Musings on the Most Ridiculous Band I Can't Stop Listening To
43 years ago today was Veneta. I’ve written about it before: you can bathe in my glory and insight and dong observations here.
After you’ve read about it, you may watch it here:
Following which, you should do your best artistic interpretation of Veneta. You may use any medium you choose. Here’s mine:
Let’s say that 9/15/72 (previously only available as a fragment or an AUD, but now streamable in full and with the Charlie Miller seal of approval) was a handsome gentleman, and you a sultry but respectable young lass. 9/15/72 invites you out on a date: what can you expect?
As with most days, the theme has emerged of its own volition and it seems to be The Spectrum of Sexy: a picture from each end of the Sexy-ometer.
So, to balance out the comfy-jeans-and New-Balance Dadilloquence that was our Philbert in a recent pic, TotD now presents Rockin’ Skinny Arms Phil: his t-shirt is too small, his bass is too big, but his sexy is just right,
![[PDF] Grateful Dead & Friends -](https://thoughtsonthedead.files.wordpress.com/2015/07/pdf-grateful-dead-friends.jpg)
The core four.
Also, Precarious Lee used a Polaroid of the speaker arrangement behind Billy as his résumé.
From an esteemed and pedigreed source comes this: A 10-hour supercut of all the Dark Star from ’72. Like me, I’m sure, you’ve often wondered, “How much Dark Star was in 1972?” Here is the answer to the question: this much.
I am reminded of the classic cocktail party game for spotting sociopaths: your mother dies and at the funeral you meet the love of your life. you have never met this person before, and they disappear without exchanging information with you. How do you get in touch with this person.
The answer is, of course, “Kill your father and meet the person at the funeral.” It’s supposed to snoop out psychos, but it always seemed more like a riddle than a true psych evaluation to me.
How do you tell a True Enthusiast: upon hearing there’s a 10-hour supercut of all the ’72 Dark Stars, you immediately ask if there will be one for ’73, as well.
Hey, Mrs. Donna Jean. Whatcha doing?
“Feelin’ it. Waitin’ for my part. Being skinny.”
Yeah. You kinda look like a Pez dispenser.
“Bless your heart.”
You explained what that meant to me last time we talked.
“Did I? It was a while ago.”
Aw, Mrs. Donna Jean, don’t be like that. It’s bad enough with Garcia’s whining.
“But: he’s dead, honeysuckle. Me, they just don’t wanna pay.”
Still, he’s pretty insistent on being there. Keeps huffing and puffing about “backup bands getting delusions of grandeur.”
“I’m sure I don’t know whatever he may mean.”
…
You and Bobby were the only ones with chins, weren’t you?
“Mickey had one, but where I grew up, we were taught it was polite to pretend Jews didn’t exist, so: yes.”
During the cold and windy Bickershaw festival in the north of England, the Dead experimented with a new idea: “the crowd is wherever you think it is.”
Are they this way? That way? On the ground behind Billy?
Yes.
I’m not even making an attempt at going left to right, and shall–just to be contrary–begin with the waif to the easternmost of the pic.
The cities of the American West have shopkeepers for fathers and whores for mothers. Of course, so does every other city on this planet, but the West is so young that there are photographs of the settlers. (Well, the most recent batch.) This puts a crimp in mythology.
The original city walls of Rome, we’re told, were laid out by Romulus after laying out his twin brother Remus in a fight over where the boundaries should be placed. Which is a rude thing to do, but he was literally raised by wolves.
And since this happened around 2800 years ago, we have no proof one way or the other. Common sense says that human nature is human nature and, therefore, Rome was originally a trading post situated near a river for easy access, a couple guys set up an inn and stables, a few women built a house, then a church came by a little later to collect tribute from the inn and tell everyone the woman’s house was one of ill repute.
Things begin, but nothing simply starts.
As is the case with the location of 7/25/72. Portland finds our heroes in town for the last two shows of an astoundingly good four show mini-tour, the first half (mostly) of which is available on Volume 10 of the criminally underrated and foolishly cancelled Digital Download series.
It’s a doozy, but instead of the usual review–
You’ve never seriously reviewed a show in your life. You pretend to have a philosophic/aesthetic disagreement with the practice, but it’s mostly that you can’t be bothered.
–I shall present the awesomess of this show in a somewhat novel way: I’ll list a fact about this show or the city of its birth, and you guess True or False. Ready? Go:
The correct answers are: TTFTFFTTFTFTTTF, though not in that order.
Has Garcia always played a maple Strat with a whammy bar at Veneta in ’72? I could have sworn he played Alligator. Did someone reset the Matrix again?
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