Thoughts On The Dead

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

Tag: dead (Page 15 of 19)

thoughts on a show

May 3, 2012 / / 5 Comments

Halloween, 1991

Kesey’s son just died*  and with the band raging behind him, he goes into ee cummings Buffalo Bill:

Buffalo Bill's

defunct

        who used to

        ride a watersmooth-silver

                                  stallion

and break onetwothreefourfive pigeonsjustlikethat

                                                  Jesus

he was a handsome man

                      and what i want to know is

how do you like your blueeyed boy

Mister Death

Try writing another joke about Dickpunchin’ Billy after that shit, man.

* This is not true, as noted in the comments. Bill Graham had just died, not Kesey’s son; Kesey’s son had died seven years prior.

Just, Y’Know: Thoughts On The Dead

May 1, 2012 / / 0 Comments

We forget how long ago it was, what a different world it was. To  understand my point, you must listen to Pig absolutely fucking KILLING IT on It’s A Man’s World. That was April 15th, 1970. Listen to how crisp and present the recording is, how clean and separate the instruments sound: I would wager most lay-listeners wouldn’t be able to tell the difference between this recording and an official release from the era. Marvel at how such a recording got made in the same world where there is absolutely no record of a show from that same month: no tape, no poster, certainly no film but there is a contract and cancelled check, so it must have happened. There are shows as late as 1973 just…gone. Compare that to today’s DeLillo Barn of a culture, all of us pointing our iThings at each other the second anything notable happens. Holding our phones vertically, all of us.

_______________________

Everybody’s new favorite fun game: Play in One Key, Sing in Another!

_______________________

Is the most terrifying moment of your day the Silence that comes before the Fretting that comes before the Waffling that comes before the Choosing? An ’89? Surely, a Summer ’71! The wrong choice–it’s like throwing the i Ching, only to lodge the coins in your cousin Kevin’s throat and Kevin dies right in front of you and you just LOSE IT and decide that you can’t get in trouble if EVERYONE ELSE IS DEAD, TOO, so you kill your way halfway down the street before they take you down. No matter which Ching translation you use, that’s an unhealthy omen.

I almost had one of those rolls today. I chose an ’85 (4/27/85 Frost Amphitheater, Palo Alto, CA) to start off the morning. The 80’s are a giant tushee: fun around the edges, but dangerous in the middle. (I apologize for that.)

_______________________

I’ve written before about Garcia’s guitar tone being friendly, but the entire band had an ethos of friendlyness-ship. (Of course that’s a word. And if not a word proper, at least wordish.) All those references to following and leading and sharing (women, wine (Not Persian, though. Persian was not a share-y kind of substance.).) There was very little aggression in the music: no one will ever enter the Octagon with Brokedown Palace blaring. This made them a different band then–say–Slayer, who once wrote a song about Josef Mengele from Mengele’s point of view.  While many Dead songs featured unreliable narrators, none of them were so unreliable as to have committed war crimes. Committing war crimes is the very definition of being unreliable: you need to be watched, apparently. The second everyone turns their back, BOOM: you’re sewing twins together.

Slayer’s always been a bit of a mystery to me. Not the “why are they popular” part: there will always be ugly 15-year-old boys and money to be made catering to them being all evil and shit. I’m referring to the actual music. A friend burned me the Compact Disc. My good friend, Inter-Natalie. You should see her record collection. I like to listen to the hard-charging angry stuff when I am up in the gym working on my fitness, Sabbath and Titus Andronicus and the Boom Boom Satellites, so I tried a little Slayer and halfway through the third verse describing what can only be classified as “atrocities,” I quietly bowed out. I prefer to keep my tunes free of graphic descriptions of torture labs. Cartman was right: hippies hate Slayer.

_______________________

Who was it, precisely, that was clamoring for the return of Dupree’s Diamond Blues?

_______________________

In May of 1969, the Dead jammed with legendary conga player Mongo Santamaria.  Also legendary was the lecture given to Bobby afterwards concerning his giggles upon hearing the name.

_______________________

Merl should have been the keyboardist after Keith. They would have looked like the Celtics in the 80’s, racially. Also, Walton.

_______________________

I don’t care if Putin has turned the place in to a Latveria-of-the-mind: THEY’RE THE BAD GUYS, FUCK THEM. They were THE BEST bad guys: evil enough (gulags, proxy wars), but not, you know, too evil (that thing that made the 40’s such an inherent downer.) They had an ideology and an aesthetic, none of this “at night, it is my bed; during the day, my clothes” bullshit these Al Qaeda fuckmuppets smell up the room with.

Check My Pulse

April 30, 2012 / / 2 Comments

Idea for sci-fi novel: An Enthusiast invents (or inherits or finds or, if this were Stephen King, extrudes) a time machine; it only has one trip in it (Get it? Trip? Because of the drug use! Because of all the drug use). He uses it to go back to 1995 and revive Garcia from his heart attack and, after proving his bona fides as a Time Traveler (with wackiness: “The president is what-now?) nurses him slowly and carefully back to health.

This act leads–both directly and provably–to a Global Holocaust. Rest assured that the words zombies, genitals, and eating will be involved and, quite frankly, it doesn’t matter what order you put those words in, I want no part of it.

Other Times, I Can Barely SEO

April 29, 2012 / / 5 Comments

Do you have an Old Mall in your town? As those caverns of the 70’s stubbornly rust all over the country, they evolve into one of a number of morphologies: there’s the Ghost Mall, that has maybe one store still there and the others look haunted and Cormac McCarthy-ish. The giant letters forming the names of the stores have been removed and left their traces on the wall. Best “out of business” sign there is.

Then there is another kind of mall. Perhaps it is just as bustling as it used to be, back when it supported three separate record shops (one of which was actually–swear–cool) and an honest-to-god Tiny Comic Book Store. Not too big–just one long oval with Macy’s on one end and Sear’s on the other. A solidly striving, middle-class mall in America. Now, yes, there always was a bit of a crime problem, but you get a lot of shoplifters at any mall and quite frankly, the whole situation was needlessly exacerbated by the Police Chief getting himself run over while in pursuit three times. Twice, maybe. Three times, you start looking at the common denominator.

But where there used to be ladies apparel shops are now cash4gold places, the Body Shop replaced by the Dollar Store, and far more places selling baseball caps than you would think the market could bear.  It has become the Terrifying Mall, a mall you are sure “belongs” to someone who is not the rightful owner, someone for whom “laundry day” is never a valid excuse for wearing certain colors.

Jut asking, because apparently some poor soul got here via the search term socks for fat ankles boynton beach and everyone knows that the best place is Sweaty’s at the Boynton Beach Mall, in between the two kiosks selling iPod accessories and the Mexican supermarket. Godspeed, you fankled lovely. 

Do you know what analytics are? I didn’t, until I started making the bloggings. Now I know how each and every person got here–there’s a list of the exact search term. Let’s see a few, shall we? (The search terms are in bold, obviously. I have not altered them except when I did to make them funnier.)

Now, weir fucking donna is an obvious one, as is is phil lesh a jerk, but less predictable was the fact that three lost, lonely men (and you know that they are most certainly men) searched for ned lagin or ned lagin band.

I’d like to think that both dickpunching billy and grateful dead crotchpunch represent people who had been here before, but for one reason or another forgot to bookmark the bloggings.

As for the 8–FUCKIN’ 8 HUMAN BEINGS–who searched for grateful dead rule 34? You sicken me. On the other hand, it was nice to fill a niche

My Old Kentucky Home

April 23, 2012 / / 4 Comments

“Hey, Bobby? I was hoping you’d play slide tonight,” is a sentence only uttered by one man in history.  It is our bad luck that the man was Bobby. He used to talk to himself a lot, on the road somewhere between Iowa and Summer. Immediately after viewing the classic made-for-TV movie ‘Sybil,’ Bobby demanded the rest of the group recognize his other selves, except Bobby had named them all Bobby and they all had his personality and, quite honestly, Bobby hadn’t even decided real concrete-like on precisely how many of them there were, so the whole situation just played itself out, quietly and quickly

Dear whoever put together the soundboard tape for 4/21/78 at Rupp Arena: thank you for doing what you did, allowing me to–at virtually no expense–possess this show, this wonderful artifact. But there is no such thing as 4 minute and 40 seconds of stage banter in 1978. Maybe in ’70, they would have sat there bullshitting with the rowdy kids in the front row on the Fillmore East, but no longer. Not here, now.

From the end of the Hiatus (June of ’76) to Keith leaving the band (2/17/79) can be seen as a gradual speedening up. Not a typo, a choice: speedening.

But here’s the thing about 4/21/78 at Rupp arena: apparently no one showed up and the security was dicks. That’s the story. Which is the problem with knowing anything, really, about the actual gig part of it–it removes the textuality of the text (well, not just the text, but also the text) and places the praxis of the ur-Dead and the…ah, fuck it. i can’t even make fun of that kind of crap anymore.  The best thing one can say of any music is nothing, there’s music on, shit the fuck up. But the second best thing you can say is, “Listen to this. Now, Now, you must.” When he got excited about an upcoming song or passage or transition, my friend Glenn would grab your forearm and he was strong. There was no getting away from the Sugaree he was offering you.

What I’m getting at is that I like to look up the shows that I listen to and read the reviews, but sometimes you see things like this:

This was a really good show for the Dead. I am from Lexington so I know they were probably playing to just a few thousand fans inside a huge 24,000 capacity seating arena. I guess that’s what they mean when they say their were plenty of seats down in the front. This was the first time the Dead ever played Lexington and it would also be their last time. That’s too bad, I wish I knew why.

HOW CAN YOU WISH FOR THAT INFORMATION? IT WAS CONTAINED WITHIN YOUR PREVIOUS SENTENCE. THEY DIDN’T PLAY THERE AGAIN BECAUSE NO ONE SHOWED UP

 

PS: Seriously, go listen to the Rupp show. They’re killing it.


A Grateful Dead Movie

April 20, 2012 / / 1 Comment

Best Set: First!

Second-best Set: Second!

Set List: Fairly standard for the era!

Show Highlight: SUGAR BEGONIAS! Seriously, do yourself a favor and listen to the seamless perfection of the transition. It got a round of applause in the theater. If I didn’t know better, I would have sworn they practiced.

Small Favor: This film was not presented in 3D.

Shortest shorts: Wild guess!

Highest Light: Bird Song! Nice laid back jam at the end and Garcia’s voice still had its last tinges of sweetness. (You ever hear his voice crack on a high note, or slip and slide around the pitch like the rest of them? No…and no fair bringing up the laryngitis shows.)

Lowest Light: Eyes! That they at least had the courtesy to not play it for thirty-five minutes is the kindest thing that can be said about this particular rendition.

Love Light: And leave it on!

Goddamn Bullshit: $12.50 for the ticket, 11.50 for the popcorn and coke! (I am physically unable to stop myself from ordering the Jumbo Combo Snack Pack. I have watched precisely one movie in my life without popcorn and a coke: Super Cop with Jackie Chan. Atkins diet. Never again.)

Nicest Tradition: Smoke break during drums/space! You meet the nicest, most reasonable people during the drums/space bathroom-smoke-wander around break. They, too, refuse to coddle those muppets for the 85 minutes an evening they took to whack on things and play bloopy noises.

Saddest Thought: Maybe there’ll be a lady there and…I don’t want to talk about it.

Secret Hero: Brent! Brent was all over this show–musically–and he got as much camera time as anyone but Garcia. He’s fun to watch, too: throwing himself up and down his B-3 and smacking at its keys to produce that ‘ducka ducka’ sound. Plus, he’s got very large, very blue eyes that poke out from the Gimli of Gloin beard covering the rest of his face, and he zeroes in on Garcia with utter joy. I think there were pictures of his little girls taped to his piano and then he would look at Garcia and it was all very sad.

Average Age: Not all that young! Lot of sandals, too. Plus: a crazy guy! Old grizzled hippie-biker guy who apparently thought 7:00 PM at the Boynton Beach Plexiplex was going to turn into an acid test and we would all lube ourselves up with butter topping and do some sort of movie-orgy. He did have one good line, though: when Garcia lit up on-screen, Biker Guy chastised him, “Those things’ll kill ya!”

Best Factoid: Floor mats! Bobby, Phil, and Garcia had, laying on top of the rugs, what looked like floor mats right in front of their mikes. I was confused until I half-remembered that they were pressure pads that turned the mike on as they stepped up to sing. Which is clever, in an over-engineered, MythBusters sort of way.

Worst Pope: Bobby Knucklesandwiches VI! Seriously, that guy shit the bed.

Secret Secret: Phil! He didn’t get a close-up until halfway through the second set, when he terrified the entire audience by stepping up to his microphone to sing backup on Dear Mr Fantasy. A visible shudder went through the crowd, I swear to you. The only shots we got of him were immensely unflattering. Remember the sweatpants with the elastic on the ankles? Yeah, those. Plus, he was playing my least favorite of his basses, the headless Modulus. There is something unpleasantly fidgety about those headless guitars and I don’t trust them.

Biggest Surprise: Tyler Perry’s cameo as Madea!

Nicest Try: The Covers Project! Before the show, they showed three videos: classical guitar guy playing Bird Song endlessly, hipsters with too many Gram Parsons records wearing artisanal suspenders playing Brown-Eyed Women, also endlessly. Finally, a fat guy showed up and just awesomed all over his bass to accompany himself on I Will Take You Home. Pretty decent, that one.

Secreter Hero: The Director! (And the editor! and producer! as well, I guess.) Completely avoiding almost every annoying rock concert cliché. No swooshing Video Toaster effects, no split-screen, and quite clearly no over-dubs: coming out of space, the MIDI controller on Wolf crapped out, leaving Garcia standing there doodling noiselessly.

Shitting Me: 22 minutes and 28 seconds! That is the combined length of drums/space.

Best Face: Billy’s! Halfway through drums, Mickey called his usual audible and turned the promised Beating of the Drums into the predictable Berating of the Roadies. Billy just smirked at him and continued whacking his bongos.

Worst Hair: Mickey! He looked like the  hostage with whom you didn’t empathize.

Bobbiest Bobby: Bobby! Good sweet mammy, was Bobby as Bobby as he could be tonight! Doing his little duck-neck shrug and the lunge and those thighs! (In the spirit of truth-telling, Bobby does have a kick-ass set of gams. Bobby is up in the gym, working on his fitness.) His hair was nothing short of spectacular and he remembered the words to everything, even an awesome Stuck Inside of Mobile, and that song has a ridiculous amount of words. They should have told Bobby they were making a movie every night. (Not only did Bobby remember all the words this show, but check out the next night, when he crushes Desolation Row. BOBBY, WHY YOU REMEMBER ALL 20 BILLION VERSE  DESOLATION ROW, BUT FUCK UP PROMISED LAND? Yeah, Bobby: what the Vietnamese immigrant screamed at you.

My God: Phil’s outfit! I don’t mean to harp, but that inch of white tube sock in between the ankle elastic of sweatpant and the top of his New Balance sneakers is simply not doing it for me. The only thing Phil was missing was a mustard stain and a pocketful of food court napkins.

How Does The Song Go?

March 20, 2012 / / 4 Comments

There are few Dead related pleasures more piquant than the moment when Bobby just totally gives up on remembering the words and starts singing, “yuh duh DUH yuh DUH.” Actually, Bobby’s constant memory lapses led to the classic stage configuration: Bobby had to be in the middle so everyone had an equal opportunity to yell at him when he sings Truckin‘ like this:

It’s hilarious. You can almost see Garcia contemplating the whole Mickey and the Hartbeats thing again.

Garcia knew the words, Bobby. Brent and Donna knew the words. Pigpen knew the words even when they weren’t technically words at all. (I refer you to “Box back nitties, Crayfish and mormon mice. Workin undercollar onda mall all night.”) Phil did not know the words.

New contest: has there EVER been a show where Bobby made it through without forgetting where he was? Identify it in the comments and win a year’s supply of Forearm Sweatbands by Mr. Phil of Palo Alto.

I’m Uncle Sam, That’s Who I Am

March 19, 2012 / / 6 Comments

I wrote about Bruce and the Dead and how different they are, even though if you think about it, they’re both overstaffed rock bands playing Chuck Berry songs in hockey arenas for white people. When you look at it that way and think about how exclusive a club that is, then yes there might be a resemblance.

But the moment of greatest divergence comes when Bruce Introduces The Band. Bruce once introduced the band for 35 minutes. If you were an acquaintance of Bruce’s and ran into him while he was with someone to whom you had not been introduced, just keep walking, man; Bruce will take a quarter-hour to say the person’s name, but it’ll be the greatest 15 minutes you ever spent. It is show-biz at its cheesiest, and therefore most authentic, best. He makes up little stories and cute pet names and shares wacky Jersey anecdotes and then you realize it’s been 12 minutes since he started this and he’s only at Roy Bittan. For a while, after Bruce rebuilt the Twin Towers and he became soulful and about family and settled into his latter-years role as “That guy from the AA meeting who calls everyone ‘brother’,” he turned the Band Intro into a song, an honest to god song about how much they all love each other even though they’re getting older and Bruce intros people, and EVERYBODY SINGS A WHOLE VERSE. It takes hooooooooooours.

The Dead did not do the show-biz introduction thing; it would not have gone well. Bobby would have to do it, of course. He had been pretending not to want to do it, but he REALLY, REALLY wanted to, so he kept dropping hints with everybody and no one knew what the fuck Bobby was talking about, so one night while Garcia was tuning and Phil was slapping a roadie, hard and in the face, Bobby just launches into–

“All right, people, lemme hear you! On the drums, stage left, Mr. Mickey–”

THWOCK a drumstick hits him in the back of the head, followed by a drum.

“That’s not cool! Over here on bass, from Palo Alto–”

“YOU KNOW YOUR PLACE, BOY!”

“Sorry, Phil. Ah, fuck, Garcia snuck into the bathroom. End of first set.”

« Older posts Newer posts »

The Stacks

Follow Us

Google Verification

Follow Us

Follow me on Twitter

© 2026 Thoughts On The Dead

Theme by Anders Noren — Up ↑