Musings on the Most Ridiculous Band I Can't Stop Listening To
I’m not sure how I didn’t think of “Donnaroo.” It’s obvious. But, I didn’t.
Thank God for the Comment Section and their creative minds, generous natures and non-litigious temperaments.
(Speaking of which: I could make a bunch of GIFs from the show if you’d like, but I don’t know how to chop the video up into sub-15-minute chunks. If anyone knows how, then speak now or forever hold your Playin’ Wails.)
No lie: I cheered. And I’m still smiling.
Now I’m happy.
The lack of a nose isn’t funny until you put the beard on, and then it’s hilarious. Look at Lego Garcia. Look at him.
The future is turning out underwhelming, half-baked, but it allows a guy from Japan to listen to a band from San Francisco, build a diorama of them with toys from Denmark, and post it on a social media site that is also from San Francisco. So, there’s that.
Also:
LOOK AT LEGO GARCIA.
This is the only picture available from 7/5/78 from the Omaha Civic Auditorium, and it may or may not be a random picture from ’78 that I am claiming is from 7/5/78. Regardless, it is enormous and fit for use as a desktop or, if you are a medievel Pope, a ceiling fresco.
As you may have guessed, somehow or other a copy of the Complete July ’78 Recordings Of Completeness found its way to Fillmore South and, after a minute or two of thought, I decided to start with David Lemieuxnitionsexpert’s pick, the Omaha show; holy shit, is this thing stellar. I have not heard the second set, but I am ready to declare it the BEST EVAR. In fact, I am doing so. It has been declared.
Also: Garcia’s plump little titty.
Look at this bullshit. Look at all this bullshit. I’ve been sitting here giggling at it for five minutes. Everything is off-kilter and askew: nothing kilters and there is no skew. Not one skew. To paraphrase Ghostbusters: no human would set up a rock band like this.
The Dead’s crew took “Just put that anywhere” as a dare.
Precarious Lee never won any awards. He came in third in his sixth grade spelling bee, and that was better than he had expected to do, so he was happy. He created no lasting works; Precarious never learned to sculpt, and he didn’t have the patience for novel-writing. He facilitated art, but never got around to making any. Precarious has lived his life without inflicting much of a scar on the historical record.
But, Precarious? He did that bullshit right there.
And that bullshit right there? That’s art.
Many tales have been told of the Grateful Dead: they’ve been examined from angles musical, financial, sociological, historical, chemical, metaphysical, biographical, academic, and there was a coloring book once. Never, though, has the Dead’s relationship with exercise been detailed, and certainly not with the scholastic rigor I intend to apply to the following bullshit I’m about to make up.
Bobby was the most physical-minded of the group; he cared about the parts of his body that were not his dick or stomach, and engaged in strenuous and joyful fits of exercise, plus many soothing and barefoot yoga sessions. Bobby enjoyed running almost as much as he enjoyed running shorts. In the 70’s, he took up mountain biking, and in the 80’s got into hill biking; the 90’s saw Bobby become interested in riding his bike on flat terrain, and in the 00’s, Ebay was founded, which is where Bobby sold his bike.
Mickey gave Bobby a run for his money, though, and sometimes literally: Mickey liked to combine his athletics with gambling and would often make more money off his impromptu wagering than from a tour. Like Bobby, Mickey took up bicycling for a while, but always preferred his horses, as it was impossible to dose a bicycle.
And here lies a sheer and fatal drop-off in both athletic ability and exercisial enthusiasm. Except for Bobby and Mickey, every Grateful Dead would be picked last and sent to right field. (There are pictures of Bobby playing softball; there are pictures of Garcia watching softball.) You might pick Billy a little higher up if you were playing hockey and wanted to start a fight.
Billy’s exercise came primarily from running amok. Smoothie in the morning, throw a mailbox at a cop around lunch, run through a hospital with a chainsaw before the show, and then finish up the day with cardio (Billy calls anal “cardio”).
The ocean also provides Billy with a chance to stretch, strengthen, and shape up; he has invented something he calls “sharkour,” but is actually just swimming slowly and looking at fish. (You cannot do parkour underwater as there are no benches to vault over, and even if there were, you can’t vault over anything underwater.)
Phil’s idea of exercise was standing up during a blowjob.
The keyboardists were all over the place, as should be expected: Pig did Tai Chi once, by accident; TC did some fancy bullshit, I’m sure; Keith, along with Mrs. Donna Jean, trained in mixed-martial arts and practiced on each other constantly; Brent was the Marin county free-diving champ three years in a row until he was beaten; Bruce beat him; Vince owed his taut tush to ballroom dance.
Garcia always carried his own briefcase, though sometimes it was heavy.
When this year gets you down–and it should have by now–remember that people are still delightful on occasion, and that though there is evil and strife, there is also a guy in Japan who makes Lego dioramas of of a semi-defunct choogly-type band from two continents over.
Also: as stated, that is the 1978 band with Keith and Mrs. Donna Jean, and Maria Muldaur with the curly plastic hair; the inevitable John Kahn on bass, and the wonderfully-named Buzz Buchanan on drums.
It would be wrong to say that the Maria Muldaur Lego looks like Whora the Explora.
Also also: Garcia’s long-lost twin from the Sub-Continent, Curry Garcia.
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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