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

Tag: lost live dead (Page 2 of 3)

Lost In The Heart Of Texas

Quickly: what’s better than a new post at Lost Live Dead? Very few things, but one of them might be a new post at Lost Live Dead about Texas. The Dead didn’t play Texas as much as you might think, and certainly not at a ratio commensurate to Texas’ size: only 29 times. (In comparison, they played 55 shows in New Jersey.) To make a long story short, Texas is too fucking big. But trust me on this one: you want to hear the long story. Go read.

All right, Enthusiasts: Trivia Time! Name the five states the Grateful Dead never played. No cheating.

JEOPARDY THEME SONG NOISE

Time’s up! The answer is: Wyoming, Arkansas, Dakota 1, Dakota 2, and…Delaware.

The Dead never played Delaware?

I was as shocked as you.

There’s a big college there.

The Fighting Blue Hens of the University of Delaware, yeah. But, no.

Learn something every day.

Not something useful

No, not useful at all.

Make Lovefield, Not Warfield

As always, serendipity abounds in the Dead world: concurrent with the video of Phil and his Phishy Phriends going up, a new missive from the invaluable Lost Live Dead about the Warfield Theater (where the show took place) appears. Garcia played there, and the Dead, and Dylan and The Clash and Snazzy Pete Wilkins and Pittsburgh’s own The Pussygrabbers.

Go read it.

Turtleneckin’*

Screen Shot 2016-05-27 at 11.33.44 PM

Turtleneck Garcia is the rarest of all Garcias, and as with all things arcane in the Dead’s universe, he was found via Lost Live Dead: a new post’s gone up about a little-known Garcia sit-in right around the time of the ’75 Lindley Meadow show, and right around the corner, too; another free show in the park that summer.

And here’s the highest praise I can give: the post was about the Jefferson Starship PLUS a Mickey solo project, and I read every word. That’s some high-quality Dead-bloggin’ right there.

Also: the picture came from a guy named Ron Draper, and you need to go check out his photos. You’ll like the Clapton one.

  • Turtleneckin’ was the only single by Rudy and the Rowdies: released by Roulette Records, it made it to #19 in June 1959.

I Once Was Lost, But Now Am Live

The quality of this site varies wildly: sure, sometimes I’ll hit a vein and Roy Head will make an appearance, or we’ll take a trip to Little Aleppo; mostly, it’s just an odd, half-clever loner making fun of musicians’ haircuts.

The same cannot be said for Lost Live Dead (and her sister site, Hooterollin). The reporting and researching are of the most lethal of calibers, and the topics are always interesting surprises; Corry (the proprietor of both sites and a welcome guest in the Comment Section) invariably finds things to write about that I didn’t know I didn’t know: the man deals in Rumsfeldian Unknown Unknowns.

This post is about the Orpheum, the San Francisco theater that saw the Dead visit for a six-night run in 1976, and I advise you to follow my lead and go read it immediately.

EDIT: I have now begun reading I have learned two things: Corry attended the 7/17/76 show soon to be released as Dave’s Picks 17; and Corry owes me money.

IMG_4164

EVERYONE STOP STEALING MY CHOOGLE.

Talk Amongst Yourselves

Busy as a beaver, Enthusiasts, whether it’s a dam-building beaver or a beaver engaged in various pornographies. Posts tonight? Maybe. We’ll know about the future when it becomes the past, I suppose.

For the bored among you:

LISTEN: 6/28/76 from the Auditorium Theatre in Chicago. Big ol’ Eyes, disco Dancin’, jammed-out first set Scarlet Begonias.

READ: Worlds collide when Lost Live Dead interviews Jesse Jarnow about black-market vinyl.

WATCH: A perfectly surreal episode of a sadly forgotten sitcom, Newsradio:

Or you could talk to your families or something.

Pack Up The Babies And Grab The Old Ladies

Corry from Lost Live Dead (where there is a spectacular post about the San Francisco Whiskey-A-Go-Go for you to gobble down) also notes that, in addition to sharing a drummer, Neil Diamond also shared a Mrs. Donna Jean with the Dead.

She’s on the left in your headphones, with a couple of other singers, and makes her entrance around 35 seconds in; the song hit #22 on the Billboard charts and, while all of the success can’t be attributed to Mrs. Donna Jean’s backing vocals, I think most of it can.

Chick Vocals

There is more reading to do today, Enthusiasts, but you will snarf up these words with dispatch and joy: a new post by my friend and yours Corry over on Lost Live Dead. This issue from the previously-unplumbed depths of Dead history concerns Mrs. Donna Jean. It starts with her precocious (a theme today, it seems) and serendipitous beginnings and her illustrious career in the Muscle Shoals studio scene (singing on two number one hits) and then pivots to ask a good question about the so-called “magical” way that Keith and Mrs. Donna Jean became Grateful Deads. (Spoiler: Garcia was trying to get laid.)

Anything else I wrote would just keep you from it: go read.

Unsettled List

TotD will always link to a new post on Hooterollin’, which equals and occasionally surpasses its brother site, Lost Live Dead; each new entry a weird and illustrative dive into the history of rock music–and America–in the post-war years. If you’re coming here and haven’t been there, I say: Wha? Huh? How you? Why that? Go, do, look. LOOOOOOK.

Stop that.

This post is a part of a running series pinpointing the Dead’s location during the years when people weren’t writing things down quite as much as we do today. The author (Corry342 from the Comment Section: you know him) covers July through December of 1966 in this latest installment, and I hate to call out a fellow Dead Scholar–

You are not any sort of scholar: you make things up.

–but there are significant gaps in this timeline. Why is this information being kept from us? My God! Has Corry342 been gotten to? Paid off by Big Dead? Did David Lamieuxnovermiami set him up for blackmail like in Godfather II?

I hate to do this, but–

Please don’t accuse people.

–I J’ACCUSE!

Please don’t do that to French, and don’t do it at all.

It’s the only explanation for this new evidence I’ve acquired. There were many more Dead dates during the period and the only reason Corry342 would leave this out is if he were now under the control of the Billuminati.

Really.

Maybe the Philluminati. Never can tell with secret societies.

I hate you.

Anyway, at great risk to life and limb, TotD presents THE REAL Grateful Dead Performance List July-December ’66:

July 4 – Barbecue, 710 Ashbury Street, CA Very little is known about this gig, or whether it should even be called a gig. There were acoustic guitars and singing, but then Garcia ate too many hot dogs and threw up on a cat and the cat lost its shit and went claws-first for Phil’s face and Bobby started crying and the afternoon was ruined.

August 8 – Foreign Legion Hall, Tuscadero, CA 18 people attended this show, and five of those people were dogs. Nevertheless, Billy managed to start a fight with a guy in a wheelchair, but he was a retired Marine in a wheelchair so he put up a pretty good fight. It was an even match-up, at least until the Marine’s non-wheelchair buddies saw what was happening and whipped Billy’s ass.

Also, Garcia contracted Foreign Legionnaires Disease and that is so much worse than the regular kind.

September 15 – Peckerwood Acres Country Club, Money Point, CA While we know about the gig Bobby played for his sister’s coming-out party (before Wendy Weir started talking to the ghosts of guitarists and dogs, she was very fancy), but little is known about this show played at the party for Bobby’s cousin, Poopsy Weir.

Poopsy was into the debutante thing: she loved horses and dresses and not having to look at poor people, but the thing she loved most of all was Phil’s dong. Now: Poopsy did not know that before laying eyes on the scruffy bassist that September evening, but once she realized, it became the truest thing she knew: she had to have it.

And, you know: she was cute, so Phil boffed her. Everything would have been fine had not Billy come through the banquet hall on a stolen golf cart, knocking down the temporary wall that made up the dressing room for the band. Phil was in a chair and Poopsy was seated atop him: they were pantless and boffing.

“Don’t stop boffing, Phil!” Poopsu said.

And Phil–who was facing the crowd that included the entirety of Poopsy’s family–said, “We should, though. We should stop boffing.”

And Poopsy said, “Dammit, man! Boff!”

The band did not get paid.

October 3 – Faculty Parking Lot, San Luis Obispo Community College (w/ Bay Area Blues Borrowers, Pantheotic Orkestra of Europa, Detroit Jeffy Jefferson, Radioactive Panther) This was an all-day gig featuring a lot of acts now lost to time. A couple of them were good bands, but one was a front for orangutans trained to steal jewels. See if you can spot which one!

The Bay Area Blues Borrowers made a fine sound to drink beer to, and they knew their limits. Their drummer, Johnny Mussolini, was a solid player despite his unfortunate name, and when he was drafted into the army, the band broke up. On the bright side, Johnny killed a shit-ton of Viet Cong.

The Pantheotic Orkestra of Europa was basically one guy who called himself Blueberry Ho-Tep and whoever would play with him this week. Blueberry Ho-Tep was the kind of musical genius that comes along once a decade, but he was an asshole who smelled like clams left out in the sun, plus he didn’t like paying people. Also, if you let him corner you with his cosmic religion nonsense, you could be there a while. Guy could play the fuck out of anything you put in his hands, but he was probably going to throw the instrument at a child afterwards.

Blueberry became addicted to drugs and shitting in mailboxes; the law locked him up for both, and in 1971–homeless–he was devoured by a pack of orangutans.

Detroit Jeffy Jefferson was actually named Franky Franklin, and he was from Houston. Sang real well, though. Also eaten by orangutans.

Radioactive Panther were a suspiciously hairy–even by hippie standards–group with murky origins. Their manager, Dr. Monkeybreaker, was a shadowy man given to quoting from the Necronomicon and challenged sanity to fistfights. Also, they could not play very well and were always mysteriously missing when jewels would disappear. Plus, they ate Blueberry and Detroit Jeffy.

They put out a couple of singles and then ate Dr. Monkeybreaker.

November 21 – Sausalito Heliport This unlikely venue for rock and roll was used by bands as a practice space and for a few shows until this one with the Dead put an end to that: Bear stole a helicopter. He only got it a couple of feet off the ground, but that’s enough to do some good damage.

December 13 – Fisherman’s Hall, Scuba del Vista, CA (Bill Graham’s Hanukkah Hoopla) No one remembers anything.

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