No one had the heart to tell Garcia it was October 3rd.
Musings on the Most Ridiculous Band I Can't Stop Listening To
Tag: garcia (Page 3 of 10)
The Dead could end songs. And by that I mean they had the requisite musical knowledge to properly end a tune, not that they knew when to do it. Also, rock songs only end one of two ways: sudden stop or big loud noise.
Starting songs was a little more difficult. That first riff, the one that most bands labor over to get your attention immediately, that says that this band is a professional band made up of professional people? The Dead weren’t good at that. They figured they had at least four or five bars to get the tempo together, and eight to ten bars for the key. They had, however, all been playing the same song at the same time since the “someone just walk over and tell Keith what we’re playing” policy was implemented.
For good or for ill, the songs were precisely as long as they wanted to be (which means, until Billy got bored). The tempos wandered all over the place, from the glacial ’72 Sing Me Back Home to the skittering, out-of-control ’85. ’85 was like the first ten minutes after you slam crystal, right? And you’re just like UHHHHHHH and then you’re like YEEEEEESSHfuck and–
I’m gonna step in here turn down his volume just a touch and say to everyone out there that Thoughts on the Dead supports living clean, waking up early, and smoothies of all sort. Under no circumstances should any of you shoot crystal meth. Let’s check back in.
–and your cock’s like–
Oh, for Christ’s…
I think no more Jerry Band for me. These bloggings started with the express rule: no Jerry Band, which of course encapsulates Ratdog and Seastones and drunkenly narrated slide shows from Billy’s scuba trips. (“Punched that fish in the dick, punched THAT fish RIGHT in the dick. Swimmin’ over here and takin’ our jobs.”)
There is something, a gestalt (a Jungian would say that) that exists between four men and whomever else they let on the stage that creates the Grateful Dead. It’s like Voltron, except it now takes up to three hours to form the Voltron Robot because one of the lions–I’m not going to say which one, but it’s Garcia–has locked himself in the Space Lion Bathroom again and we can’t really force him out of there because he’s in an 800 ton warp-capable lion mech; outright aggression would be counter-productive.
I say four because it was four who were necessary: Garcia, Bobby, Billy, Phil. Mickey came and went; keyboardists plowed under as if stage right was the Somme. It was the four of them that made the sound that was the Dead: that lazy lope, that leonine lurch, that lupine lambada and they checked one another’s bad habits.
The worst thing to happen to Garcia–or any of them, really–was being the guy in charge of the band. Because Garcia wanted to play this next number for 23 minutes. Doesn’t matter what song, but it’s probably Dylan or a reggae tune he has de-reggaefied, and it’s gonna be 23 minutes. So, if Garcia’s the one signing your check, you comp under him for 23 minutes. Also, it’s going to be slow.
Billy wouldn’t put up with that shit, though. Billy was the guy who, when the group needed to buy a new truck in the early days, instead demanded they buy him a Mustang that he promptly wrecked. If Billy wanted a song to be over, it was going to end.
Phil didn’t really do any solo stuff; he could be a bit lazy. And surly. All of the Evil Dwarves. And, of course, when Bobby gets left to his own devices, this happens:
[youtube http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dWscxdleZzI&w=420&h=315]
It hurts very badly when the spambots leave comments about how I should write a book.
However, it intrigues me how search terms like these: vince welnick disliked by other members of the dead and vince welnick was a bad choice seem to come up in batches. Nothing for a long time, and all a sudden, everyone on Google is demanding to know about Ned Lagin.
Also, I truly pray that the person who searched for “grateful dead” white slavery had simply been here before and forgotten the name of the site where he read about the Dead and their controlling interest in the worldwide white slavery trade. Because most of the alternatives are horrifying.
The Dead played a billion covers. Some they played forever: Me & My Uncle, NFA; some just the once: How Sweet it Is (from the DP 30 Academy of Music shows that I’m always honking on about). Some songs, though: it’s better the Dead never sat down to figure out the changes.
Dubstep would not have worked; Phil would probably like it. If you haven’t heard dubstep, it’s the sound of a Transformer getting raped. Actually, Mickey might have liked it, too. This is what dubstep is: it get interesting 90 seconds in. I understand why half-naked teens on drugs would love dancefucking to this, but it’s not for listening.
Itsy-Bitsy Teeny Weeny Yellow Polka Dot Bikini (fuck you all for making me type that) would be a poor choice as Bobby would fuck up the chorus so badly that everyone would think it was a Dylan tune.
Any of the particularly tricky Rush tunes: La Villa, YYZ, By-Tor (not the Snow Dog, oddly enough.) The Dead had the chops to pull it off, but those tunes required precision and practice. Even the Dead’s more complicated tunes, like Terrapin–if you missed the musical turn, you could wait for it to come back around again. Plus, there were twice as many people in the Dead as Rush, man.
Devo. Any deconstruction-type stuff. The Dead did not dismantle, in fact they piled on, always. They were rococo and baroque. Also, broke, but that’s for a different post.
AH HEAR YURR LOOKIN FURR A NEW WRITER FOR THIS HURR NEWSPAPER.
Aw, man: you just made the spell-check kill itself.
DIRTY SOUTH! SKRILLEX!
Those two things are not related except for tangentially at best.
YEAH! KING! YEAH! ELVIS KING!
You’re not listening. This is a job with the Grateful Dead. I’ve heard there have been incidents.
MORE LIKE A NON-INCIDENT, HEH-HEH-HEH.
Why are you laugh–
HAIRY GARCIA WONT KARATE WITH ME, EVEN THOUGH I TOLD HIM TO!
That actually seems to be the precise way to get him to not do something. Maybe if you–
AH’M AUDITIONING NOW
—Great.
THE GRATEFUL DEAD WAS JUST SOME CHOOGLY-TYPE JAM BAND WITH NO DISCIPLINE INSTILLED IN THEM BY THE STUFF NECESSARY TO BECOME A BLUE BELT IN PRES-LEE-DO, WHICH IS A MARTIAL ART I MADE UP. THE FACT THAT EVEN I, ITS CREATOR, HAVE NOT MASTERED IT SHOULD SHOW ITS FIENDISH DIFFICULTY. AH AM HALFWAY THROUGH ‘KICKING.’
That’s gonna be all I need to hear.
SO ELVIS HAS THE GIG?
Sure: we start at 8:00 AM.
ELVIS PASSES.
Hey, what if the Grateful Dead were Secretaries-General of the United Nations? Obviously, Garcia is Boutros-Boutros Ghali (which my spell-check says is spelled wrong, therefore: racist devil). Phil is clearly U Thant, and if you can’t see Trygve Lie’s baby blues staring out at you from behind the drums stage right, well…I don’t know what’s wrong with you, pal.
You got nothing, do you?
Not as such, no.
It really is going to be sad to see you go–
Dead as the A-Team? With Garcia as Hannibal and he’s like, “I love it when a jam comes together.” And Billy is Murdock and Bobby is Face and Merl is B.A., because they tried it with Mickey in black-face and even he saw the problems, so they called the only black guy they knew.
I’m going to pass.
Merl was the Dead’s Billy Preston
Nice observation, but still gonna pass.
Can I just go workshop some stuff, rub it up some flags, get it back to you in a much more proactive paradigm?
If you admit that what you just said doesn’t mean anything, then: yes.
Complete bullshit. All of it.
Get back to me.
Kids, pay attention: this is how your parents were raised. Now, if your baby is onstage with the Grateful Dead (and that’s a big “if” because nowadays, babies are not allowed to be on stage with the Grateful Dead, metaphorically speaking), but anyway, if your baby was right now on that stage, you would give him those horrible little baby earmuffs, In the 70’s, if your baby was on stage with the Grateful Dead, you gave him a tambourine.
(Those baby ear protectors are the worst. It’s a baby. Don’t bring it the show, huh?)
P.S. I stole this picture fair-and-square from some loser-breath monster pants.
Sorry to rail on about this Ronnie Tutt fellow, but first off, he’s just a massive drummer who gives my wiener worries; second, he played with Garcia AND Elvis. That is an odd cross-section of the Twentieth Century there. Supposedly they never met, but this of course begs the question: why not? Garcia must have been interested in the King, and Elvis was up for any stupid bullshit after enough pills and sandwiches.
Ronnie mentions it off-hand one night, and Elvis jumps on it like a steel trap.
YUR WURKIN FER THAT HAIRY GARCIA?
“Yeah, Elvis. He wanted to meet you, so I thought he could come on down to Vegas and catch–”
VEGAS? HAIRY GARCIA AIN’T COMIN TA NO VEGAS. I WILL RECEIVE HIM IN THE THRONE ROOM. I WILL RECEIVE HIM UPON THE SEAT OF MY POWER.
“That’s Graceland, King?”
YEAH, I WILL SEND THE LISA MARIE.
So, Garcia and the boys show up at Graceland. A red-headed porter in a modified Elvis suit/apron answers the door and shows them in, stopping at the entrance to the Jungle Room.”
“King, I present–”
Bang.
HEY, GRATEFUL DEAD: AH JUST SHOT THAT WHITE BOY. THE FUCK YOU THINK ‘BOUT THAT?
This time, even Billy had nothing: he was just as impressed and terrified as anyone else. There was a silence; no, not a silence: there were birds birding and branches creaking and creeks branching and cars starting 300 yards away. It was actually a sound that, like the smell of a dominatrix decaying in a bathtub in a row house just north of the 7-11 on Santa Monica Blvd in West Hollywood, hit your primal nerves–it was a sound that your reptile brain recognized long before your dumb ass put a name it: the sound of everyone shutting the fuck up and listening to the guy with the gun.
AH’M JUST SHITTIN YOU NOW, BOYS: GET THE FUCK IN’ERE. STEP OVER THAT DEAD CRACKER FUCK.
So they did and a good time was had by all. They talked a bit, ate bacon. Dr. Nick stopped by and declared them all very, very sick so they needed medicines of all colors and shapes; the proper dosage of these pills should be “a handful”. The Dead, of course, had dosed everything and everyone in the room, as well. The combination of LSD and the three champagne glasses full of pills Elvis dry-swallowed (which would have been a great party trick except for the whole “saddest thing you’ll ever watch another human being casually do right in front of you” thing) hit the King a bit funny.
TIME FOR KARATE: AH’M GUNNA KARATE THE GRATEFUL DEAD!
With that, the King jumped off the couch (there are many shades of jumping, from vaulting or leaping to whatever it was that Elvis did that day). He ripped off his robe, expecting–I believe–that in an attack situation, he would just grow a karate suit like he was Super Man or something. But he didn’t: he just ripped off his robe and stood there, naked and confused for a good long moment and then someone came and brought him up to his bedroom to change.
The Memphis Mafia was thrilled by this; they took the time away from the King to smoke doobies with the Dead, since Elvis did not allow doobies to be smoked in Graceland.
“Is he really gonna karate out when he gets back? said Bobby.
“If he–PHWOOOOO (doobie)–remembers, yeah. And if he goes for it, we gotta join in. Sorry, Grateful Dead,” said Joe Esposito.
“Does anyone need towels or water?” said Charlie Hodge.
“Y’know, Charlie,” said Garcia. “My brow is sopping, but my throat is bone-dry.”
“I got the solution, chief: towels and water.”
Another two hours or so went by, and everyone was having a great time. They were high as kites, and girls showed up, and Red broke out the guitars, and everybody had just the right amount of towels and water, and they had a hootananny right there in the Jungle Room. The thick shag was sown with pills, like a qualude farm and–
KARATE TIME!
Elvis was back. As promised, the Mafia had to pretend to fight, but the Dead were just giggly at that point, perhaps due to all the velour. Even Billy didn’t have any violence in him.
FACE ME, GARCIA. FACE YOUR KING.
“Well, y’know man, it’s just that you’re kinda being a rude sort of host here and–
YOU LEAD THESE MEN. YOU ARE THEIR KING. NOW FACE ME, FOR IN THE THRONE OF KINGS, HE DIES WHO…SHIT. IN THE KING OF GAMES, YOUR BEER IS…NO, FUCK, NO.
“We’re gonna split, man.”
NO! KARATE WITH ME, HAIRY GARCIA!
The door shuts on the loud group of men, leaving relative quiet in the Jungle Room.
“I’ll karate with ya, King.”
SHUT THE FUCK UP, CHARLIE.
…
I WANTED TO KARATE WITH HAIRY GARCIA.
This is how it always happens: a nice stranger on the internet pays you a compliment and BOOM: listening to the fuckin’ Jerry Band. (And don’t give me any guff about “Legion of Mary,” or “Reconstruction,” or whatever: it was always just the fuckin’ Jerry Band. And what that was, was Garcia and John Kahn making dope money.)
The Jerry Band mostly sucked, except for the times when, coincidentally, people like Merl Saunders or Ronnie Tutt were in the band. Odd how that happened. Otherwise, it was ponderous, unmemorable Dylan covers.
My main memory of The Jerry Band was my Dead Bodhidharma, Glenn. He dug the ’90 live CD, the one with Simple Twist of Fate on it, in which John Kahn takes an eight-minute bass solo (strike three) in the wrong key. Or for the first time on a fretless. Or with a number of head wounds and contusions. these are only some of the excuses he might have for whatever it was I was forced to sit through.
P.S. Speaking of intonational follies, check out Second that Emotion from 4/13/71 at the Catholic Youth Center in Scranton, PA. The intro answers the question “Could Garcia be so out of tune, he actually becomes in tune the long way around?”
P.P.S. Seriously, go find this recording: Jerry Garcia Collection vol 1: Legion of Mary.
© 2021 Thoughts On The Dead
Theme by Anders Noren — Up ↑
Recent Comments