made by two, maybe three guys. Mick, Keith, Glyn Johns in the Rolling Truck Mobile Stones Thing. A lot of people played the songs, but the record? That was two guys. The drummer was not allowed anywhere near the console. Bill Wyman once wandered in the control room, and Mick was rude to him until he left. Those Brits!
In the Dead, however (it seems like when you’re comparing the Dead to standard business or musical practices, the phrase “In the Dead, however” gets used a lot), the aggressive equality practiced onstage backfired in the studio.
This sort of thing doesn’t get Dark Side of the Moon made:
The proper tempo of Sugaree is dream.
There have been new visitors to the bloggings, mostly from the wonderful and masculine-smelling Reddit, which was exciting and sexual. Problem was, I think the last few postings on the bloggings have been kind of weird and insular and not really about the Dead as much as my wrestling with the Creeping Insanity and that fucker just having his way with me. No contest, just taking his sweet time.
Until I yearned for it.
That is the kind of shit we had the meeting about.
Right, right. Sorry. So: who is this for? If you fit any one of the following descriptions, you should dive into the archives.(Actually, physically dive into them. Running start right into the computer: I swear it will work. It is an app.)
- You love the Weather Report Suite, yet realize the lyrics are so dumb they ought to be quarantined. Black dirt live again, my ass. (But here’s an awesome WRS from the Curtis Hixon Convention Center in Tampa on 12/18/73. This is one of my favorite names for a 70’s arena. I just wish it had merged with the nearby building in Pembroke Pines to become the Curtis Hixon Sportatorium, which is the most 70’s you can get in three words. You can almost picture the enormous tie knots and boxing still being relevant.
- You’ve ever idly wondered whether, after building the Wall of Sound, they considered building a Wall of Sight. Or maybe a Wall of Taste. (Warning: do not taste the Wall of Taste.)
- You like the parts that are in between the songs better than the songs.
- Occasionally–not always, but certainly not never–Jack Straw gets on your last nerve.
- You have forgiven Vince, but still choose not to listen to his dinky tinklings.
- Your ongoing argument with yourself regarding The Greatest ___ Ever! has resorted to factionalism, dirty-fighting, and–since Billy is involved–crotchpunching.In my head, it feels as though each year has achieved sentience and is now throwing evidence around when I’m trying to do other things like eat or cry or eat while I’m crying. It’s like the Italian parliament up there, but with nary a spicy meatball.
- You want Sugaree to be longer. No matter how long it is, you believe it could stand to gain another 8 minutes or so.
- You’ll put up with Bobby’s cowboy bullshit, but not his first set turn as Silly Dixon.
- You got here by googling “rule 34 grateful dead.” You are sick, though constantly recurring, blips on my analytics and I welcome you to a place where you’ll be accepted. (Warning: there will be NONE of that “slash” fan fiction stuff where you take other people’s characters and hump them together like they were your childhood toys. However, we may dip our toes into that shiver-inducing pond by figuring out the most horrifying match-up: my money’s on Phil/Billy, because in the whisper of time before Billy started punching dicks, it would be awkward.)
- Now you’re thinking about it, aren’t you? Even if you don’t want to, your brain’s just going “Brent/Mickey? Hornsby/Phil?” Tell me what the worst of the terrible, terrible images your brain is rifling through right now against your will in the comments. Best one wins a lifetime supply of Beard! for men with beards. Have a beard? Use Beard!
“Hey, Bobby? I was hoping you’d play slide tonight,” is a sentence only uttered by one man in history. It is our bad luck that the man was Bobby. He used to talk to himself a lot, on the road somewhere between Iowa and Summer. Immediately after viewing the classic made-for-TV movie ‘Sybil,’ Bobby demanded the rest of the group recognize his other selves, except Bobby had named them all Bobby and they all had his personality and, quite honestly, Bobby hadn’t even decided real concrete-like on precisely how many of them there were, so the whole situation just played itself out, quietly and quickly
Dear whoever put together the soundboard tape for 4/21/78 at Rupp Arena: thank you for doing what you did, allowing me to–at virtually no expense–possess this show, this wonderful artifact. But there is no such thing as 4 minute and 40 seconds of stage banter in 1978. Maybe in ’70, they would have sat there bullshitting with the rowdy kids in the front row on the Fillmore East, but no longer. Not here, now.
From the end of the Hiatus (June of ’76) to Keith leaving the band (2/17/79) can be seen as a gradual speedening up. Not a typo, a choice: speedening.
But here’s the thing about 4/21/78 at Rupp arena: apparently no one showed up and the security was dicks. That’s the story. Which is the problem with knowing anything, really, about the actual gig part of it–it removes the textuality of the text (well, not just the text, but also the text) and places the praxis of the ur-Dead and the…ah, fuck it. i can’t even make fun of that kind of crap anymore. The best thing one can say of any music is nothing, there’s music on, shit the fuck up. But the second best thing you can say is, “Listen to this. Now, Now, you must.” When he got excited about an upcoming song or passage or transition, my friend Glenn would grab your forearm and he was strong. There was no getting away from the Sugaree he was offering you.
What I’m getting at is that I like to look up the shows that I listen to and read the reviews, but sometimes you see things like this:
This was a really good show for the Dead. I am from Lexington so I know they were probably playing to just a few thousand fans inside a huge 24,000 capacity seating arena. I guess that’s what they mean when they say their were plenty of seats down in the front. This was the first time the Dead ever played Lexington and it would also be their last time. That’s too bad, I wish I knew why.
HOW CAN YOU WISH FOR THAT INFORMATION? IT WAS CONTAINED WITHIN YOUR PREVIOUS SENTENCE. THEY DIDN’T PLAY THERE AGAIN BECAUSE NO ONE SHOWED UP
PS: Seriously, go listen to the Rupp show. They’re killing it.
The Jerry Ballad is one of a number of sacrosanct moment of the show, along with the Dylan Slot, the Closing Raver, and the Brent Bathroom Break. (Or the second set Estimated in ’77; on two separate occasions, they set up their gear so they could play Estimated on an off-day.) Unlike the other categories, the Jerry Ballad has been there since the very beginning, along with the part of the show where the drummers get high while the rest of them irritate the audience and then the reverse.
The songs that work in the Jerry Ballad slot are perfect examples of what I call The Lope, that uniquely Dead stop-and-start stumble. Ramble On Rose, Sugaree. Slow it down a little and you’ve got Row Jimmy (or the later versions of They Love Each Other). Speed it up and it’s Brown-Eyed Women (or the early versions of They Love Each Other). It is the sound of a small barefoot boy in overalls ambling along with his donkey in the South that only exists in the first 20 minutes of rock star bio-pics. The donkey may be wearing a hat. Bum-BA-Bum-BA-Bum: the beat toodles to and fro.
Black Peter does that. So did Standing on the Moon and Ship of Fools and Wharf Rat. Sing Me Back Home never did that: it might be the worst of all Jerry Ballads. It is a perfect exemplar of the maxim Keep it snappy, boys! They’re DYING out there! Plus, SMBH was always a victim of the Dead’s most pernicious trait: the tempo drift. Songs have a certain tempo they sound right in. A 10 bpm deviation either way leads to the rushed, coked-out clatter od ’85, or the sludgy miasma of the Fall ’76 shows. They never got the tempo for Sing Me right, which might not have been such a problem but not for the fact that they were incapable of playing the song for anything less than a dozen minutes at a time.
(Bobby also had interests in a late show weeper. In fact, that’s what he called it: the Bobby Weeper. When he told Garcia about this, Garcia said nothing, just walked away and found Billy and the crotchpunching began.)
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