Thoughts On The Dead

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

Tag: 1976 (Page 2 of 4)

The Music Almost Stops

July 13, 2017 / / 5 Comments

Been forever and ever since an old-fashioned show recommendation, Enthusiasts. Hell, it’s been forever since any of this bullshit was about the Grateful Dead, but 6/26/76 from the Auditorium Theatre in Chicago is a fine topic upon which to revert to bad habits. It is a highly entertaining show.

Note I did not say “good.” This fucker’s a mess, and Music Never Stopped is the high/lowlight: no one quite remembers the arrangement, Bobby has forgotten all the lyrics, and the drummers limp along like a giant who got a dryer stuck in his tennis shoe.

You turned it around.

I turned the phrase around, yeah.

You’re a winner.

I’m a hero. Anyway: the show’s a clumbering pile of clunk, but–like I said–it’s entertaining. This is not the mid-80’s lazy sloppiness: the band is trying! And failing! It’s delightful.

Grade: WOBBLY.

In fact, TotD now presents Things Less Wobbly Than 6/26/76:

  • Weebles.
  • Eugene Debs.
  • Ronald Reagan before Margaret Thatcher told him to stop being wobbly.

Can I just say that I no longer understand anything on this site?

You can say whatever you want, man.

Pete Townshend, Jerry Garcia, And Some Coke

July 5, 2017 / / 4 Comments

“And then the alien jumps down, right, and eats Harry Dean Stanton.”

“Blimey, Jer. ‘Ow’d you get away, then?”

“Pete, for the third time: this didn’t happen to me.”

“Right, right. Go on.”

“So Sigourney Weaver takes off her clothes for some reason, right? And she’s got on a pair of panties that are, like, not functional. They’re just not big enough to perform the task of underwear.”

“Blimey. Fuck her, didja?”

“Again, Pete: movie.”

“Sorry. Right.”

“And then she blasts the sucker out of the airlock.”

“You guys have an airlock? Where? On your bus?”

…

“Is Entwistle around?”

“Yeah, but he’s not much of a talker.”

“I would prefer that.”

I Can’t Complain

January 7, 2017 / / 7 Comments

This was the Day on the Green in ’76–well, one of the two days–and Garcia looks skinny, and though you can’t see it in this picture Bobby is wearing either jodhpurs or puttees. Some form of non-trouser pant.

But this is what Roger Daltrey looked like:

“What’s the matter, Weir? You’ve been pouting all day?”

“Well, Jer: you know how I’m usually the best-looking guy in the room?”

“Sure.”

“You see Daltrey?”

“Healthy specimen.”

“That’s what I’m saying.”

“It’s just two shows, Weir. Next week you’ll be competing with Billy and Phil again.”

“I guess.”

“Aw. C’mon, buddy. He ain’t that great.”

“Y’think?”

“I’m not generally one to look at another guy’s crotch, but where’s his potato salad?”

…

“I see none.”

“Like a Ken doll.”

“You always know what to say, Garcia.”

“You’re my guy, Bob.”

“Can I take my shirt off for our set, too?”

“I will whip you to death with my guitar cord if you remove your shirt, Bob.”

“Okay.”

“We’re not that kind of group.”

“We could be.”

“No, we couldn’t. Besides, if you take your shirt off, Billy’ll take his off.”

“That’s no good for anyone.”

“No.”

Old Friends With Fuzzy Memories

August 15, 2016 / / 2 Comments

jerry bobby brown 75 weird.jpg

“Um, Jer?”

“Yeah, Bob?”

“What’s, uh…what’s going on behind you?”

…

“Reality has epilepsy, best I can tell.”

“Like Caesar.”

“Sure. And George Peppard.”

“George Peppard? Huh. Had no idea.”

“Yeah. Caesar, George Peppard, and reality: spontaneously spastic, the lot of ’em.”

“Great big world, Jer.”

“That it is, Bob.”

…

“I like Josh a whole bunch, but you know you’ll always be my Garcia.”

“I know, Bob.”

A Bush League Of Their Own

July 12, 2016 / / 5 Comments

The thing about the Bush League is that it’s fun and homey: you can chat with the players, and there’s always great seats. Local high school kids sell undercooked hot dogs and generic cola drinks from the stands out in right field, and there is both popcorn and cop porn. A home run counts for 2.7 runs, or perhaps none at all: the scoreboard belongs to the possums now. In the Bush league, you can steal second or you can embezzle third; there is a Designated Catcher.

And in the Bush League, the Grateful Dead sings the National Anthem every night.

dave's picks 19 screw up

FoTotD Jay Gerland over at The Dead Blog alerts us to the new Dave’s Pick 19, which has been produced using Time Sheath technology, apparently.

The Mothership Is Here

June 16, 2016 / / 2 Comments

Spaceships, and costumes, and elaborate mythology: P-Funk could be written off as Black KISS, but for the fact that they could actually play their instruments and write songs. (Though a great deal of their material is George Clinton chanting gibberish over a bass ostinato, P-Funk has a lot more “songs” than you’d think, and they’re well-crafted and solid.)

This is the ’76 band on the Mothership Tour. The song from Maggot Brain I posted? This band only has George Clinton and Bernie Worrell in common with the lineup that recorded the classic album from just five years prior; you can tell, obviously, but the sound is still recognizably P-Funk. This is because, among his many other talents, George Clinton could find talent: he couldn’t particularly sing–especially when compared to literally any other vocalist sharing the stage with him–and I don’t think I’ve ever seen him play anything, but he was the Jascha Heifetz of hiring drummers.

Check out Bernie on the squiqqly-wiggly solo at 31 minutes in. He looks like this:

Screen Shot 2016-06-16 at 5.57.26 PM

Bernie is less blurry in the video, and–presumably–in real life.

You learned how to take screen shots, huh?

Only took six years with an Apple.

And you won an internet slapfight.

Been a good day.

Sure, slugger.

A Canadian Ecdysiast

April 19, 2016 / / 1 Comment

Once again, every Deadhead’s favorite archivist takes to YouTube, via Mount Tamalpais, to tell us about the new Dave’s Pick release. This volume, the 18th in the outstanding series, will be from the 17th of July, 1976. (When you write dates like that, it doesn’t sound like a Dead show; it sounds like a Presidential speech honoring dead people.) It’s a great show from a legendary run (the Orpheum in San Francisco) with the predictably unpredictable 1976 setlist, but let Davie Lemaeiouandsometimesyx explain it to you.

Also: there is a bit of stripping. So, maybe this is a little NSFW, or at least the Canadian version of NSFW, which stands for Not Safe For Winnipeggers. (The collective name for people from Winnipeg is Winnipeggers, but an individual from the city can be referred to as a Winnipeggy-o or a Winnipegasus.)

If you want a CD, they’re $30 over at Dead.net, where the news of another release from the 70’s has gone down precisely how you would expect.

(Hey, let’s have some fun: someone start one of those dopey Change.org petitions to make David Lemieurythmix put out some shows from 1983.)

A Momentary Confusion

March 31, 2016 / / 8 Comments

keith band orpheum 76

There was nothing the Grateful Dead couldn’t make more complicated.

Also: this picture confuses me. Those aren’t stage lights in the upper righthand corner: they’re film lights. Rock and roll lighting hangs from a truss; it certainly doesn’t go in front of the band with gels gaffer-taped over the bulbs.

And since we know that the Dead’s road crew would never do more work than required (and sometimes not even that), then we must infer that this show was captured on film.

…

It is here, Enthusiasts that I can either be honest or simply delete the whole post; for both our sakes, I choose honesty: this photo is from 7/12/76 at the Orpheum in San Francisco, which we do in fact know was filmed. You can watch the soundcheck, courtesy of the legendary and mysterious Voodoonola:

Now, here’s where I turn into a complete slapdick: I had a whole theory about how the photo was not from 7/12, but instead from a different night in the run, which means another night was recorded and that there was a pro-shot film from ’76 being kept from us. My thesis relied heavily on the fact that Mrs. Donna Jean is wearing a different blouse in the photo than in the soundcheck video.

And then I remembered that people change their clothes.

Sorry to have wasted your time.

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