Q: Why did the Dead play Estimated so much in ’77?
A: What time signature is Estimated in?
I’m sorry: did I just blow your mind?
Musings on the Most Ridiculous Band I Can't Stop Listening To
Tag: 1977 (Page 11 of 11)
Quick question followed by hysterical rantings, accusations of treachery, cries of poverty (abject, moral, financial), and threats of reprisal.
Why not crowd-source the next Dead release? Put the 6 or 8 shows being decided among online and let the Enthusiasts decide. Why wasn’t that part of the Grateful Dead Game, that feculent folly? Someone explain that thing to me or I’m going to have one of my little fits and we can’t have the couch cleaned again: it’s more duct tape than sofa now.
Here’s my vote for the next one, pulled from a well renowned for its sweetness and goblins, but in fact all the more worthy because of its brethren: to listen to any show from Spring ’77 is to demand comparison and 4/22/77 at The Spectrum in Philly more than holds it own against any comers. The Peggy-O is the equal of the vaunted 5/7; the Scarlet>Fire might be better than 5/8.
P.S. The Scarlet>Fire is better, just objectively better. Don’t argue with me and go eat some fiber. And, hey: if you like what I’m doing, then wave the flag, huh?
P.P.S. Listen to Keith during the Dancing jam at 7:45: he hits these beautifully dissonant chords with the Hammond, which he uses quite a bit this show, but then he starts playing like a child, a drunken hairy child prone to smacking people, doing smack, smacking smack, and occasionally shoplifting. EDIT: There is no evidence whatsoever that Keith was a shoplifter. The smack, yes, but we have every reason to believe Keith paid for his candy bars.
Thereafter, Keith goes back to the piano to play some of the most gorgeous lines he’s ever laid down (you jive turkey) as if to reinforce his point.
P.P.P.S. They have, collectively, taken this show out back and beaten the living shit of it. BEST SHOW EVER! You stop that, you big bully.
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!
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.
I want to write a book called Tuesdays with Mickey, in which Mickey shares life lessons about the power of drumming and then tries to choke me.
Show of the Day: 2/26/77 The Help>Slip>Franklin’s is terrifyingly good, especially the Slipknot! and, it’s the first time they’ve ever played Terrapin and they choose to open with it. You might wonder if Garcia nailed all the lyrics to Terrapin. He did, Bobby: first time. How about that?
As is my wont (and my tont and my soupt), this begins with a plea, an urgent command from the Library to listen to something, something you’ve almost definitely heard before, but listen to Keith here on 5/7/77 playing Mississippi Half-Step on THE ORGAN FOR THE FIRST TIME SINCE THE TOUR STARTED, THANK YOU. Forget the sheer tonnage of beatdown Garcia is bringing: listen to the B3!
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Okay: I can tell how many people are clicking on what links and the cold, hard fact is that not nearly enough of you are going on to listen to 8/24/72 even though I keep telling you and breaking your toys in front of you and making you wear Dead Mom’s lipstick every Wednesday night. Humpday? Huh. You got no idea.
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In the early days, they all had different relationships with the concept of being in tune. Phil agreed whole-heartedly when it came to his bass and his voice in the early days, but after his vocal sabbatical, he was just all over the place. Bobby played in tune and sang out of it, Garcia sang in tune, and played out of it. Keith was just plain out of it.
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Tupac keeps making popping up, Morrison went to Africa like Rimbaud, and people will be seeing Elvis along the highway for as long as the Republic stands. Garcia? He’s gone.
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39:07 for The Other One on 9/17/72? Why? Why, Grateful Dead: why would you let this happen? Forget the sheer tonnage of notes; instead, note the date: September 17, 1972. It’s been released, officially, as Dick’s Picks 23. This is not just a show they played, this is something they offered for sale in the market with their imprimatur. In other words. the Dead are telling us that this is behavior that they are proud of. “Most bands could play a song for maybe 20 minutes and then it would get weird and sad. It took us 40 minutes. GRATEFUL DEAD RULES, EVERYBODY ELSE DROOLS”
It wasn’t like roulette, you see. The casinos have made fortunes since they installed those immaculately legible tote boards listing the numbers that have landed previously in red with big ol’ tempting empty spaces in between and they’ve been raking cash in because your dumb ass has evolved to think 15 is gonna hit because it’s due. It makes sense to believe that present events are based upon past observation: that’s why people instinctively shielded their crotches whenever Billy came around, for al the good it would do them. Billy was like Gretzky: he could always find your five-hole.
But just as it is a logical fallacy to think that the rules of real life apply in the casino, it is also a mistake to think that Hoyle has any say over the world. (It’s called the Ludic fallacy, which I know because it is one of those facts that gets lodged in my brain instead of, say, how to find love.) So, why do we forget that about the Dead? Why do we lionize certain shows only to ignore the rest of the week? These men were, appearances to the contrary, human. They had good runs. But the forest is invisible but for the trees, especially when some trees are, y’know, Barton Hall or Red Rocks. They suck up all the light.
Talking about the Dead is to talk about overshadowing. Garcia overshadowed the rest of the band, Mickey’s overkill overshadowed Billy’s light touch, ’77 and ’73 overshadowed all the other years, and Vince’s playing overshadowed the charitable work he did as a participant in the saddest Make-A-Wish event ever. Even Vince knew enough to be embarrassed.
We let ourselves think the greatness appeared as weird happening, crepuscular beams from a murky sea. Not so. 5/19/74 is rightfully well-regarded, especially the raging Truckin’>Mind Left Body jam. but listen to the very next show, 5/21/74 at UCLA the University of Washington* where they proceed to pull out a GODDAM 45 MINUTE PLAYIN’. Give the kids some Robotussin, shoot the dog and LISTEN to this thing, to the peaks and valleys that spring like Zeus out of inchoate spaciness one after another. (And, since it’s a GREAT matrix mix, listen to the appreciative audience cheer every twist and turn. Listen to ’em ROAR for Donna in Playin’. hell, listen to Donna!
Yeah, 2/14/70 is historic, but 2/11 is better. Yes, 1977 was THE year, but y’know: ’78 kicks more ass than an avowed lover of kicking ass who had spent his last dime to enter an ass-kicking contest in an attempt to win enough money to open his own business, a high-end Ass-Kickery.
*Thanks to a comment by an Esteemed Enthusiast, the location of the 5/21 show has been amended to note the actual location. For his Sherlockian abilities, he will receive a lifetime supply of Bobby Weir’s Shorts Shorteners. Shorts too long? Shorten ’em with Shorts Shortener!
Your opinion of 5/8/77 (and I know that, if you’re reading this, you probably own the show, but check out the Matrix tape on Archive.org I linked to–it might even be better than the famed BettyBoard) has absolutely nothing to do with 5/8/77’s congenital greatness. It’s like the Sun: you cannot ignore it. (Also, it will give you skin cancer, but since everything gives everyone cancer nowadays, why hold that against the show?)
(What if, instead of culture doing what we wanted it to do, we did what culture wanted us to do? A truly memetic view of the world? And what culture wanted us to do was get cancer. That’s something DeadBase won’t tell you, primarily because it makes no sense.)
Now, the first set is spectacular, especially the Lazy Lightning/Supplication and Deal. But, the second set is obviously where the money is hidden. I always loved the very beginning of it:
All right, now we’re gonna play everybody’s favorite fun game: Move Back. Now, when I tell ya, “Take a step back,” everybody take a step back. Right? Right. Okay, take a step back. And take another step back. And take yet another step back. And another. Take a step back. Doesn’t everybody feel better? Whaddya mean, “No?”
And Keith plays his little snake charmer thing, and Garcia says,
Now, see, uh, all these people in front are getting horribly smashed here. So, uh, that means all you people in the back have to move back…
—or feel real guilty–
…just move back some.
Then all your friends won’t be so bug-eyed.
Garcia tocks away the Scarlet chords, soft and gentle, and then Mickey counts it off with this little triplet: dot dot dot…
AND THEN PHIL COMES IN: BOMP-buhWOOOO bum Bum BUM. That immensely confident bounce that the song enters with!
You know the rest of it. Just listen to the music play.
Why hasn’t Barton Hall been released commercially? Not that I’m looking for it, obviously: I can still remember the all-black Maxxell with 5/8/77!!! written on the tag in red ink. Since then, I’ve never not listened to this show. Even though the boys and I drifted apart during the first decade of the new millennium, that second set still called to me. “Just the first little bit,” I would tell myself. “Just the opening to Scarlet: dat dat dat–bom ba WHOOOM!” And then, of course, it would be seventy minutes later and the Dead would have destroyed and rebuilt the world with Morning Dew.
But no official release. They have the tapes, obviously, along with a fondness for releasing Spring/Fall ’77 shows–there have been 5 Dick’s Picks, one Road Trip, one Digital Download, To Terrapin, and the 10 CD Winterland ’77 box set. (Swear I did that by memory, so if I’m wrong, then…I don’t know: nothing, I guess. Carry on wasting time reading this nonsense.)
There’s a great book that came out last year, Love Goes to Buildings on Fire by Will Hermes. It might be the definitive history of one of the most fertile musical scenes in history, New York in the 70’s. The author is mugged taking the subway to the train for Cornell and loses not only his money, but also his Dead tickets. The New York Times wrote an article recently about the archive and the sheer volume of shows available nowadays and its effect on ranking shows and whether or not the band should be appreciated show-by-show or by tour. Quite honestly, I think the author of the article was assigned an article covering The Dead’s weary arrival into Manhattan and just couldn’t interview Bobby again. True, there had been no dickpunching since Billy went back to the ocean, but still, you try asking Bobby any other question other than, “When did you start looking like Dad Wolf from Teen Wolf?
- So, who was on Style’s Woof-mobile?
Anyway, what I’m saying is that 5/8/77 is kind of almost vaguely “out there.” And we’re coming up on the 35th anniversary, but no one’s talking advantage of it. New members, fresh blood. Think I haven’t seen hobbies die? I used to work in a comic book shop, man: Hell holds no terrors for me.
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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