Thoughts On The Dead

Musings on the Most Ridiculous Band I Can't Stop Listening To

Page 796 of 1031

Jerry Just Left Chicago

The Crowd. Grateful Dead Concert  Raceway Park Englishtown NJ 3 September 1977 | James R Anderson Photographer

Chicago will not look like this. Not thrown together and temporary: you will not see any seams or inner workings, unless you pony up for the VIP Road Crew Experience. For only five grand, you get to show up at dawn, carry speakers around, and punch people at the band’s behest.

There will be more shirts; there’s so much more of all of us these days.

Outside balloons will not be permitted into Soldier Field. For the courtesy and safety of all, there will be officially sanctioned balloons on sale in the facility for $12 each. (Each balloon comes with a limited-edition string as a free gift.)

There will be far, far less smoking. However, there will be infinitely more vaping, as there was no vaping in 1977. So, mathematically, any vaping at all would be infinitely more, but you get my point.

She’ll be there. She’ll be there, and when the band kicks into one of their good-time songs, she’ll think about an afternoon in New Jersey a lifetime ago, when she was beautiful and he was born to take his shirt off and the music played so damn loud you couldn’t hear anything at all.

Rolling Stone Away The Dew

Another day, another Rolling Stone interview with a Grateful Dead, another batch of important facts left out of the article at the command of Big Dead. Why were the following points Robert Hunter made omitted from the article? Is it because they cause autism? Probably.

  • Has outsourced his lyrics to Bangalore since around ’92.
  • Middle name: Corn Bread.
  • Makes deliberate grammatical mistake around John Perry Barlow just to fuck with him.
  • Raked in a bunch of cash translating poetry after he realized that the people paying him had no way of checking his translation and just started making shit up, which is much quicker.
  • Only listens to speed metal now.
  • Has been banned from 12 zoos for exposing himself to the marsupials.
  • And seven for exposing himself to the patrons.
  • It should be mentioned that the patrons he chose to expose himself to were wearing fanny packs, so they were kinda marsupials.
  • Wishes he and Garcia had written more novelty songs.
  • Not a germaphobe, but won’t get near a buffet. (“Why don’t I just pay a transient to shit in my mouth?” Hunter would often ask when offered access to the buffet table.)
  • The dark star was his butthole.
  • Did not care for Montevideo. Nothing to do there.
  • In 1975, gave himself scurvy, just to see what it was like.
  • Awful. Scurvy is awful.
  • His poetry dick is a dactyl long.
  • Tried writing with Bobby one last time in 1981, but by then, Bobby required a farmboy to drunkenly shoot at him to write a song, so that was it for the partnership.
  • Played the character of Jack Tripper in the pilot of Three’s Company, only to be fired and replaced by John Ritter.

Palm Your Face

bobby phil billy ugh

Billy remembered the muted shmap of bare feet on clean wooden floors, and of women breathing , and the sound of people not making any noise in particular. From first to second position, the right foot raising a parabola of dust to dance along in the sunbeam.

It was his mother’s dance studio, and he beat along on his little drums; he had good time for a kid and he got better quickly. Sometimes he would play from underneath the brown baby grand in the corner. (It took up too much space, but Billy’s mom had gotten it for free, so there you go.)

Billy would play with the piano player as the women danced and the children learned to dance.

And sometimes he would remember those early childhood days while those two geeks were getting up to whatever bullshit that is right there, and he would facepalm so hard that he broke his nose one time.

Too Many Beards

jerry bobby 5_17_77

Garcia’s beard hated Bobby’s beard from the time it was 5 o’clock shadow. If the beards got less than five feet from one another, they would hiss and spit and pop their claws; one time Mickey’s mustache got in between them and had to be taken to the vet.

After just one tour, Bobby made a tough decision, grabbed a razor and sent his beard off to live at a farm, where it runs and plays with other beards and is best friends with a pair of muttonchops.

Sneak Preview

bobby trey phil omnstage
“You’re not my Garcia.”

“And you’re damned lucky for it, mister. If I were your Garcia, you would be going straight back to your dressing room to put on some human clothes.”

“Are you talking about the stringent dress code you maintain in your side project?”

“Phish is not my side project, Bobby.”

“Got one fucker looks like Divine’s nerdy brother/sister, got another sitting next to Kanye at Fashion Week.”

“Page looks okay.”

“Page looks like he has a game of Settlers of Cataan going. Don’t tell me how to dress, Not Garcia.”

« Older posts Newer posts »