The rarest Grateful Dead pepe of all: potato salad TC.
Musings on the Most Ridiculous Band I Can't Stop Listening To
Tag: TC (Page 1 of 2)
Many tales have been told of the Grateful Dead: they’ve been examined from angles musical, financial, sociological, historical, chemical, metaphysical, biographical, academic, and there was a coloring book once. Never, though, has the Dead’s relationship with exercise been detailed, and certainly not with the scholastic rigor I intend to apply to the following bullshit I’m about to make up.
Bobby was the most physical-minded of the group; he cared about the parts of his body that were not his dick or stomach, and engaged in strenuous and joyful fits of exercise, plus many soothing and barefoot yoga sessions. Bobby enjoyed running almost as much as he enjoyed running shorts. In the 70’s, he took up mountain biking, and in the 80’s got into hill biking; the 90’s saw Bobby become interested in riding his bike on flat terrain, and in the 00’s, Ebay was founded, which is where Bobby sold his bike.
Mickey gave Bobby a run for his money, though, and sometimes literally: Mickey liked to combine his athletics with gambling and would often make more money off his impromptu wagering than from a tour. Like Bobby, Mickey took up bicycling for a while, but always preferred his horses, as it was impossible to dose a bicycle.
And here lies a sheer and fatal drop-off in both athletic ability and exercisial enthusiasm. Except for Bobby and Mickey, every Grateful Dead would be picked last and sent to right field. (There are pictures of Bobby playing softball; there are pictures of Garcia watching softball.) You might pick Billy a little higher up if you were playing hockey and wanted to start a fight.
Billy’s exercise came primarily from running amok. Smoothie in the morning, throw a mailbox at a cop around lunch, run through a hospital with a chainsaw before the show, and then finish up the day with cardio (Billy calls anal “cardio”).
The ocean also provides Billy with a chance to stretch, strengthen, and shape up; he has invented something he calls “sharkour,” but is actually just swimming slowly and looking at fish. (You cannot do parkour underwater as there are no benches to vault over, and even if there were, you can’t vault over anything underwater.)
Phil’s idea of exercise was standing up during a blowjob.
The keyboardists were all over the place, as should be expected: Pig did Tai Chi once, by accident; TC did some fancy bullshit, I’m sure; Keith, along with Mrs. Donna Jean, trained in mixed-martial arts and practiced on each other constantly; Brent was the Marin county free-diving champ three years in a row until he was beaten; Bruce beat him; Vince owed his taut tush to ballroom dance.
Garcia always carried his own briefcase, though sometimes it was heavy.
The casual fan might be amused by Vince’s skullet; the normal human tickled by TC, who looks as if he has been arrested in the Sarasota area three times this month for sexing strangers’ above-ground pools.
The Enthusiast knows that the real fun is Phil, who is not wearing his glasses and, therefore, completely blind.
And–as usual–where the fuck’s Mrs. Donna Jean?
Phil doesn’t even know how to hold that thing, let alone play it.
Also, even in a recording studio in the 60’s, Bobby can find his light.
“Five minutes, guys! Everybody got their cowboy hats? Serapes? We all set on folding chairs?”
The reason the Dead didn’t use a lot of car metaphors is because every time they got anywhere near an automobile, they looked like complete muppets.
The lighting makes it look like Garcia is naked from the waist down, or as my grandpa used to call it, Porky Pigging it.
Garcia was in the service, the Army. It was normal back then for most everybody except sissies, commies, or college boys in their raccoon coats. Mickey and TC were both in the Air Force (Mickey played drums in the Air Force, because the Brass didn’t let him play for three days or so and set fire to a mess hall, so they decided to just let the monster have his Slingerlands and keep the peace.)
Phil was in college and driving a mail truck while shooting speed, which seems like a lovely way to spend a summer at age 22, so no playing soldier for him. Billy got his letter and walked into the draft office, Pall Mall dangling from sneering lips under a newly-grown but already treasured mustache.
“You send me this letter?”
“Ye–”
SHWOKKATHOOM Dicks got punched, dicks got punched left and right, my friend. The sergeant, the lieutenant, the other hard-to-spell things: all of them down, dicks punched, just punched to shit, my man. Everyone got it; sometimes it seemed like he was going harder on the people who were just randomly there. A plumber just in the office got it the worst for some reason, perhaps because he begged. Ah, you think: if Billy hates it when one begs, then therefore, one must fight back to gain his respect.
No! Never fight back. You’re not understanding the main motivator here: when Billy gets to punching dicks, Billy gets to punching dicks. It’s not a competition: it’s a thrust, an urge, he MUST PUNCH DICKS. The thing that pisses him off is the time wasted: beg, bargain, fight, offer to slobber his johnson–these all just register on Billy’s radar as vague buzzing that, every second that it lasts, trends towards white-crazy lightning ruining his brain. You’re making it worse: just lie back and think of Sausalito.
8 – Hallelujah hatracks (Really?)
4 – Dead keyboard players. Not 4 keyboardists for the Dead, 4 dead keyboardists. How is it possible that the mortality rate for musicians in an improvisational country-rock outfit is higher than that of those guys who parachute into forest fires? The family crest of the Dead keyboardist read Pertransiit sine me (Go on without me).
3 – Fancy little shoe racks for TC’s fancy little ankle boots.
210,000 – Number of dollars Lenny Hart stole from the band while “managing” them.
40,000 – Number of dollars Lenny Hart stole during the meeting to try to explain the financial irregularities when someone left the door to the safe open. They were trusting men, at first, our Dead.
88 – Keys on a piano.
176 – How many Keith usually saw.
1 – Number of times a crew member looked Phil directly in the eyes. Just that once.
95 – Live albums released, 110 if you count the Digital Download series (One of which I’m listening to now, the Donna-tacular 4/30/77 at the Palladium in NYC. (Audience copy, if you’re into that sort of thing. Harumph. But, seriously, it’s an AUD: think about whether that’s the person you want to be. AUD guys are to Enthusiasts what fat guys fluent in Klingon are to Trekkies)
13 – Studio albums
2 – That were any good at all.
0 – Number of times the question, “How many fingers does the Grateful Dead have?” can be answered with a whole number.
12,000 – Amount extra versus a standard P.A. it cost to tote the Wall of Sound around. Luckily, it was worth the price because it was “the righteous thing to do, man.” That is an exact quote from Blair Jackson, who was actually talking about something else entirely, but FUCK CONTEXT.
6 – Months it took the righteous thing to do to break the band’s back.
2 – Drummers.
1 – Drummer.
2 – Drummers.
12 – Teenage male hustlers found horribly mutilated throughout the 80’s in a pattern correlating to the Dead’s tour schedule. The culprit was never found, but was described as having luxuriously thick blond hair and singing the high harmony part. The pattern stopped briefly in 1989, but picked up again–far more rapidly now–in 1990, except this time it was females and there’s a weird theory that there were two guys based round this mystery man they call Suburban Lanky. Doesn’t make any sense at all, if you asked me.
40 – Milliseconds after Bobby asked, “Tonight, what if we open…wait for it…with the encore?” that his dick got punched.
300,000 – Dollars spent by Mickey in the winter of 1977 to create his most ambitious percussive masterpiece to date. Mickey planned and rehearsed diligently. He spent over a year writing the score and hired musicians from all over the world, building them a brand-new studio. Then he locked them in that brand-new studio, set it ablaze, and recorded their dying screams. Lou Reed is quoted as saying, “Why didn’t I think of that?” The album was never released, except in Norway where it reached #31 on the Billboard-flurgen charts.
14 – Bucks for the Oven-Roasted Shrimp and Sun-Dried Tomatoes at Phil’s new hotspot, Terrapin Crossroads. Come for the food, stay for the Phil!
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