Thoughts On The Dead

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

Tag: Grateful Dead (Page 3 of 25)

Rock The Boat

August 22, 2013 / / 0 Comments

jerry kidd kiss

Garcia had a rule: if you’re on the water, it doesn’t count. And I’m gonna be honest with you and it pains me, this fact, but it needs to be out there: Garcia lured the entire crew onto the boat and forced himself on them in an explicitly gay way. Parrish accepted his fate stoically, but Ramrod struggled and founght and tried to slither away, and he was wiry-strong.

There’s nowhere to run on a boat, though. And nothing counted on the water, according to Garcia.

We need to have a serious discussion and I think the HR person needs to be in the room.

Starphish

August 15, 2013 / / 0 Comments

I’ve been thinking about the Tahoe Tweezer from that improvisational group, The Phishes, and I want to see it as its own thing, to not compare, to not demand a referent, but it just happens: certain stars are binary. Peanut butter goes with jelly; Yankees with the Sox; toilet activities with shame. The Phishes will always be compared to the Dead, because like the Dead, they’re not special: White guys playing Stones covers in hockey arenas; iconic guitar-god frontman with a penchant for opiates; unpleasant-looking, half-Jewish rhythm section.

Getting back to this immense Tahoe Tweezer: the only thing I could compare it to was a ’72 Dark Star. When they got long, and deep, and mystical. In ’72, sometimes you can’t tell whether they’re going to make it back. Will they paint themselves into a corner while painting their masterpiece? Would they have to cheat and just SLAM another song up against some abstract doodlings? That was the Dead’s way of admitting defeat in a jam, that they had neglected to take a left turn in Albuquerque and each of them had subtly suggested a number of options for songs, but no one could agree, so Bobby (always the most quietly obstinate onstage) would just Leroy Jenkins them all into Sugar Magnolia.

After listening to a few Dark Stars, I realized why I’ll come back to the Dead. Why this music is good and should be shared and kept and treasured.

It was after Dark Star, actually: they had gone into Wharf Rat and I listened to these men (and Mrs. Donna Jean) sing a song about two men on opposite sides of a story, and I have been both of those men and that has been my story and that has not been my story.

It’s the songs, it was always the songs. I grew to love the men who sang them because of the songs that they sang. I’m a first-set guy. Tell me a story.

Tell me the one you told me last night: it’s the only way I’ll sleep.

Driving That Train

August 15, 2013 / / 0 Comments


What other website brings you–you, the discerning Enthusiast–exclusive news of how the Grateful Dead responded to the news of the Hyperloop? None!

Y’think there’s a reason for that?

Big Dead?

Really?

No, not this time. This shit’s getting arcane.

band young train

Phil half-read the article, then demanded that “this hyperlooper the boffins have invented” be worked into his amplifier rig.

All day, Bobby had been giggling, hard. He was doing that thing where you’re at a funeral or church or an orgy–somewhere you’re not allowed to laugh–and now YOU CAN’T STOP LAUGHING. Every once in a while, Bobby would try to catch his breath: he would double over, hands on knees, shaking his head. “Hyper poop,” he would whisper, and again start quivering with laughter. It continued for hours; Garcia had to sing most of the songs that night.

Billy invented a hyperloop, as well: it was sexual in nature, and I’d thank you not to ask me any more about it.

Vince was heartbroken over the rumor that the emergency brake was to be named the Vince Song, because it brought things to a dead stop.

Garcia would check into hotels under the name “Hy Perloupe”. He thought is was clever, and it actually wasn’t such a bad little joke. Then he would accidentally burn down half the building.

 

Up Pulled A Cadillac

August 15, 2013 / / 0 Comments

jerry bobby phil rambler room

Here’s a weirdo show for a weirdo day: the Rambler Room on 11/17/78.  I can barely figure this one out, and the internet is no help: some folks say this was a Bob Weir Band show, but the Dead are on tour (they play great shows at the Uptown Theater the nights before and after this.) Bobby wouldn’t have a solo tour co-booked with the Dead, so they probably just called themselves “The Bob Weir Band” because promoters get cranky when you play a surprise show in the same city where they’ve engaged you for the weekend.

Was this a favor? Was Bobby trying to get laid? He was Bobby, for fuck’s sake: surely this was too much effort, even for a college girl–he was a rock star, after all, and there were so many young women who wanted to sleep with rock stars that a special name had to be thought up for them.

Billy’s not there, but that doesn’t really matter: Acoustic Dead was always only Garcia and Bobby and Phil standing in the back with the treble on his bass turned all the way down.

It’s a fun show: Garcia sings Knockin’ On Heaven’s Door, even imploring the small, but friendly, crowd to sing along. Great high harmonies from Bobby, who acquits himself with his slide when not permitted by the design of the guitar to place the thing all the way up the neck to make screechy noises.

It’s a homey show: you know they sent Parrish to steal the stools from the student union cafe ten minutes before the set.

PLUS a great Big Boy Pete, complete with goofy back-and-forth between Bobby and Garcia and you can hear the smiles on their faces.

Jerry: The Movie

August 5, 2013 / / 0 Comments

No, nothing’s gonna bring him back: today we have celebrations of him instead of celebrating with him, and with all due respect to the soldiers that soldier on, legacy must be polished to a gleam that more and more people can see every year, not less and less.

The Grateful Dead isn’t making anymore Enthusiasts, so we have to–we, all of us, top to bottom. This music is good. It is good for you. It is a punch in the dick of the enemies of fun. The men (and Mrs. Donna Jean) who made it were enthusiastically human at all times: they left behind good stories; their stories were the stories of their time; we should tell these stories.

We should tell them well.

[vimeo http://www.vimeo.com/57295533 w=400&h=300]

For fuck’s sake, this is not the way to do it.

The horse that the Garcia family (well, the ones who are legally allowed to do so as the Garcia family) chose to back is a guy who directed an Elvis movie in 1970. The website for this project lists his email address: it is an AOL account. (Go check, but I warn you: the trailer posted above starts playing automatically, so I linked to the bio page and you can click to the main having already hit the mute button.  I’m not going to make any sort of joke here because webpages that start playing music automatically aren’t funny. I never have nor will claim any privileged–or even particular–knowledge of any other man’s mind, especially not a two-decades dead rock star I never met, but I’ll tell you one thing, and I would lay it all on the line–the lives of family–that Garcia would have absolutely fucking HATED IT when webpages start playing automatically. Have a go-see: Jerry: The Movie )

There’s nothing even here, that’s the funny part: an interview with Garcia in which he expounds upon his love of music? Stop the presses. The story of his first guitar? If you zoomed out, you would see Parrish standing 10 feet away mouthing the words along with him.

The only good thing about this is that it won’t get made.

But something should.

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