This fucking guy right here!
Musings on the Most Ridiculous Band I Can't Stop Listening To
Tag: keith godchaux (Page 13 of 17)
A little more actual art to cleanse the palate…
March the motherfucking 16th, 1973, brohams! And how about a little Phil-led monster-under-the-bed Playin’ jam followed by a ripping Promised Land INTO Bertha. Into? INTO! Fuckin’ into, man.
Is there any more into? YES! Bertha INTO Greatest Story. Is Keith killing it? YES!
This show is positively slathered in YES: they’re hyped up on the stage and in the crowd; say what you will about Long Island, it’s not shy. The boys are just Billypunching shit all over the fuck and THEN AT 3:30 IN STORY, THEY TEASE ST. STEPHEN.
And even here in Long Island, a foul and loathsome squat of fecal matter and cultural decline: the intro from Uncle Bill himself, and Uncle Bill wasn’t just the best at what he did, he was the only one who did what he did. Mostly because he had muscled most of his competitors out of the business.
Why are you here? Go to there; listen; relax; enjoy; fondle; adjust; refondle. Mostly listen.
I won’t be bound by reason, nor shackled by logic. When you think I’m going to zig, I collapse in a heap crying, then hie away to dark and obscure corners of the interweb to play Smackytush. (It’s a game I don’t want to talk about, CAPTAIN BRINGDOWN.) So today, when Brent is on my mind, I should link to a spectacular and high-energy Brent show, maybe a Fall from ’87 or ’89.
But people who make assumptions have gumption making asses out of umps. Umps don’t need help with that; they do it quite well on their own. How is it possible that Baseball doesn’t have instant replay yet? It’s 2009 and–
What? It’s…are you kidding? It’s 2013.
–we’re just supposed to ACCEPT human error when there are cameras available?
…
2013, you say?
Yes. Coming up on August, 2013.
IT WORKED! WHO’S THE PRESIDENT?
Bring me the anal pear.
Getting back to business…
The pear was for me; it brings me an exquisite pleasure. I was actually enjoying the crazy make-em-ups.
…
So, instead of a Brent we have a double-dose of Not-Brent: Keith and Pig from 1/2/72 at Winterland.
HOLY GOD, Good Lovin, ladies and other ladies wearing trousers! Listen to 9:00 in, the ECSTATIC peak they hit transitioning into the most dramatic tone settable while someone’s singing about a pony.
AND THEN LISTEN TO 12:15! Y’know what: just listen to the whole show. Hall of Fame.
Let’s think about them all today: Brent and Keith, Vince and Pig. Garcia, too. They’re gone. The shows can’t bring them back, but it’s all we’ve got.
Among the many things Bobby knew that Keith didn’t (don’t mix your substances) was: if you keep showing up for the gigs, you didn’t really get fired.
Happy 65th, Keith.
Digressions and distractions, they buzz around me and lick me like the patch of carpet that Keith thought “smelled like dope.” I intended–honestly, with no agenda–to make a full and sweeping, perhaps even academic overview of the Dead’s various visits to Chicago. It was to be multi-paragraphed and sourced and impartial: it was gonna be my Lost Live Dead: I was gonna hit the big time, Pop!
And barely 36 hours (or maybe three days–I have been binging on Storage Wars and time and space seem to have, I don’t know, maybe switched places a little bit?) after undertaking this feat of literary endurance that would make Samuel Johnson soil his trousers, I get sidetracked.
By the way, Samuel Johnson soiled his trousers a lot. More than you would accept in most men, but fuck it–it was Samuel Johnson: if you write a dictionary all by yourself, you get to shit yourself. The fucked-up thing was that every time it happened (and remember: it happened quite a bit), he would–even before attending to his pressing hygienic needs–white-knuckle his walking stick and start whaling the daylights out of Boswell, who hadn’t done anything: fucking Johnson was the one who made the doody in his pants, HE should be the one getting hit! But, no: Johnson would sock the poor fucker, like, six or seven times, hard, and start screeching, “Not for the book!” SHWAKATHOOM “Not for the book!” HAGGADAH “Not for the book!”…
Stop it. Stop it now. You are a mutant who will never know love and you need to stop it and get back to the point.
Fine.
So: I’m fully immersed in The Chicago Project. I was gonna put it on Kickstarter just as soon as I figure out what that means. And then a certain Mr. Completely (yes, Enthusiasts, the same Siren who lured me onto the rocks of Fucking Jerry Band for a while) mentions a bunch of ’80’s shows on Reddit and everything’s gone pear-shaped.
So check out this exquisite ’82 from Frost Amphitheater: not the more famous 10/10, but the day before. Brent is playing scads of piano–real piano, not the Fender–in this one and it just might be the show to fully convince me of his Motherfucker status. He’s clearly listening to Garcia and is fast and responsive and dynamic: everything Keith wasn’t at the end. PLUS, early Touch and Throwing Stones AND a rare On The Road Again! Listen to this, or I’m getting the Time Sheath, loading Samuel Johnson up with Mexican food, and coming to your house.
Always give in to peer pressure, just choose your peers with care.
I met an actual, real-life Enthusiast the other day; he asked me who my favorite member of the Dead was. I said Bobby without thinking. I didn’t even know why at the time.
Now I know.
It’s because he can photobomb himself.
Sound quality is the thing–it’s a deal breaker for me. I need my shows to sound like a closeted preacher’s marriage: clean and separated.
“You gotta kinda struggle to hear everything, man, but it’s totally worth it.”
No, it is not. It sounds like a Belgian farting in a laundromat. There must be separation: Garcia and Phil at 12 o’clock, Keith and Bobby at 10 and 2. Billy spreads out along the bottom or Billy on the left and Mickey on the right. No exceptions.
My quest for aural satiety continues, festers, defines. It broods in the winter and sweats like a holy man in the summers. Some enthusiasts of an audiophile bent will settle for nothing less than FLAC files, while others–confused, spotty lads and broken old men the lot of them–content themselves with mp3 files.
I, on the other hand, make Charlie Miller come to my house and sing to me.
All nonsense, of course. No stereo here in Fillmore South with which to crank tunes, bitchin’ or otherwise. Just one of those little dock things and the computer, whom I hate and fear and will one day beg to come back. You know: Dad.
Computers combine the worst qualities of dogs and cats: they’re as stupid and literal and single-minded as dogs, and as annoyingly independent as cats. (To think of the computer this way falls into what I call the “canine fallacy,” which is that adorable habit humans have of thinking of all animals as weird-shaped dogs, much to their chagrin as a bull moose stompjacks their heads over and over with his dinner-plate sized foot. Fewer people would get mauled and eaten each year if they remembered that, out of the entire animal kingdom, only dogs have a category called “buddy.”)
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