Musings on the Most Ridiculous Band I Can't Stop Listening To
Number four, the first one in the second row, that one makes me sad: Phil and Billy used to be friends, or at least buddies, or at least friendly enough to drunkenly paw at one another during photo shoots.
Plus, if you read the images as a story, then the story is about Mickey enjoying cocaine.
This is from the first show from the ’73 Boston Music Hall run, one of the proto-Wall gigs; a truck broke down, or there was a storm, or a swarm of bees fell in love with Ramrod: something happened and the stage wasn’t set until after midnight. The show went all damn night.
Now Boston’s not an all damn night town: bars close at four in the afternoon, and you get shot for trying to buy beer on Sundays. But the show went all damn night.
There’s not a lot of Dead shows where you can definitively state that the cops and the fire marshals were paid off, but this is one of them.
Also: that is the perfect length for men’s trousers, just exactly. Slight break on the shoe in the front, and parallel to the top of the heel in the back. Creepy Ernie does good work.
Also also: Creepy Ernie thought what Donald Trump said was disgusting, and rejected the excuse that it was locker room talk. Creepy Ernie spends an unbelievable amount of time in locker rooms, and has never heard anything like that.
“Weir, knock it off.”
“I’m gonna take it out, Jer.”
“I didn’t mean to finish doing the hokey-pokey. I meant to stop doing it entirely.”
“I gotta shake it all about, Jer.”
“You really don’t, Bob.”
“Hullo.”
Hello. Who are you?
“Klaxon.”
White people shouldn’t be allowed to name children.
“Wha?”
Nothing. Nice hat.
“It was my brother’s, but he gave it to me and when I wear it, you can’t see me if I don’t want you to.”
I wish I had that kind of hat.
“Mine.”
You look like you’re about to hop onstage, buddy.
“Gonna play the drums.”
Don’t do that.
“Gonna.”
You won’t make it.
…
KID STRUGGLE
KID STRUGGLE
…
Told ya.
“Who was the guy with no hair that picked me up?”
Robbie Taylor.
“He’s strong.”
If you were older and had wandered onto the stage, you’d find out how strong.
“Like The Rock?”
Yes.
“Like Superman?”
Yes.
“Wow. Who’s this?”
Who?
“The guy.”
Telling the stories?
“Yes.”
That’s Phil Lesh. He’s the bass player for the Grateful Dead, which is a semi-defunct choogly-type band. Also, he owns the restaurant.
…
You see that little boy over there in the yellow shirt?
“Yes.”
The guy reading the stories is the little boy’s grandpa.
“Oh, okay.”
Klaxon, who’re your two favorite superheros?
“Superman and The Rock.”
What if The Rock fought Superman?
“Nooooo. They’re good guys. They would fight Kylo Ren and it would be like PSSSH! and BAAAAAM! and then The Rock would pick him up and be KDDDUSH into a building and the building would BOOOOOOM and then Kylo Ren would take off his mask? He would take off his mask? His mask?”
…
AND?
“He’s Batman!”
OHMIGOD!
“And, and, and then Iron Man shows up and he’s all KCHOOOM, and then–”
“Young man!”
“–The Rock is like ‘I’m hit, I’m hit’ and then Superman goes–”
“Whippersnapper!”
“–‘I will avenge you, The Rock’ and then–”
“I’m telling a story here, rapscallion!”
Klaxon, shh.
…
“I blame you for this, idiot.”
Me? What did I do?
“You got him all worked up.”
Everyone’s a little worked up right now, Phil.
I don’t know where to start with this, Enthusiasts, so let’s begin by stating that we all love Phil Lesh. Let’s get that out of the way. Phil, and his family and friends and Friends, and all of his business concerns are tops in all of our books. Terrapin Crossroads is a classy establishment that provides quality food and reasonable prices, and also has a bocce court that hasn’t been pooped on in months.
And as with all people that we love, peculiarities are forgiven. Oversight is overlooked. Bobby keeps showing up at award shows in sandals, and Billy punches dicks, and Garcia’s dead; we forgive them their trespasses, because without these quirks of personality, they wouldn’t be the men they were and are, and make the music they did and do. Phil’s into the occult: so what?
(Now, Phil’s into a Californian/syncretic/cafeteria-style occult, but the right hand smiley path is just as occult as the left hand spooky path. If Phil were British rock star, he would have a haunted castle and produced a failed musical based on the life of Alastair Crowley. It rains a lot in England, so their occultism is all misery and basement orgies; California, as you know, is California, so even the goth kids have tans and everything’s a little more optimistic.)
Phil’s love of the new age (or New Age: I don’t know if it’s capitalized) led directly to the Egypt shows; he championed the trip from the beginning and you know Phil thinks aliens built those pyramids. Phil was also responsible for the side trip to Stonehenge during the ’72 tour, in which most of the band stood agoggle at the ancient monoliths, and Billy dogged a slag from Essex. (The British Enthusiasts will understand that.)
And now Phil’s enjoyment of the esoteric can be shared and celebrated at TXR. On December 11th, Phil’s hosting An Evening With The Dead, which will feature music and a visit with Thomas John, who is an internationally acclaimed psychic medium.
This is Thomas John, displaying the ludicrous plain-tie-on-checked-shirt fashion that has for some reason infected otherwise normal men’s closets.
That guy looks pretty psychic. I’m psychic about these things: I have a sixth sense about who has a sixth sense, and that guy? That guy’s a…well, hell: let him tell you.
Thomas John is a global psychic sensation who has wowed audiences across the world with his impressively accurate messages from ‘the other side’. Hosting sold-out events such as A Night with Spirit and Dinner with the Dead, Thomas John is one of the nation’s most coveted psychic mediums. Bi-Coastally based, his gifts continue to be in high demand with influencers, A-list celebrities, and those at crossroads in life from coast to coast and around the globe.
That’s from his site, and there’s a lot of clues in this paragraph that Thomas John is an actual psychic. First off: psychics hate grammar. Psychics deal with the realm above us, not the petty drudgery of properly placing modifiers. Second: he told us he was, and when has anyone ever said they were a psychic and lied about it? Influencers love him!
Shall we learn more about Thomas John? Straight from the horse’s mouth:
Thomas John, gifted since birth, connected with the spirit of his late paternal grandfather at the tender age of four and correctly described to his parents the location of a missing wrist watch that had haunted the family for years (Grandpa’s best friend Jack had it!). From that point forward, Thomas and his family knew he had prodigious abilities, unlike any they had experienced before. Though born with the spiritual skills to communicate with the dead, he didn’t always embrace them. At the age of 18, Thomas began his studies at the University of Chicago. Graduating with a degree in Psychology and Human Development, with departmental honors, Thomas pursued research internships at Yale University and The University of Massachusetts at Amherst, where he was a lead research assistant on studies related to psychopathology and personality. During these internships, Thomas John was the author of three peer-reviewed publications. He was accepted into graduate school programs in medical research, but through the guidance of several of his own deceased loved ones, decided at the last minute to further develop his abilities as an intuitive, and began his metaphysical studies in New York City.
I’m confident that all of this is true. It certainly doesn’t sound like puffed-up half-truths, complete bullshit, and baldfaced lies mixed together and sprinkled with commas. And, sure, the University of Chicago offers a program in “Comparative Human Development,” and not “Psychology and Human Development,” but I’m sure that’s just an oversight.
Oh, Thomas John sells coffee:
How did Thomas John know I yearned to connect with my imagination and creative intelligence AND drink coffee? Well, he’s a psychic, that’s how.
Hey, wanna meet another guy? Sure ya do. This is Tommy Flanagan:
That’s his mugshot from when he got busted scamming people out of apartment deposits on Craigslist. Tommy Flanagan ain’t no psychic: how do you not know you’re getting caught pulling nonsense on Craigslist? That’s like calling in a bomb threat to your high school from your parent’s phone. Anyway, that’s Tommy Flanagan, and like I said: he’s clearly no psychic. I don’t even know why we’re talking about him. Let’s get back to Thomas John, who looks like this:
Much better. Far more psychic. Definitely not a Flanagan, not with those eyebrows.
Besides teaming up with Phil, Thomas John has three main avenues of revenue it seems: speeches, readings, and “Dinner with the Dead,” which is a five-course meal combined with…hell, let him tell you about it:
Now here’s what I would do, Enthusiasts, because I’m not a psychic. I would make everyone pay up front with their credit cards or via Paypal; that way, I’d have their names. Out of 30 people–people with enough money to be going to five-course meals with psychics–I would bet at least half have a Facebook page under their real names, maybe a few Twitter accounts or blogs.
Then, I’d have my Event Coordinator seat the room right: those guests on either side of me that I start the evening off with? I’d know things about them their spouses didn’t know, and I’d start off with a big WOW for the night, so if I fuck up a couple times after that, people won’t remember. There’s going to be a few folks I couldn’t get any info on, so I would try a little cold reading on them, but mostly I would make sure they were sat in between people about whom I knew juicy stuff. Bracket the failure with success, and the failure gets forgotten.
Oh, plus I would have a ringer or two inserted into the dinner, people who work for me and mingle with everyone beforehand and try to get stuff out of them. A lot of times before they meet psychics, people will say–out loud–things like “I hope I get to talk to my father. I miss him so much.” Because I’m not a psychic, I know that people are trusting at heart and want to believe that their loved ones are still safe and being taken care even in the afterlife, that they miss the souls departed with an intensity that makes them do foolish things sometimes, and believe foolish things other times. It’s easy to prey on people’s sadness, and that’s what I’d be doing by pretending to be a psychic.
Luckily, Thomas John is a psychic, so he doesn’t have to do any of the treacherous bullshit I mentioned, but if there were no such thing as psychics, then that’s how it would be done. I would also use that strategy for readings: find out who you are beforehand and then pretend like your grandpa is telling me stuff you posted about on Instagram. I wonder how Thomas John accepts payment for readings?
That’s how I would do it! Just like that! But, of course, Thomas John is a psychic, so I’m sure that this method of payment is simply for tax purposes or another perfectly believable reason.
Do you wanna meet one more person? (It’s getting so you can’t tell the players without a scorecard, but it’s actually a lot easier than it seems at first.) Okay, this is Lady Vera Parker:
Who is not a psychic, or she would not be wearing those shoes. Lady Vera was a popular drag queen in Chicago, an award-winning one. Again: not a psychic.
Kelly Jacobs, Ricky Botega, and Doug Mennin are not psychics, either. They seem to be aliases. I don’t know what they have to do with anything, so let’s just ignore them and move on.
Thomas John, who is a psychic, has nothing to do with any of those people he used to be, who were not psychics. He can talk to the dead, and–apparently–to the Dead. Luckily, the Grateful Dead’s track record with hucksters and bullshit artists is sterling: it’s not like he comes bearing Ford Cortinas, after all.
Thomas John is a psychic. Just ask him. Or him. Or her.
Hey, Phil. Whatcha doing?
“Picking and grinning.”
Literally.
“Yeah.”
Your bass isn’t headless.
“No, it looks like a shark’s vagina.”
I was mistaken. Phil, can I ask you some questions?
“Shoot.”
What’s your favorite part of doing laundry?
“I don’t…what? I don’t do the laundry.”
What is laundry to you?
“I don’t understand the question.”
How do you make laundry an enjoyable task?
“I told you I don’t do the laundry. What’s wrong with you?”
What’s Phil Lesh’s laundry pet peeve?
“What the fuck is that? Who would have a laundry pet peeve?”
What’s your proudest laundry victory?
“Get off my property, jackass.”
Tell me a laundry fear that you conquered.
“Robbie!”
Going.
This picture’s been going around, and it’s primary source evidence of the nadir of the Dead’s guitaristic evolution. The Moduluses (Modula? Moduloi?) were drastically uncool tech-y, gadget-y, pocket protector-y instruments, plus they were clearly named by the twelve-year-old son of the company’s owner. Blackknife! Quantum! Other guitars in the Modulus line included:
Phil has stuck with the headless guitars, mostly, since then; I stand by my distrust of the configuration. There’s something wrong about it. You know when you’re talking with a person and you feel uneasy and can’t put your finger on it, but then later you realize that the person you were talking to was actually several raccoons? Headless guitars are just like that.
The big groups all toured South America, the harder rocking members of the music industry mostly. There had to be a Brazilian version of The Eagles; every country has their own sappy bullshit, so why import another culture’s? KISS or Queen, though, could sell out stadiums down there: South Americans love it loud, and they enjoy when others rock them.
Which is why the Grateful Dead’s ’81 tour through Brazil, Argentina, and several other countries that Billy had to be discouraged from referring to as “Lower Mexico” is such a mystery. The concept, the agreement by the band to do it, actually getting them on the planes (and in 1981 it took a series of increasingly smaller planes to get anywhere in South America), the bookings: everything, really. To this day, no one knows whose idea it was in the first place, but lately people have been blaming Brent.
Thankfully, the original idea of driving down was nixed, even though it took a few days to explain to Bobby that the Darien Gap was not a clothing store. Mickey pushed hard for the overland journey, wanting to record indigenous drums and native cymbals and hopefully a half-civilized tambourine or two; he hoped to locate and capture on tape drums never before seen or heard, and then he would have the right to name those drums when he wrote up the article for the Journal of American Drumming. (Mickey was planning on naming the newly-found drums after his penis.)
The plane landed safely in Guatemala and Phil asked, “Why are we in Guatemala?”
To which Billy replied, “Because we’re touring South America, shitbird.”
“That’s unnecessary.”
“It’s been a long flight.”
“To Central America. The flight has only been to Central America. We’re supposed to be on a South American tour.”
“South, Central: what’s the difference?”
“Location. Location is the difference.”
“Ah, stop being such a Phinicky Phil, shitbird.”
And then there was a fist fight on the plane in Guatemala; Garcia got conked in the head by accident; he was in a foul mood about it for days. After consulting both the itinerary and a map, it was determined that Guatemala was, in fact, not where they thought it should be, which led to a vote of “no confidence” in both Guatemala and the map. The plane took off again, pointed downwards.
45 hours later, the Grateful Dead touring party landed in Buenos Aires, where there was a press conference for them. Billy was given a microphone, because otherwise he’d start swinging chairs around, and kicked off the question-and-answer session by thanking the Argentinians for being so welcoming.
“People have been so nice, you would think we were escaped Nazis!” Billy said and then they were all immediately thrown out of the country.
From there it wasn’t on to Chile, as it had been decided by everyone to skip the country: in the very beginning of the planning process, someone mentioned hitting Chile, and Bobby said, “We should bring sweatshirts,” and everyone in the room realized they would be hearing variations of that one for months to come, so it was tacitly agreed to never bring up the place again.
After that was Brazil, where they do not speak Spanish because a Pope drew a line on a map in the 1500’s. What Brazilians do have in common with the rest of the continent is a philosophy in stadium-building: as big as a Midwestern city. They are built so large because the architects want to give the peaceful sections of the crowd somewhere to run to once the riot breaks out. In Paraguay’s largest stadium (El Stadio Grande de Paraguay), any given Tuesday night will see four futbol matches and two unassociated riots going on at the same time.
The Maracanã hold 78,241 people. The Dead sold around three thousand tickets, and the place seemed kind of empty, but the crowd rioted anyway. The band did make at least one fan, who showed his appreciation the traditional way: chucking a lit flare at Bobby during Estimated.
Venezuela was next, but no one wanted to go and everyone hated South America and Brent, who they were blaming the whole thing on, so the plane stopped in Colombia even though the flight logs do not say that it did and the tour was never spoken of again.
“Randos.”
No! Stop this! I will not have a flare-up of the Rando Wars. Too many have lost too much.
…
Phil?
“Yes?”
Are you Jesus now?
“The hands?”
Yeah. You look like you’re about to belt out I Believe I Can Fly.
“Honestly?”
Please.
“I’m sick of touching these fuckers.”
Solid reason.
“Y’know? It’s enough already.”
Say no more.
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Here’s something else that has nothing, nothing at all, to do with the flaming wreckage of a failed experiment our republic and culture has become: Phil and some very special Phriends from the Warfield in SanFrancisco on 4/15/99. Trapqueen Applefucker and Page from The Phishes joined Phil, along with Steve Kimock and John Molo, and the whole thing kicks ass, starting with the half-hour Viola Lee. Grateful Deads are playing Phosh music, Phishes are playing choogly tunes: mass hysteria.