Someone got to the bloggings yesterday by searching “Did Brent Mydland like groupies?”
My friend: if you don’t like ’em, they ain’t groupies.
Musings on the Most Ridiculous Band I Can't Stop Listening To
Tag: grateful (Page 3 of 4)
As with the last video I posted, embedding is impossible so I will just link to 11/24/78 at the Capitol Theater in beautiful, downtown Passaic, NJ. If you don’t have time to watch, just listen: the sound is spectacular.
Re-read Cutler’s great (not true) book (true) about his time road-managing the Dead. What I came away with was that Sam Cutler was some sort of poisonous frog that, whenever threatened, doses you with acid. Seriously, go read the book: Cutler charges through backstages and airports secretly giving near-strangers heavy psychedelics. Any time anyone at all needed to talk business with him, he would immediately slip them a massive dose of LSD. It’s a genius negotiating tactic, really.
But, you can’t do that kind of thing anymore. This is no longer a nation where grown men are allowed to wander around out of their gourds calling themselves Country Joe and the Fish. You get drones sent to your house for that kind of display now.
Quick question followed by hysterical rantings, accusations of treachery, cries of poverty (abject, moral, financial), and threats of reprisal.
Why not crowd-source the next Dead release? Put the 6 or 8 shows being decided among online and let the Enthusiasts decide. Why wasn’t that part of the Grateful Dead Game, that feculent folly? Someone explain that thing to me or I’m going to have one of my little fits and we can’t have the couch cleaned again: it’s more duct tape than sofa now.
Here’s my vote for the next one, pulled from a well renowned for its sweetness and goblins, but in fact all the more worthy because of its brethren: to listen to any show from Spring ’77 is to demand comparison and 4/22/77 at The Spectrum in Philly more than holds it own against any comers. The Peggy-O is the equal of the vaunted 5/7; the Scarlet>Fire might be better than 5/8.
P.S. The Scarlet>Fire is better, just objectively better. Don’t argue with me and go eat some fiber. And, hey: if you like what I’m doing, then wave the flag, huh?
P.P.S. Listen to Keith during the Dancing jam at 7:45: he hits these beautifully dissonant chords with the Hammond, which he uses quite a bit this show, but then he starts playing like a child, a drunken hairy child prone to smacking people, doing smack, smacking smack, and occasionally shoplifting. EDIT: There is no evidence whatsoever that Keith was a shoplifter. The smack, yes, but we have every reason to believe Keith paid for his candy bars.
Thereafter, Keith goes back to the piano to play some of the most gorgeous lines he’s ever laid down (you jive turkey) as if to reinforce his point.
P.P.P.S. They have, collectively, taken this show out back and beaten the living shit of it. BEST SHOW EVER! You stop that, you big bully.
Found this and thought you’d like it, but before you click on it, know this: you will be going to a desert, a ghost mall of the internet, a junction far, far across the Rio Grand (EeyOoo): MySpace. There exists a MySpace. Still. I wonder if their office still has the half-pipe and yoga studio? Didn’t “Tom” die in an auto-erotic asphyxiation thing last Winter Solstice? (That’s how I mark time, because of my beliefs. TOLERATE ME.)
So, you have to go to MySpace because, well, it’s on MySpace, but mostly because I don’t know how to grab the video, so just aim your clicker over the blue letters–not the blue thing, the blue let–good aaaaaand: there’s your bank account, Grandma. Love you, Gam. NOMNOMNOM your face Gam. Gonna kill you in your sleep, Gam. NIGHT!
EDIT: I’m not even going pretend to know what went wrong there. It’s beyond just apologizing and moving on: this is High Crime or Misdemeanor time. Fuck…WHOO, where was he even GOING with that? These are decent folks out there getting high and listening to the Dead while reading about the Dead. Fuckin’ stoner-ass stoner asses. Who am I again? Am I the Reader or the Faithless Narrator? Sometime, he uses italics for one, and sometimes…sometimes, I think this is all just a bunch of obscure lies and silliness, man.
SUPEREDIT: Play the video or I’ll teach you what the word ‘flense’ means.
So: the Grateful Dead playing Saturday Night Live on 11/11/78. (You should open the video in a different window or, you know what? You’re bright and capable and more than equipped to wrangle the doodads. Just be yourself all over the place.
And we start off with everyone’s favorite secret genius, Buck Henry!
And Billy!
.26 It’s called conditioner, Garcia. Plus–and I’m just saying–for a guy who always bitched about being on TV, he certainly does play adorably to the cameras.
.38 Here we see Donna, who for some reason is easy skanking.
.50 Was Phil just yelling at the drummers on live TV? Seriously, can no one get Phillip Lesh to exhibit anything even resembling human behavior?
1.05 Donna was always dressed like your grade-school art teacher that time you ran into her at the supermarket.
1.15 We need to talk about Bobby’s pants. Young man, are you wearing jodhpurs? Or are they riding pantaloons? Are you playing Young George Washington? Will you golf later? If so, is your caddie Bagger Vance? Are you the renegade scion of the House of Bourbon? How are those socks staying up–is there a garter in play here? EXPLAIN YOUR PANTS.
1.45 Although if we’re going to be honest, they do hug his ‘tocks quite nicely. Bobby’s sexy and he knows it.
2.00 The slide. That’s a choice.
2.22 Hey, there are other people in this band! (None of whom are attractive enough for a close-up, apparently.) And a great shot of both drummers, um, drumming.
3.00 Donna gives me boners.
3.12 It’s Rowlf the dog!
3.27 Hey, Mickey’s in this band!
8 – Hallelujah hatracks (Really?)
4 – Dead keyboard players. Not 4 keyboardists for the Dead, 4 dead keyboardists. How is it possible that the mortality rate for musicians in an improvisational country-rock outfit is higher than that of those guys who parachute into forest fires? The family crest of the Dead keyboardist read Pertransiit sine me (Go on without me).
3 – Fancy little shoe racks for TC’s fancy little ankle boots.
210,000 – Number of dollars Lenny Hart stole from the band while “managing” them.
40,000 – Number of dollars Lenny Hart stole during the meeting to try to explain the financial irregularities when someone left the door to the safe open. They were trusting men, at first, our Dead.
88 – Keys on a piano.
176 – How many Keith usually saw.
1 – Number of times a crew member looked Phil directly in the eyes. Just that once.
95 – Live albums released, 110 if you count the Digital Download series (One of which I’m listening to now, the Donna-tacular 4/30/77 at the Palladium in NYC. (Audience copy, if you’re into that sort of thing. Harumph. But, seriously, it’s an AUD: think about whether that’s the person you want to be. AUD guys are to Enthusiasts what fat guys fluent in Klingon are to Trekkies)
13 – Studio albums
2 – That were any good at all.
0 – Number of times the question, “How many fingers does the Grateful Dead have?” can be answered with a whole number.
12,000 – Amount extra versus a standard P.A. it cost to tote the Wall of Sound around. Luckily, it was worth the price because it was “the righteous thing to do, man.” That is an exact quote from Blair Jackson, who was actually talking about something else entirely, but FUCK CONTEXT.
6 – Months it took the righteous thing to do to break the band’s back.
2 – Drummers.
1 – Drummer.
2 – Drummers.
12 – Teenage male hustlers found horribly mutilated throughout the 80’s in a pattern correlating to the Dead’s tour schedule. The culprit was never found, but was described as having luxuriously thick blond hair and singing the high harmony part. The pattern stopped briefly in 1989, but picked up again–far more rapidly now–in 1990, except this time it was females and there’s a weird theory that there were two guys based round this mystery man they call Suburban Lanky. Doesn’t make any sense at all, if you asked me.
40 – Milliseconds after Bobby asked, “Tonight, what if we open…wait for it…with the encore?” that his dick got punched.
300,000 – Dollars spent by Mickey in the winter of 1977 to create his most ambitious percussive masterpiece to date. Mickey planned and rehearsed diligently. He spent over a year writing the score and hired musicians from all over the world, building them a brand-new studio. Then he locked them in that brand-new studio, set it ablaze, and recorded their dying screams. Lou Reed is quoted as saying, “Why didn’t I think of that?” The album was never released, except in Norway where it reached #31 on the Billboard-flurgen charts.
14 – Bucks for the Oven-Roasted Shrimp and Sun-Dried Tomatoes at Phil’s new hotspot, Terrapin Crossroads. Come for the food, stay for the Phil!
Once, a master asked his student, “Why does Billy punch dicks?”
And the student did not answer, because he had been punched in the dick.
That master also wrote a famous haiku called “Summer Tour”:
The shorts of Garcia
Have been put on–motherfuck!
He just punched my dick
The Dead were not a Prog-Rock band, as that required hours of rehearsal, which was impossible when the phrase, “Let’s try that one again,” led at least three men to start wildly swinging their fists without even looking to see where they were going. The Dead were like Sinatra: one-take. If you allowed them back at the material after the first try, they would fiddle with it endlessly, eventually disappearing up their own asses entirely.
The Dead were not a Boy Band. Boy bands feature young, girlish men who conform to pre-slotted roles as the Cute One or the Shy One. The Dead was made up of men whose appearances might have been put on cans of stew. Yes, Bobby was the Cute One, but there was also the Locked in the Bathroom One, the Punching One, and Phil. Tiger, yes. Tiger Beat, no.
The Dead were not Alternative. I think it might have been the attitude towards guitars. Since Johnny Ramone threw his plastic Mos-Rite in a shopping bag and carried it into CBGB’s, one of the key signifiers of “cool” in the punk/alternative status game is who can find the shittiest, most obscure guitar. Garcia did not like that game, not one bit. He chased the dragon with those guitars as much as with his habit. Elaborate, expensive and–most of all-heavy things that he could fuss over. And, as we all know, anything fussed with too much is shit and those last guitars, my god, the pomp and circumference!
Wolf! Wolf weighed–I looked this up–211 pounds.
The Dead were not a Country Rock Jam Band with Delusions of Grandeur. No, no: they were. That is what they were. And, damn they were good at it.
The Dead were not Electronic Music, even though they used to let Phil’s retarded cousin Ned Lagin finger his MOOG onstage occasionally. I’m talking the Ibiza stuff, KLF is gonna house you, that thing where the bass stops and then it makes this WUBWUBWUB sound, that sort of thing. First of, all the darkness would lead instantly to a round of stealthy dickpunching the likes of which this party’s never seen! WHOO! Second, the Dead would, upon seeing the other large, bass-heavy sound systems, immediately go nuclear, leading to destruction.
“Chief, what have those Grateful Deads done this time?”
“Mr. Mayor, they’ve wired the sewer lines and turned the very ground beneath us into one giant sub-woofer!”
“And what happens if something goes wrong?
“Mr. Mayor, do you know what a caldera is?”
The Dead is not Hip-Hop, although there are similarities: the guys whose job title is kinda loose, weed.
Okay, Grateful Dead cocktail party games. Annnnnnnnnnnd: go!
Dead as countries Phil is Germany, technical and peevish; Brent is Canada, adorable and drunk; Billy is Mozambique, because Mozambique’s flag has a fist holding an AK-47 on it. No secrets, there.
Dead as Wars, Ancient Phil is most certainly the Punic Wars, all of them: savage, righteous, salted. Mickey is the Warring States Period, just because I like the name. (I was thinking about reading about the history of China, so I looked at the shop and the smallest of the books was so heavy that the Dead lugged it around with them in ’78 “just because.” Plus, I know I should care about the place where a sixth of the world lives, but try reading that wikipedia page. I get three sentences in, tops.) Garcia is the Persian War.
Dead as animals(visual) Garcia is obviously a koala: just picture a koala, now add the glasses. (That image isn’t getting out of your head, sorry.) Brent is a hedgehog. Donna is a squirrel. Phil is halfway between an ostrich and a giraffe.
Dead as animals (metaphorical) Bobby: Springer spaniel. Garcia: silverback gorilla. Phil: halfway between an ostrich and a giraffe.
Dead as rivers: TC is the Danube; Vince is the CayuhogaCuyahoga; Billy is the Mississippi: mighty, proud, and difficult to spell.
Most appropriate Dead song for the funeral of a FTM transsexual He’s Gone.
Least appropriate Dead song for the funeral of a MTF transsexual He’s Gone.
I want to write a book called Tuesdays with Mickey, in which Mickey shares life lessons about the power of drumming and then tries to choke me.
Show of the Day: 2/26/77 The Help>Slip>Franklin’s is terrifyingly good, especially the Slipknot! and, it’s the first time they’ve ever played Terrapin and they choose to open with it. You might wonder if Garcia nailed all the lyrics to Terrapin. He did, Bobby: first time. How about that?
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