Thoughts On The Dead

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

Tag: 1974 (Page 8 of 9)

Miami Vice

August 7, 2013 / / 0 Comments

But what’s spinning at Fillmore South today? We got 6/23/74 from the Jai Alai Fronton as the Grateful Dead bring their talents and sexually transmitted infections to South Beach.

There’s the famously good second set, featuring a Dark Star (actually a Dark Star Jam because Garcia just Bobby’s the words and turns to the band and musically asks, “Instead of going to the turpentine knifefight of dimebags, why don’t we go into the brains of whomever is listening  and melt them?) into Spanish Jam into–wait, maybe someone hasn’t heard it! SPOILER ALERT FOR A FORTY YEAR OLD CONCERT!–U.S. Blues that will seem to you like a magic trick that isn’t actually a trick, just magic. They catch the bullet here, saw the lady in half for real. For realsies, even

Just go listen.

Listen to the whole thing, now because the whole damn thing is both the dank and the nugs. Goodness oozes. Listen to the only ever Let It Rock and a tight, propulsive Black-Throated Wind. (An underrated Bobby number.)

Listen to the way Garcia and Keith soothe over the surely-jangle nerves of the crowd in the nameless, transient jam into Ship of Fools, always one of my favorite of Garcia’s middle-of-the-show midtempo numbers

Do not listen to Seastones.

 

Happiness Is A Warm Pun

June 25, 2012 / / 0 Comments

It’s sequel time here in Fillmore South:

Things I love about the Dead, Part the II

  • When Bobby would say “Thank you,” in that silly high-pitched voice.
  • The end of China Doll where it generally dissolves a little and then Garcia comes in all by himself with the “Take up your China Doll” part, which is really difficult to sing, because the notes are weird AND you have to get the time right, since you’re basically counting the band back in with it AND it’s pitched pretty high, but he got it right far more often than not.
  • The beginning of Truckin’ they’d do sometimes, with the whistles and the snare drums: BRUM-bum BRUM-bum BRRRRRR rum-bum.
  • Occasionally, later in the career, when Bobby would (as is the running gag with both my bloggings and, you know, actual recorded-on-tape reality) forget the lyrics to Truckin’, Phil would start BOMBING away at him and then come in on the next part where they all sing just SUPER LOUD, so clearly seething at the fact that it’s been ten years: learn the words, man.
  • He’s Gone. Not so much on the “Bop bop bop” coda.
  • The jam after Seastones from 6/23/74. Seriously, try to listen to Seastones. Now, on acid. But listen to what Garcia does right after: he plays the sweetest, softest lines, and leads everyone back from the dark place where Ned Lagin touched them.
  • The Baby Dead. The way they would take a riff and just brutalize it, tear it apart and put it back together, mostly the same but weirder for the journey.
  • Their refusal to give in to peer pressure. Often, they would be the only ones in the room who wanted to smoke and bullshit and yell at Bobby for five minutes; the other several thousand people present preferred some form of entertainment. Because, holy god, do these baboons take a long time in between songs. Sometimes for no discernible reason: you can’t hear them talking, nor are they tuning. Were they just wandering around confused for three minutes at a time? It’s not unprecedented: Thelonious Monk did it.

We Could Be Heroes

June 15, 2012 / / 2 Comments

The Dead neither dated nor married for effect. There are no reports of Phil squiring, say, Joyce Dewitt into the Whiskey while wearing an enormous trenchcoat containing Mickey and Billy for some reason, I don’t know, it’s just a funny visual: the two of them LEAPING out from within the coat like that was Phil’s mutant power, to be able to generate two rampaging cashfuckers at will from his vestments. Phil was actually an X-Man briefly, but chafed under the authority of Professor X and got Colossus killed again, so…

He had to transfer to Garcia’s School for Exceptional Youngsters. Garcia was a benevolent presence that infused the grounds with his personality, riding around in his Alembic-made $400,000 wheelchair; he wasn’t crippled, just lazy. His mutant power was to bring people together and spread love and cheer so that everyone in the room was having such a good time that no one saw him sneak off to the bathroom, which he would invariably burn down.

Bobby takes down villains and keeps the peace with the power of his muscular thighs.

Donna is capable of emitting a banshee wail powerful and strident enough to paralyze an enthusiast at ten paces away from a good ’74 Playin’. (Wait, she’s not a mutant? She just sang like that? Huh.)

P.S. Despite my general distaste for most of the dirges of ’76, here’s a goodie from this day in Dead history: 6/15/76 at the Beacon Theater in money-making, heart-breaking Manhattan.

Candyman

June 3, 2012 / / 7 Comments

You know the first of The Rules, don’t you? Life is short: listen to 1973. Now, you might substitute in 1977 or 1974 or certainly the hidden gem year of 1971. But you’d never throw in ’88, would you?

But then there’s this! (How am I treating this show like I discovered it? It’s fucking famous.) 6/28/85 at Hershey Park Stadium. Check it out, starting at the Brobdingnagian Music Never Stopped and it just gets better from there.

P.S. Except of course for Garcia losing his way through Terrapin, lyrically speaking. but aside from that, it gets better. For little gay kids and for a handful (at most) of weirdos listening to a specific musical performance given 18 billion years ago.

P.P.S. Holy shit, listen to Morning Dew and then realize that, had you been at this show, you would have been listening to this face-boiling Dew and not, like, 100 yards away is a rolly-coaster. God bless America and all her ships at sea.

P.P.P.S.  So, of course, after 6/28 ends, I throw on 6/30 and there are some audacious moments: the Shakedown is outstanding, parts of the Stella are great, but my overall opinion is not swayed–Life is short: listen to ’73.

Play By Number

May 31, 2012 / / 6 Comments

On 2/22/74, at Winterland, the Dead played BIODTL with a 22-beat opener. Or, as Bobby thought of it, “Just keep hitting an F chord until Garcia nods at me.”

P.S. Check out 11 minutes into the Playin’, when Garcia starts paying the twisty little riff to Slipknot! for the first(?) time. Billy sure didn’t know what was going on.

P.P.S. AND THEN HE PLAYS IT AGAIN IN EYES. I JUST POOPED WITH JOY. AND OREOS.

MexiBobby Blues

January 22, 2012 / / 0 Comments

“How long are you going to play Eyes tonight, guys?”

“From immediately after drums until the heat death of the Universe.”

“So, the same as last night, then?”

“Yes.”

I once heard a ’74 Playin’ that is still being played at this moment.  It has been going on for nigh-on-40 years now because Phil is, and I am quoting a man who belongs to several tough-guy unions and yet still allows other people to call him Ramrod, “really feeling it.”

The only reason to play a song for as long as the Grateful Dead played several of their’s is if the lack of music will trigger a bomb. Like the Grateful Dead were in Speed, and Bobby is Keanu so he is pretending to be a Cop On The Edge instead a Cowboy With A Broken Heart this time.

As we’ve discussed, Bobby actually thought he was a fucking cowboy. Now, each of the Dead’s singers had a certain persona they delivered their songs through: Jerry was the Gambler, Bobby was the Cowboy, and Phil was The Guy Who Couldn’t Sing. Now, when Jerry did Deal or Loser or whatever, he was delivering these songs from a uniquely American perspective, one that he and Hunter had crafted to serve as an avatar for the Dead’s sheer Americanness.

For the Dead were the most American band there ever was: far too loud, prone to ridiculous, money-losing foreign entanglements, drugged out of its mind, and dying of diabetes. But also capable of the most astonishing grace–American. And what’s more that than the Gambler, armed with his six-shooter and his wits? Garcia and Hunter recognized this metaphor and wrung all they could out of it.

Except Bobby actually thought he was a fucking cowboy. He apparently spent part of one teenaged summer a’ropin’ and a’rasslin and a’rompin’ and a’ridin’ and whatever the fuck else gentiles do in the summer. You can imagine Bobby traipsing through the fields, shirtless, asking the farmhands if they thought he was pretty.

Thereafter, Bobby was a fucking cowboy and we had to sit through Mexicali Blues every other night

Hulk vs. Superman

January 22, 2012 / / 0 Comments

1977 is something that must be dealt with; its little brother is ’73. Speak to me not of 1974, when Billy decided that they were gonna be a damn jazz band if he had anything to do with it. Leave ’76 in your pocket, when tempos dragged and everything was a dirge. Yes, the Beacon shows were outstanding, but they were still figuring out what to do now that they were less of a fighter jet and more of a bomber.

You’re going to bring up the Old Shit, the Primal Dead Shit. The before-they-learned-how-to-write-songs Dead. The Dead that had, like, four riffs that went with three different sets of lyrics, each more ridiculous than the last, and would just trip their balls off while holding instruments in front of audiences really loud? We all love that Dead. You can’t not love that Dead. It’s like the Baby Jesus. We love the Baby Jesus simply because he’s gonna be Jesus, but right now: he’s a baby! Yay, we love babies! And that’s what the Pigpen era was: Baby Jesus.

If the Dead hadn’t learned how to write songs, they would have ben the Quicksilver Messenger Whatever. Or Jefferson Airplane. Just endlessly jamming with some nonsense lyrics about The Man, or the Shire.

So we must leave Primal Dead, to refocus on 1977 and 1973.  1977 and 1973. They are the Batman and Robin of the Grateful Dead’s output.

Some will say it is the historic availability of the high-quality Betty Boards that bias the long-time Grateful Dead listener: these shows were taped so well that they were invariably the best sounding thing in anyone’s collection. Huge bass, crisp separation–these tapes were a joy to listen to, as opposed to the murky 4th and 5th gen Maxell’s cluttering up your basement. No matter how “warts and all” your stance, you couldn’t help appreciate the sound that rivaled some of the Dead’s official releases. (I’m looking at you, Skull & Roses.)

Perhaps ’77 is so esteemed simply because listening to it doesn’t give you a headache? This would have been a valid argument years ago, but after 32 Dick’s Picks, two dozen Road Trips and Digital Downloads, we have fearful amounts of Dead available, all at a sound quality that any one of us would have once killed for. Yes, you can quibble over the “punchiness” of this release versus that, but these are, when it comes to using the Dead to feed the hunger of your burgeoning OCD, light years beyond what we used to deem acceptable

We have not mentioned any year past 1977. There is a reason for that. (We’ll get to Brent later, you can be assured.)

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