Phil nearly started a riot at the quiet little office where you get your passport when he insisted on using this as his picture.
Musings on the Most Ridiculous Band I Can't Stop Listening To
Tag: phil lesh (Page 100 of 105)
Look behind Billy. Seriously, WTF?
Tonight, the part of Phil will be played by Donald Sutherland. Also appearing will be every amplifier in the world. We hope you enjoy the show.
Phil has the teethiest teeth I’ve ever seen.
I think no more Jerry Band for me. These bloggings started with the express rule: no Jerry Band, which of course encapsulates Ratdog and Seastones and drunkenly narrated slide shows from Billy’s scuba trips. (“Punched that fish in the dick, punched THAT fish RIGHT in the dick. Swimmin’ over here and takin’ our jobs.”)
There is something, a gestalt (a Jungian would say that) that exists between four men and whomever else they let on the stage that creates the Grateful Dead. It’s like Voltron, except it now takes up to three hours to form the Voltron Robot because one of the lions–I’m not going to say which one, but it’s Garcia–has locked himself in the Space Lion Bathroom again and we can’t really force him out of there because he’s in an 800 ton warp-capable lion mech; outright aggression would be counter-productive.
I say four because it was four who were necessary: Garcia, Bobby, Billy, Phil. Mickey came and went; keyboardists plowed under as if stage right was the Somme. It was the four of them that made the sound that was the Dead: that lazy lope, that leonine lurch, that lupine lambada and they checked one another’s bad habits.
The worst thing to happen to Garcia–or any of them, really–was being the guy in charge of the band. Because Garcia wanted to play this next number for 23 minutes. Doesn’t matter what song, but it’s probably Dylan or a reggae tune he has de-reggaefied, and it’s gonna be 23 minutes. So, if Garcia’s the one signing your check, you comp under him for 23 minutes. Also, it’s going to be slow.
Billy wouldn’t put up with that shit, though. Billy was the guy who, when the group needed to buy a new truck in the early days, instead demanded they buy him a Mustang that he promptly wrecked. If Billy wanted a song to be over, it was going to end.
Phil didn’t really do any solo stuff; he could be a bit lazy. And surly. All of the Evil Dwarves. And, of course, when Bobby gets left to his own devices, this happens:
[youtube http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dWscxdleZzI&w=420&h=315]
The Dead played a billion covers. Some they played forever: Me & My Uncle, NFA; some just the once: How Sweet it Is (from the DP 30 Academy of Music shows that I’m always honking on about). Some songs, though: it’s better the Dead never sat down to figure out the changes.
Dubstep would not have worked; Phil would probably like it. If you haven’t heard dubstep, it’s the sound of a Transformer getting raped. Actually, Mickey might have liked it, too. This is what dubstep is: it get interesting 90 seconds in. I understand why half-naked teens on drugs would love dancefucking to this, but it’s not for listening.
Itsy-Bitsy Teeny Weeny Yellow Polka Dot Bikini (fuck you all for making me type that) would be a poor choice as Bobby would fuck up the chorus so badly that everyone would think it was a Dylan tune.
Any of the particularly tricky Rush tunes: La Villa, YYZ, By-Tor (not the Snow Dog, oddly enough.) The Dead had the chops to pull it off, but those tunes required precision and practice. Even the Dead’s more complicated tunes, like Terrapin–if you missed the musical turn, you could wait for it to come back around again. Plus, there were twice as many people in the Dead as Rush, man.
Devo. Any deconstruction-type stuff. The Dead did not dismantle, in fact they piled on, always. They were rococo and baroque. Also, broke, but that’s for a different post.
Bands the Dead was better than:
And I’ll just tell you upfront that I’m leaving Phish out of this entirely. I have as much interest about arguing Dead v. Phish as I do with getting involved in internet arguments about atheism: none.
Pink Floyd – Quick: what was the Pink Floyd sound? (Yeah, yeah.) Imagine Floyd jamming on, say, Summertime Blues. What would it sound like? Right.
Jefferson Airplane – The whole two singers just kinda standing there annoyed me. If you’re singing on a stage, you either stand tall with thrusted chest holding a libretto or you rock the fuck out and end the show by laying your enormous wang on a PA speaker, allowing the audience to watch it vibrate to the feedback of the guitars. That’s a lead singer. Being curly-haired and singing part of shitty Airplane jams makes you just a guy standing there singing occasionally.
Van Halen – Eddie and Garcia were both virtuosos, I suppose. Eddie could play a lot more notes. Both were known for their custom guitars, although Eddie made his in his garage for $40, and the creation of Garcia’s guitars always included, somewhere along the way, the phrase,”Well, it costs what it costs, man.” These are some of the most dangerous words in the English language, and when you hear them, you should stop letting the person who spoke them have anything to do with your money ever again.
The Sleigh Bells
[youtube http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=roTsrA-0Rxs&w=560&h=315]
Where is your drummer? You fuck right off back to Brooklyn and get yourself a drummer. We understand that the Marshalls are ironic, but Leggy Von Bangsinhair, an Ibanez guitar, and an IMac do not a band make.
Queen – And that pains me to say, because I love Queen. When the Wembley ’86 double-CD live album from the legendary–yes, legendary: like Dunkirk–Wembley Stadium Show came out, I ditched school for an hour to go to the mall and pick it up immediately: I wanted to show enthusiasm in my purchasing so perhaps Queen would do another tour in America. Freddie was dead within weeks.
But still, it was a good album.
Freddie did this a lot. No one in the Dead ever did this, except maybe after chimichanga night at Club Front. So, points: Dead.
U2 – Because every band is better than U2. It’s music for people who don’t particularly like music.
The Beatles – You couldn’t dance to the Beatles. Could you make sweet, sweet love to them? You could certainly make drugged-out love to Revolver, but the rest of it? Piffle and bosh. Plus, Revolution #9 was, pound-for-pound, every bit as annoying as Seastones, but y’know what: Seastones wasn’t on the album in the middle of the all the other stuff, the stuff you actually wanted to hear but now you had to sit through these dicks futzing around with their recording desk or, since it was 1970, get up and walk across the room the move the record needle, which is barbaric.
The Who – The Dead and the Who had a friendship/friendly rivalry thing starting at the Day on the Green in ’76. It was only an equipment loan from The Who that turned the Egypt excursion from “economically infeasible” to simply “ruinously expensive.” Also, Daltry, Townshend, and the dead one behaved badly after Keith Moon’s death: they should have retired the name, at least. Instead, they carried on with a drummer so boring he was called Kenny Jones.
Okay okay okay: what if the Dead were mattresses? Garcia would be soft and fluffy, Phil would be firm and ungiving, Vince would be blood-stained and lying by the side of the road in an industrial section of town.
Are you mocking your own tropes are have you genuinely just run out of gas?
80/40.
That is not a thing.
70/40?
Nor is that. Look, I’m going to need the ball. We’re going with the lefty.
Wright?
Yes, yes: Lefty Wright.
Doesn’t he also switch-hit?
Yes and no.
KNOCK IT OFF WITH THE ABBOT AND COSTELLO ROUTINE.
Sorry, boss.
Life is short: listen to ’73!
You are just the worst kind of suck-ass that there is. What you do is shameful and whether or not you feel wrong about that like normal humans have evolved to do over millennia doesn’t matter: your actions have shame attached to them and will hound you not just here, but in all the worlds to come.
How about the boys as olde-time comedian? Bobby could be Lucy and get into situations because Garcia don’t wanna take ‘er to da show. Garcia, Ricardo, same shit, right.
BILLY!
NOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOthump0000000000000000thump00000000.
Audition time!
Hey, what if the Grateful Dead were Secretaries-General of the United Nations? Obviously, Garcia is Boutros-Boutros Ghali (which my spell-check says is spelled wrong, therefore: racist devil). Phil is clearly U Thant, and if you can’t see Trygve Lie’s baby blues staring out at you from behind the drums stage right, well…I don’t know what’s wrong with you, pal.
You got nothing, do you?
Not as such, no.
It really is going to be sad to see you go–
Dead as the A-Team? With Garcia as Hannibal and he’s like, “I love it when a jam comes together.” And Billy is Murdock and Bobby is Face and Merl is B.A., because they tried it with Mickey in black-face and even he saw the problems, so they called the only black guy they knew.
I’m going to pass.
Merl was the Dead’s Billy Preston
Nice observation, but still gonna pass.
Can I just go workshop some stuff, rub it up some flags, get it back to you in a much more proactive paradigm?
If you admit that what you just said doesn’t mean anything, then: yes.
Complete bullshit. All of it.
Get back to me.
Kids, pay attention: this is how your parents were raised. Now, if your baby is onstage with the Grateful Dead (and that’s a big “if” because nowadays, babies are not allowed to be on stage with the Grateful Dead, metaphorically speaking), but anyway, if your baby was right now on that stage, you would give him those horrible little baby earmuffs, In the 70’s, if your baby was on stage with the Grateful Dead, you gave him a tambourine.
(Those baby ear protectors are the worst. It’s a baby. Don’t bring it the show, huh?)
P.S. I stole this picture fair-and-square from some loser-breath monster pants.
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