Raise a glass for times gone by.
Musings on the Most Ridiculous Band I Can't Stop Listening To
Tag: Grateful Dead (Page 6 of 25)
What do you get the man who was everything?
Garcia, you’re not fooling anyone: we all know what’s in the briefcase.
(Picture unabashedly stolen from fuckyesjerrygarcia.tumblr.com.)
Though the man who owned the farm was a huge Deadhead, even he had to admit that the new scarecrow was just not working.
Sorry for the disappearing act: I didn’t feel like making jokes, especially not about Billy punching dicks. Tawdry and insignificant, in the face of it.
But time goes on, so more goofy wackiness to come. PLUS the continuation of the Spring ’78 tour run-through! AND special guest blogger Elvis Presley!
USE MAH ROYAL TITLE, MONKEY.
Umm…His Man-jesty, the Most Hung and Holy Fourth Degree Black Belt, Tushee Monster Extraordinaire, Elvis Presley.
FUCKIN’ A.
Happy birthday to the best piano player the Dead ever had.
Which brings us, again, to 4/21/78 at the Rupp Arena in Lexington, Kentucky. This tour is something of a Rust Belt/Appalachian Trail theme and, yes, there were two shows I’ve neglected, but my versions sounds as if the recording device had been keestered in and then never un-keestered, to be found post-mortem and released in a macabre recreation of Betty Canter-Jackson’s storage locker incident.
So, I went to the Rupp show, which I’ve written about before: it with this weird, wired energy that isn’t just the coke singing. Listen to the Playin’>drums. All of them stay up there for drums and listen to it climax 12 minutes in with a Donna-led call-and-response chant that makes this one of the only drums I’ve ever listened to on its own.
And then, right after that, Mickey starts playing the Knight Rider theme.
4/16/78, West Virginia. Holy shit, they must have been broke, although it seems like WV would be pretty in the spring. Check out Garcia’s solo in Peggy-O, the way he leads the chord changes. Just listen to Peggy-O: this version is astonishing.
In fact, Garcia has been on fire the entire show and for most of the tour, but sweet Sally in the alley, would someone take that slide from Bobby. For the children, if nothing else.
And then listen real careful to Ship of Fools, where Garcia implores us to “Looky here,” before he tells us how late it was when he got around to believing.
P.S. in the New Orleans tradition, when the body is brought to the church, the Second Line follows, playing traditional funeral dirges. IKO IKO IS NOT ONE OF THEM, GENTLEMEN. Hop to it, guys: you’re killing me.
And how about 4/14/78 at the Cassell Coliseum at Virginia Polytechnic University? Most of the show is a complete mess, but like the rest of this tour, its sheer energy pulls it through, and then LISTEN TO GARCIA do his George Benson thing and start singing along with his guitar during Black Peter.
Next up, West Virginia.
Rage on, you cataracts and hurricanoes, rage on. We take a break from our tour in progress to match the show to the day: thick and rainy and hot and weird and that can only mean one thing: the Wharf Rat>Sugar Mags from 6/20/83 at the Merriweather Post Pavilion.
The lightning was hitting the struts and buttresses of the sound system and Phil was answering God right the fuck back with his own thunder and the crowd was swimming in mud and Bobby was dosed out of his head and starts babbling about Aborigines.
So, a Grateful Dead show.
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