Thoughts On The Dead

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

Tag: phil lesh (Page 101 of 105)

Good Morning Little Schoolgirls (And Boys)

June 30, 2012 / / 0 Comments

Now,we know what would have happened if the Dead had taken over a hospital, but what if they all got jobs at a school? Wokka wokka?

Phil taught music, obviously. His decision to include the uncut Einstein on the Beach as the centerpiece of the Fall Music-alooza was hotly contested by some before the show, and by all about three hours into the show. Also, Phil threw a tuba at a kid once. In his defense, that kid’s a well-known dick.

Garcia went in the Teacher’s Lounge and it’s been a while since he’s come out and if you try to go in, Parrish punches you really hard in your face and head.

Keith taught geometry. Not algebra or trig, nothing but geometry. Sometimes, he could be harassed into teaching another subject, but he would do it so deliberately poorly, accidentally injuring so many students and mascots that he would be asked to stop before October got there, even, and he would go back to teaching strictly geometry, which it should be said, he was unbelievably good at. He is also heavily addicted to heroin and, to be honest, was rather mumbly before the Persian. Opiates are not the natural friend of diction

Bobby coached soccer and basketball and track because:

…and Bobby don’t do pants.

Mrs. Donna Jean was the art teacher. Because she looked like your art teacher, right: crunchy and maybe gay and in-retrospect high all the time and predictably liberal. But she wasn’t. Mrs. Donna Jean liked to get shitty on pills and whiskey and fuck Bobby and crash her BMW into things in the parking lot and sing off-key for eight years. (Now, you know I’m a Donna Defender, but if the old canard about “not being able to hear the monitors” were true, wouldn’t you have worked hard to fix that? Shouldn’t the Dead’s crew–for all the mockery, they could never be accused of being bad at their jobs; lethal, perhaps, but thoroughly competent in the face of disaster–have been able to set her up lickety-split? Things to think about.

The parents caught one glance of Billy leering at the 15-year-olds and chased him, reviling his good name in utter besmirchment and giving the dogs the lash to catch the natty minge. The parents rousted Billy into a boiler room, which they boarded him into and set ablaze! Now, with a scarred face in the shape of a mustache and drumsticks sloppily taped to his fingers, he haunts the dreams of hot, sexy teens doing hot, sexy teen things as…Billy Kreug-etz-mannger. (I did not think this through beforehand.)

Emergency Crew

June 29, 2012 / / 2 Comments

Breaking news, my fellow Enthusiasts: the Hiatus was a lie! Well, not that it occurred: the Dead played only four shows in 18 months. That’s fact. What’s not fact is the reason why. We were all told it was because the Wall of Sound and the Wall of Drugs were driving them into bankruptcy and insanity. True, but not the only reason. In fact, not even the MAIN reason.

In the Summer of ’74, the Dead played a gig that appears in no database. They appeared as ringers in a local Anal Creek, WV, talent show to raise money for Li’l Possum, whom the city doctors had proclaimed was, “just as fucked up as you can be and still be alive. You want me to kill it? Let me kill it: I’d be doing everyone involved a favor.”

Well, they won, and raised that money. To thank them, the townspeople gave them a hospital, short on staff but long on love: St. Stephen’s Medical Center.*

Billy became Chief of Staff and immediately improved the hospital’s standing, financially and medically. From the top brain surgeon to the lowest psychiatrist, everyone respected Billy’s simple management style. He had one rule: “Y’sure you wanna do that?” And only one punishment. You knew where you stood with Billy. And sometimes, you knew where you lay in the fetal position, tenderly cupping your battered banana while puking.

Phil immediately went Phantom of the Opera: like, during the very first walk-through. Not only was Phil skinny, but he could dislocate his hips to the point where he could shimmy through an 18-inch pipe and he ran away from the group right when they got in the door and SHHOOOOOOP right into a duct and no one saw him for a month or so.

Garcia became the pharmacist and then four minutes later he threw up on himself and passed out, so the road crew instinctively put him on a plane to Milwaukee.

Vince would wander the halls convincing people to let go and follow the light, but he wasn’t all that good at judging how sick people were, so he would end up with a lot of 12-year-olds getting their tonsils out and 55-year-olds getting their knees replaced. Vince would clutch them tight (otherwise, they would squirm away) to his chest, and whisper, “Stop fighting. Be with your ancestors. THEY CALL TO YOU. Succumb. Succumb!” People lodged formal complaints; it was the kind of thing you filled out paperwork about.

Keith “would fuckin’ thank people to stop mistaking me for a corpse, please. I’ve had CPR administered on me four times today. Stop it: this is just the way I look.”

Bobby was the crusading internist/trauma doc/diagnostician (which is not a thing) of the hospital. He could heal anyone…but himself: Dr. Bobby, M.D. He battles with the suits, makes love to Nurse Donna Jean and tries to find a lead in the case of the disappearing livers.

Brent was a male nurse. He was gentle and kind and shaved all the ding-dongs.

*Yes, we’re all quite aware none of this makes sense and this bit makes no sense in particular. You’re very clever to have noticed.

In The Army Now

June 28, 2012 / / 0 Comments

Garcia was in the service, the Army. It was normal back then for most everybody except sissies, commies, or college boys in their raccoon coats. Mickey and TC were both in the Air Force (Mickey played drums in the Air Force, because the Brass didn’t let him play for three days or so and set fire to a mess hall, so they decided to just let the monster have his Slingerlands and keep the peace.)

Phil was in college and driving a mail truck while shooting speed, which seems like a lovely way to spend a summer at age 22, so no playing soldier for him. Billy got his letter and walked into the draft office, Pall Mall dangling from sneering lips under a newly-grown but already treasured mustache.

“You send me this letter?”

“Ye–”

SHWOKKATHOOM Dicks got punched, dicks got punched left and right, my friend. The sergeant, the lieutenant, the other hard-to-spell things: all of them down, dicks punched, just punched to shit, my man. Everyone got it; sometimes it seemed like he was going harder on the people who were just randomly there. A plumber just in the office got it the worst for some reason, perhaps because he begged. Ah, you think: if Billy hates it when one begs, then therefore, one must fight back to gain his respect.

No! Never fight back. You’re not understanding the main motivator here: when Billy gets to punching dicks, Billy gets to punching dicks. It’s not a competition: it’s a thrust, an urge, he MUST PUNCH DICKS. The thing that pisses him off is the time wasted: beg, bargain, fight, offer to slobber his johnson–these all just register on Billy’s radar as vague buzzing that, every second that it lasts, trends towards white-crazy lightning ruining his brain. You’re making it worse: just lie back and think of Sausalito.

Happiness Is A Warm Pun

June 25, 2012 / / 0 Comments

It’s sequel time here in Fillmore South:

Things I love about the Dead, Part the II

  • When Bobby would say “Thank you,” in that silly high-pitched voice.
  • The end of China Doll where it generally dissolves a little and then Garcia comes in all by himself with the “Take up your China Doll” part, which is really difficult to sing, because the notes are weird AND you have to get the time right, since you’re basically counting the band back in with it AND it’s pitched pretty high, but he got it right far more often than not.
  • The beginning of Truckin’ they’d do sometimes, with the whistles and the snare drums: BRUM-bum BRUM-bum BRRRRRR rum-bum.
  • Occasionally, later in the career, when Bobby would (as is the running gag with both my bloggings and, you know, actual recorded-on-tape reality) forget the lyrics to Truckin’, Phil would start BOMBING away at him and then come in on the next part where they all sing just SUPER LOUD, so clearly seething at the fact that it’s been ten years: learn the words, man.
  • He’s Gone. Not so much on the “Bop bop bop” coda.
  • The jam after Seastones from 6/23/74. Seriously, try to listen to Seastones. Now, on acid. But listen to what Garcia does right after: he plays the sweetest, softest lines, and leads everyone back from the dark place where Ned Lagin touched them.
  • The Baby Dead. The way they would take a riff and just brutalize it, tear it apart and put it back together, mostly the same but weirder for the journey.
  • Their refusal to give in to peer pressure. Often, they would be the only ones in the room who wanted to smoke and bullshit and yell at Bobby for five minutes; the other several thousand people present preferred some form of entertainment. Because, holy god, do these baboons take a long time in between songs. Sometimes for no discernible reason: you can’t hear them talking, nor are they tuning. Were they just wandering around confused for three minutes at a time? It’s not unprecedented: Thelonious Monk did it.

Weir, There, And Everywhere

June 25, 2012 / / 0 Comments

We need to talk about Bobby because I’ve been talking about Bobby and I need to know why, godammit. Admittedly, I go through phases: a quick glance through the archives will reveal the Mickey phase, the Keith era, and–real early on–a whole lot of Vince jokes in a row. But I always go back to Bobert W. Weir, like the swallows returning to Capistrano. (Also, if you wanted to go back to Bobby’s hotel room, you had to swallow his Capistrano. DICK JOKES!) Picasso had his Blue Period; I had a month where I made a lot of Phil jokes.

You can relate to Bobby more than the other guys, though: he was the Everyman, the Protagonist, the White Guy Abroad that Hollywood likes to make movies about. Tom Cruise in The Last Samurai? That guy.

You couldn’t relate to the others: Phil was intimidatingly smart and currently yelling at a roadie. It’s like that saying, “It’s 5 o’clock somewhere?” Well, no matter the time, somewhere, Phil is yelling at a member of some road crew, somewhere. That’s why he opened up the restaurant, to scream at busboys in halting Spanish, “TIENE OIDO ABSOLUTO! DAME TUS HEPATICAS!” Billy was scary: there was always so much blood and none of it ever seemed to be his. Garcia and Pig were…well, Garcia and Pig: one might admire or imitate or spurn, but relate?

But as everyman as Bobby seemed, he was anything but: an orphan, a rich kid, really pretty, in good shape. Wait! Bob Weir…Bruce Wayne. Huh.

Bobby was a guy who’d found a home, that family we all yearn for. Adopted, shipped off to boarding school. And, legendarily, a ranch for the greater part of a summer, hence Bobby is a cowboy, but that’s been well-established. (I make fun of Bobby for this, but what man doesn’t pursue their white whale into the sunset? People need the myths they choose; they filter them back out and it turns into Mexicali Blues, which you like more than you’re willing to admit, and kind of rules when those nutty drummers decide to turn it into a disco tune on 5/25/77

He made the Dead better, and they made him better. Bobby outside the realm of those other five or six guys was a mess with visions of Hollywood in his head, and had he been able to come up with some hit singles and gotten the right backing, Bobby could have been just as big as, say, Bob Seeger. But, like a flawed diamond, Bobby’s beauty only truly shone in one oddly-shaped, custom-made setting: the Dead.

Beyond the superficial, speculative, and shit I’ve just made up entirely, there stands the inarguable fact that Bobby was a master musician of the highest caliber, dueling it out with Phil and Garcia every night and walking away proud. He adapted this oddly-voiced, syncopated approach to rhythm guitar, finding a path that isn’t self-evident under Garcia, over Phil, and side-by-side with the keyboards, but he wasn’t flashy: like Billy, he was often at his greatest only upon second, careful listening.

But what about his songs? Lost Sailor sucks, dude! More like ‘Velveeta’. Heh heh.

Yes, what about his songs, made-up straw man? You mean like Sugar Magnolias, Looks Like Rain, Greatest Story, PLAYIN’ IN THE GODDAM BAND, One More Saturday Night, and a little thing called The Other One? Not so italicized now, are you? Like those other fuzzy burnouts were contributing anything towards the end in terms of new material? You want to hear Eternity again? No song has ever been more properly named.

Now, of course, there was this kind of bullshit:

He learned, eventually, but at first, Bobby was convinced that, gee willikers, it just wasn’t a slide solo without going ALL THE WAY up the neck to make those horrible, metallic screeches.

So, we raise our whatever’s-at-hands to Bobby. We love you, you goofy bastard. And you know what it is they say about our love…

Hi, I’m Bobby

June 23, 2012 / / 5 Comments

There’s this new tumblr I like, Phil is weird, I think that’s the name. Funny pictures of Phil and funny captions and Phil is exceedingly goofy, just all the time and I haven’t seen most of these pictures: this Tumblr guy is a Google ninja and I salute him (or her, but let’s be honest, him.)*

Are you shitting me? When you saw the site, you sulked for an hour, muttering darkly, “Somebody’s being funny about the Dead on the internet: that’s MY thing, I invented that.” You whined like a kicked kitten.

None of that is true.

And then you stole all the pictures you could and reposted them on your little site, didn’t you?

I did that. Yes, I did.

But Phil’s just an amateur, man.

* It’s a lady. A pretty, pretty–

I’m warning you, buddy.

–lady. I’ve already planned our Wedding. The groomsmen have to wear Bobby shorts, then the Best Man locks himself in the upstairs bathroom for three hours.

Who Wears Short Shorts?

June 22, 2012 / / 1 Comment

I need to stop watching these videos, because…I hate to say this, but: looking at Bobby and his choices distracts me from the music.

He is wearing a too-tight purple Izod, and his short pants. They are the type of short pants that suggest a bikini underneath and a long, soapy afternoon washing cars to raise money for Cayden’s cousin Rex who’s got cerurul pawsy. or something–it’s bad. He is playing not his ultra-cool 335, but a Casio guitar. Not a joke, that: it was seriously made by Casio.

Bobby, why won’t you let us love you? You know we do, Bobert. But, these fashion shenanigans (fashenanigans?) are going to have to stop or you will have to start letting me out of the car at least two blocks from school.

It’s 9/10/91, MSG, NYC. Ok? It’s one of the only Vince-related things to hold up at all, and as I’ve stated before, it’s tough to sound too bad when you’re being propped up by Bruce Hornsby and Branford Marsalis.

Anyway, I won’t do my usual dissection of the thing, except to point out one bit that I BEG you to watch because it will make you very happy, I promise: it happens at  1.15.30–Branford is coming out of this wonderful solo and plays this figure, ascending sixteenth notes, pretty but nothing mind-blowing, except Bruce starts playing it, so Branford goes back to it and the Phil picks it up, but he’s playing it going down the scale, and Garcia finally just reaches up the neck of his guitar, effortlessly, to where he knows the notes have always been, waiting for him to play them, and he picks up the figure twice and launches into his solo and yes I said yes I said yes.

« Older posts Newer posts »

The Stacks

Follow Us

Google Verification

Follow Us

Follow me on Twitter

© 2026 Thoughts On The Dead

Theme by Anders Noren — Up ↑