Tag: john cipollina

Hunter has the exact same face as Warren Zevon. Never noticed before.

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Rockin’ Ricky over there is John Cipollina, who was in Quicksilver Messenger Service and jammed with the Dead on many occasions, but even cooler is the fact that his mom gave Pigpen organ lessons.

This is ’68, right after the Least Effective Firing In History. (Second on the list is George Steinbrenner firing Billy Martin: yes, Billy always came back, but at least he left the stadium for a couple months or so. Bobby and Pig didn’t even miss a gig after they were fired, so the Dead–as always–win a contest that they didn’t know they were participating in.) Bobby buckled down and practiced, but Pig’s problem was more foundational: he had no clue how the band’s new Hammond B3 worked. The sucker’s got a dashboard like the space shuttle, and foot pedals and levers, and switches and sliders and two keyboards. Pig knew how to play the piano.

Luckily, John’s mom Evelyn was a concert pianist and an accomplished organist, and so she–semi-secretly, now: the Pig’s got his pride–taught him the intricacies of his new instrument. They probably sat there next to each other on the bench, and maybe Evelyn would whack Pig’s knuckles when he got something wrong, and give him a gold-star sticker when he did a good job.

I bet Pig called her “ma’am.”

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A rare photo in which Mrs. Donna Jean not only doesn’t have the best hair, but also does not feature Bobby.

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No, wait: Hunter looks like Elton John.

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Lucky Strikes are foul, but the packs–especially the soft packs–are art.

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Takes balls to start with an invocation to the gods. Homer did it, Virgil did it, Dante did it, and so did Hunter. All of them got away with it.