Continuing with tonight’s accidental theme of dead people working with the Dead, we can see a recent performance of Ratdog where Vincent Schiavelli sat in on the (miniature?) upright bass.
Musings on the Most Ridiculous Band I Can't Stop Listening To
Tag: bob weir (Page 121 of 198)
A-HA, fucker! You tried to trick ol’ TotD, didn’t you? You were tricksy and false, weren’t you, David Browne?
Oh, are we accusing someone new of insane conspiracies?
I J’ACCUSE YOU, DAVID BROWNE, newest shadowy figure in the international cabal of Big Dead. Covering up murders, starting up wars, looking up skirts: these are bad folks.
We’ve always known that Keeper of the Vault David Lemaeiouandsometimesyx has been behind most of the lies and death. He is assisted by The Most Right and Honorable Reverend Dr. Captain Nicodemus von Merriweather the VII, DDS, EMT, AKC (Ch.) who maintains the visual archive at UC Santa Cruz (Go Banana Slugs!)
McNally: he’s in on it. David Gans? That sumbitch knows where bodies are buried. Blair Jackson once invaded Cuba. It was in 2006, and he and his wife went with a local university and had the best time. But still: invaded Cuba.
The band may or may not know or care about any of this. Several internecine secret societies were started during the band’s run, most notably the Billuminati and the Philluminati, but they were much less Masonic societies with secret aims than they were two guys squabbling who read too many Robert Anton Wilson books and whose names rhymed with “ill.”
Bobby, it should be noted, is and has long been a member of an actual honest-to-shit Secret Society.
Anyway, in Browne’s new book, which I am not linking to again, but is called So Many Roads, he tells the little-known story of Clarence Clemons from the E Street Band befriending the band (specifically Garcia and Bobby) and getting asked to officially join, only to have someone who isn’t named in the book (ilPhay eshLay) shoot the idea down.
That’s a good story, but the short aside that follows is better: Garcia, Bobby, and Clarence fucking Clemons were going to get a bachelor pad together in the city. It would be Full House, except without the children, and the teenaged girls would be getting rogered. Also, Uncle Jesse is black and enormous.
If TotD had access to Time Sheath technology, this moment might be my new number one: the conversation where Garcia, Bobby, and Clarence Clemons decide to get a place together. Apparently, Clarence brought it up, but the idea gained enough traction to make it into a book thirty years later.
It’s a late night/early morning at Front Street:
“Man, do I love hanging out with you Grateful Deads! Shee-it, is it a change from Bruce.”
“We run a loose ship here, y’know?”
“Slack sail.”
“Gotta follow the rules in the E Street Band. Number one rule: watch Bruce. You look away for a second, he changes it up, and you miss your cue. One time, Max Weinberg got distracted by a girl in the crowd and missed a tempo change. After the show, Bruce put a hornet in Max’s ear.”
“Kind of a question of the punishment fitting the crime here.”
“Where’d he get the hornet?”
“Now, you see: there’s you two in two lines. Philosophic and practical. Bruce had the hornet in a glass jar backstage, and he also had the tweezers, and no one wanted to ask about it.”
“Wow.”
“Mostly, it was fines. Phoning it in onstage? He’d give you this wink and a smile, but it wasn’t really a smile if you knew him: he was pissed and you just lost a hundred bucks.”
“Whaddya think Billy would do if someone fined him a hundred bucks?”
“Like someone in the band fined him for an infraction?”
“Yeah.”
“Murder.”
“Right?”
“Yeah. He would murder.”
“Who, y’think?”
“Let’s not find out.”
“See: there’s Bobby being down-to-earth. You guys are great.”
“You’re great, Clarence.”
“C Dog, I am enjoying the fuck out of our visits.”
“Yeah, me too, guys. We should get a place.”
“Ha! Yeah, we should.”
“Sure, right, yeah.”
…
“Y’know–”
“I’m between wives at the moment.”
“–you’re between wives at the moment.”
“So is the Big Man.”
“Can we get one of those globes that opens up to reveal a bar?”
“I have one in storage.”
“Awesome. I’m in.”
According to Mr. Browne and Big Dead’s lies, the plan was abandoned for many reasons, chief–though probably unspoken amongst them being that three aging rock stars moving in together is kinda creepy and sad even for the eighties. Also, you know: someone would die. Shortly after moving in, right?
In reality, Garcia, Bobby, and the Big Man moved into a charming triplex in North Beach where they remain today, even after two of them have died. That’s how strong their bro was.
I might just devote all of tomorrow to So Many Roads: The Life and Times of the Grateful Dead by David Browne, the new doorstop-sized history/tell-all/overview/Mickey and Justin Kreutzmann interview. (Seriously: Justin is quoted more than I remember, say, Jason Bonham being in Hammer of the Gods.) It is well-written and capacious and digressive and wonderful: purchase the fucker.
One particular story I hadn’t heard needs more immediate attention, though: not only was Clarence Clemons semi-seriously asked to officially join the Dead, but he, Bobby, and Garcia were going to get a bachelor’s pad together. Like in Three Men and a Baby, but without the baby. Two Men and a Bobby, I guess.
The Dead all hit it off with Clarence, who was legendarily extroverted; for his part, Clarence was just happy not to be playing the same two-note vamp for twelve minutes while Bruce talked about his father or cars or that dream he kept having where his penis turns into Mr. Roger’s cardigan.
There was a lot more freedom with the Dead, Clarence found. You were allowed to trip your balls off onstage. Bruce had never made it explicitly forbidden to eat several handfuls of mushrooms before going on, but it was to be assumed: he had once caught Garry W. Tallent smoking a doobie; Bruce threw him down a flight of metal stairs and fined him a hundred bucks.
Clarence was also used to being the only black guy, so that was cool.
As far as joining the band goes, Clemons is blackballed by someone in the band whom David Browne does not name but is Phil. Garcia and Bobby asked him in the first place, so they vote yes; Mickey, as we know, had an open-stage policy. It was Phil.
Clemons took it in stride, went down to the bar, and did some blackballing of his own.
Oh, for fuck’s sake.
What?
Hey, guys. You seem happy.
“Phil’s not here.”
Gotcha.
What the fuck is this?
“Oh, hey. This is Bjork, possibly.”
I’m pretty sure that isn’t Bjork.
“It might be that Zooey Deschanel gal.”
I don’t think it is.
“She’s a triple threat.”
…
“I was told it was Bjork.”
It’s not Bjork. Bjork can’t play the fucking sitar: we would’ve heard about that by now.
…
She is giving you the look of love, though.
“Still Bobby after all these years, brother.”
What’s the state of your trousers? Are they intact or holier than the Pope’s mother? Does every little breeze seem to whisper Louise on your nethers and privates? If you are a stone-cold teen fox, can you feel the wind on your sweet and pink little nubbin? If you are old, is there a draft hitting your stained and crusty asshole?
Has your dick and/or balls fallen out today? And, not “fallen out” like it usually does: an actual accident.
If so, try Bobby Patches! They’re iron-on patches, which means you place the patch on the spot you desire, let the iron heat up, place a thin towel over the whole shebang, and press down with the iron really hard for a minute. After that, get a needle and thread and sew the thing on* because the ironing never worked.
* WARNING: Do not sew Bobby Patches© over eyes in hopes of looking like Bobbeard the Pirate. You will not be able to see and you will crash your Honda.
“…and it was getting in my eyes all the time. So, I said: what about a ponytail?”
“That’s what he said. He said it to all of us, y’know: numerous times.”
“But, now: how does one go about such a thing? I quickly hired a ponytail guru–”
“He got thrown out of the food court for bothering tween girls.”
“–and planned my strategy. Scrunchie? Was there a manly enough scrunchie, or would my natural manliness push the already-manly scrunchie into a parodic, macho sort of manliness that I like to stay away from?”
“Bobby thinks about his hair a lot.”
“I do, Jer.”
“Anything to add, Mickey?”
“Happy to be here.”
“Great.”
This washed-out and otherwise uninteresting shot does give a glimpse into the architectural nightmare that the 20th century was. Modern architecture, like art, needed a theory. It was no longer enough to have a building and some permits, no: your building now needed an ideology. (This differentiates it from today’s architecture, which belongs to the post-modern age. Today’s buildings need a story. And not “Christ died for your sins.” That story makes your building a church.)
Any Enthusiast over a certain age, or who’s been in various East Coast capital cities, will recognize the useless linear twaddle on the walls that signifies a Brutalist building. Like right-angled turds, these urban nasties are sprinkled over the world now; we’re tearing them down, but–I swear to you–conservationist societies have begun to fight to save them.
There’s nothing in this world you could try to get rid of without a group popping up to save it.
“Save the Middletown Shitpile!”
“Lady, it’s a literal pile of shit. Human feces slopped gloppily atop itself.”
“Someone wrote their PhD. thesis about it: it’s got artistic value.”
Besides the fact that modern architecture is just aesthetically displeasing, the guy behind most of it–Le Corbusier–was clearly full of shit in every way. Check out this bullshit right here:
“Extensions of our limbs and adapted to human functions that are type-needs and type-functions, therefore type-objects and type-furniture. The human-limb object is a docile servant. A good servant is discreet and self-effacing in order to leave his master free. Certainly, works of art are tools, beautiful tools. And long live the good taste manifested by choice, subtlety, proportion, and harmony.”
He was talking about a chair. That’s not even good bullshit: bullshit is proportional and you shouldn’t go Condition: Delta over a fucking chair. It cheapens you. Imagine what Le Corbusier would have to say about a table: you’d be there for a week and when you got the table, it would be made of poured concrete.
Concrete is where Brutalism gets its name from, not its rough looks. Breton Brut is raw concrete: ergo, Brutalism. Though, maybe Bretonism would have better situated the movement for success. Perhaps an English-speaker should have had a chat with Le Corbusier.
“Cor Bear–”
“Don’t call me that.”
“–you can’t call it Brutalism. It sounds like the English word “brutal” and they’re going to think that’s what it means. It doesn;t help that all your buildings look like jails from fantasy novels.”
“Zoot alors! ‘Ow can I ‘elp the ‘apless Yankee and the ‘elpless Rosbif? They will look up ze knowledge, no?”
“No. They will not.”
“Zis is silly! Merde! I need to zink deeply about a desk zis afternoon: I do not have ze time for zis ratatouille!”
“It just sounds like ‘brutal.” Can’t you think of any other names?”
“Forcefulrectum-ism.”
“That’s not a thing.”
“It is: it means ‘method for living in harmony’ in Tagalog.”
“You don’t know that language; and, no it doesn’t.”
“Fine. Ghostface Killa-ism”
“You’re down with the Wu?”
“Corbusier rules everything around me.”
Shut it down. Too weird.
“Aw.”
“Merde.”
In case you forgot just how famous the Dead were in 1988, this is them at the press conference for a rainforest benefit concert sponsored by the United Nations. You have to be stupid famous to get in bed with the UN. That’s Bono/Angelina Jolie-level celebrity. The press conference was even held at Dag Hammarskjold Plaza itself, which Bobby referred to as “where the dagos get their hammers” and no one corrected him.
Hey, Bobby.
“Grrr. Rrrrr. Shnarl.”
Yeah.
“Nargle nargle nargle woof.”
Stop that.
“I’m a–”
Weirwolf.
“–Weirwolf. Aw. Why can’t you be any fun?”
It would be more fun for everybody if you would move your left hand about five or six inches to the left.
“Well, like I told you: it’s tough to play slide guitar when you can’t see well.”
Funny how something always impedes your vision when you pick that thing up.
“Once, I was in the middle of a slide solo during Walkin’ Blues and Mickey threw Sea Monkeys in my eyes.”
…
“Didn’t I turn into a werewolf for real once?”
No. That was the punchline of the whole thing.
“That?”
Yeah.
“Wasn’t that thing, like, five chapters?”
Something like that.
“And the punchline was ‘nothing happened?'”
Seems so.
“Funny how you’re not getting paid for this.”
Touché.
“Tushee?”
© 2025 Thoughts On The Dead
Theme by Anders Noren — Up ↑
Recent Comments