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

Tag: 5/14/74

From The Top #9

Things TotD Can Tell You About Montana Without Looking At Wikipedia (Or Any Other Site):

  • Its capital is Helena.
  • The left part of the state nestles into Idaho in a sexual way.
  • Named “Montana” because of all the mountains.
  • Joe Montana is not from there.
  • Neither is Joe Mantegna.
  • There are Black Hills.
  • Custer? Was that Montana?
  • Sam Neill’s character from The Hunt for Red October never got his dream, which was to move to Montana.
  • He was never going to get there, honestly. The second he started telling Sean Connery his dreams and hopes, everyone in the theater knew he was a goner.
  • If you’re in the kind of movie where people die, don’t tell people your plans.
  • Or cough. If you cough in a movie, you die.
  • Cold as shit and a million miles away from anything.
  • And because of that, for a while there was no speed limit on their highways: it just said “Reasonable and Prudent.”
  • The federal government, however, was having none of Montana’s foolishness and threatened to take away all their road money, so they put up a couple “80 mph” signs, but there’s really no speed limit between Helena and Livingston.
  • Montana grows more dental floss than any other state.
  • Not as scenic as Idaho, but not as infested with White Supremacists, so that’s a draw.
  • Has never hosted a World Cup.
  • Nor a Papal visit.
  • The Dead played there once on May 15 14, 1974 with the mighty Wall of Sound. The fine show, with its huge Dark Star>Morning Dew China Doll can be heard in all its glory on Dave’s Picks 9.
  • While it was in-state, the Wall was the fourth largest city in Montana.
  • There will be no riots in Montana, mostly because there aren’t enough people to classify as a riot. The largest outbreak of violence possible is a bar fight.
  • It and California somehow have the same amount of power in the Senate. Thanks, Founding Fathers, you short-sighted, slave-owning fuckwits.

Big Sky, Dark Star

The new Dave’s Picks, number 9 of what I hope will be an infinite series, has been announced. The Dead’s only Montana show, and it is am all-time, but perhaps underrated great: 5/14/74 in Missoula. This is in Big Sky Country, which has earned its name by having nothing in the way of an immense canopy of blue. I’ve seen pictures, and if I were there and ventured outside, I would immediately drop to the ground, clutching at shrubbery in fear of shooting upwards: falling to death in reverse, ever upwards.

Billy’s deft snare work and light hand cymbal was always what separated him from the common, thundering horde. Billy put the ‘b’ in subtle, and that was evident on the cowboy songs at this show, and they played fucking all of them. Bobby saw that sky and screamed, “Bobby the Kid RIDES tonight!” And then he leapt on the back of a hefty groupie and put his spurs (Bobby was wearing his spurs; this would be the last time it was permitted) into her sides. Except, you know: she wasn’t a horse, so she just had the wind knocked out of her and collapsed. Bobby skinned his knee.

And listen to 3.18 into the Weather Report Suite, when Garcia’s guitar chokes back a tear…

The PITB (I always hated that shorthand: my brain insists on pronouncing it like a Bronx Cheer) from Montana is a masterpiece, with a the band stretching out for hours in between Mrs. Donna Jean’s wails. Keith stays on the down-and-dirty Rhodes piano and Bobby plays flamenco flourishes until they completely whiff on the transition back into the song, each of them stuttering and deferring to the others, like Englishmen arriving at a door simultaneously.

The Dark Star is a ’74 Dark Star, and if you don’t know what that means, then I hope Billy punch your mother right in her dick.