If we’re only going by this picture, then Mickey Hart is the BEST EVAR Mickey. No contest: look at that glorious sumbitch. He looks like how the guy from Monster Magnet thinks he looks.
Musings on the Most Ridiculous Band I Can't Stop Listening To
Tag: phil lesh (Page 33 of 105)
CELL PHONE NOISE
CELL PHONE NOISE
“Hello, this is Phil. Phil Lesh. Of the Grateful Dead.”
“Weir here.”
“Hey, Bob.”
“Took your advice.”
“You shaved?”
“No, the other advice.”
“You switched from dryer sheets to dryer balls?”
“I’ll just tell ya. The restaurant. You had a point, y’know, and I thought about it and decided to go for it.”
“Weir, that’s great. You gonna buy out the other investors, change the name?”
“Change the name? I bought the place for the name.”
“Bought? Wait. You already owned a piece of Sweetwater.”
“Oh, no. Not that joint.”
…
“Bob, what did you do?”
“Bought a bar on the Upper East Side.”
“Why?”
“Hold on, I’m sending you a picture.
DING!
“Get it?”
“That’s Billy’s dick, Bob.”
“Dammit.”
DING!
“And those are his balls.”
“I can get this to work.”
DING!
“The Weir.”
“That’s my name!”
“You’ll save on the sign.”
“Right, right. And, you know: I used to have a place in New York, me and Garcia.”
“Do you still have the apartment?”
“Sold it years ago.”
“So: where are you going to live while you’re running this dive bar?”
“Live? Figured I’d call in once or twice a day; pop in once a month. Bars mostly run themselves.”
“No, Bob. Bars don’t run themselves. Bars do the opposite of that. More work than you’d think humanly possible. And all kinds of work, too: heavy lifting, and math, and drunks, and taxes. Simply the biggest pain-in-the-ass business there is.”
“Huh.”
“This was not what I advised, Bob. I said to do what I did, not buy a pub 3,000 miles away.”
“Well, it’s mine, now.”
“Where did you say it was?”
“Upper East Side.”
“Sell it to the Meyers kid.”
“Ah, yeah.”
- Whatever it is, Phil wants it placed right there.
- Doing the new dance craze, The Philtusi.
- Having his “launching the nukes” daydream again.
- Phil is trying to dance like John Travolta, very unsuccessfully.
- Midget on the stage.
- Making a decision by playing Eenie-Minie-Moe in his head.
- Bobby said, “Hey, Phil: let’s point at absolutely nothing and make goofy faces,” and they did.
- Pretending he is the Daupin of France and picking out a peasant to hunt.
- (An aside: there was a Joan of Arc movie starring Milla Jovavich; John Malkovich played the Dauphin and everyone kept referring to him by title, except they were all using terrible fake French accents and I thought they were talking about a dolphin. “Why does France have a dolphin?” I kept asking. I was well into my twenties at the time.)
- Puncturing the fontanelle of Invisible Baby Hitler.
- Snitching.
If you’ve got any money left over after the Wall Street Dead aHead Networking Event, then you can buy one of two custom Eye of Horus bass guitars. Don’t know what I’m talking about? Perhaps you know it as–
–Phil’s DEATH SWAN. Destroyer of swing-sets, tackler of chambermaids, blaster of Dave Alvins: the Death Swan inspired fear and confusion everywhere it went. Our man Reddy’s played some beautiful basses and some goofy-looking ones, but the Swan was different.
Commissioning the bass from master luthier Jens Ritter in 2009, Phil loved the instrument so much that he gave it away 18 months later. (Okay, okay: it was to the Smithsonian, so “gave away” might have been a deliberately dismissive phrase.) The shape is from a previous design of the guy’s (the Jupiter, if you don’t feel like going over there), but Phil likes to get all the options and the performance package when he gets a guitar, so Ritter made a ten-instrument run to Phil’s specs and called it the Eye of Horus. They’re $14 grand apiece, sure, but they light up.
So if you ever find yourself in a survival situation–jungle, alpine, Billy’s basement–you can use the Eye of Horus to signal for help, or illuminate the path to safety, or scare ferrets.
Have you noticed the pickup? Here’s a closer look:
That, Enthusiasts, is a quattrobucker; I am not making that word up, even though it sounds exactly like a word I’d make up. Swear to you. Phil won the Gear Wars the day he took possession of the quattrobucker. He probably called Bobby to gloat.
“”Weir here.”
“Quattrobucker. Quattro means ‘four.'”
“Four what, Phil?”
…
“Buckers, I guess.”
“Okay. How’s the family?”
And so on.
And there’s an inlay, because Phil refuses to play guitars without mother-of-pearl inlays of occult-type stuff. The symbol he chose gives the bass its name:
And the LED lights are a map of the chakras, because of course they are.
Like I said, you can buy one; there’s two left. But for $14 grand, you should get a guitar with your own bullshit on it. The Egypt bullshit and the chakra bullshit? That’s Phil’s bullshit. Get your own bullshit.
Let’s not let the innertubes see this, please. Every year, a few white people get yelled at for Cinco de Mayo-related bullshit, and I would prefer that one of them not be Phil. Mostly because Phil yells back at the innertubes, and he will give Twitter the finger, and then the Beyhive will get involved and someone will ‘shop a Crying Jordan onto Phil’s head; no one wants this to happen.
Also: why does the black lady not even get to be a Mexican? White guys get to be Mexicans, but not black ladies? Let Jay Lane be a floating head; he is a bad influence on Jeff Chimenti and does not deserve to be any sort of Mexican, let alone a Mariachi Mexican. (The Mariachi suit is the southern equivalent of a Mountie’s uniform: the single coolest piece of clothing allowed a man in that particular culture.)
The very definition of White privilege is denying black ladies the right to be Mexican guys.
Also, Phil is having the busboys do the Photoshopping for the Insta feed.
Let’s just put all this silliness away in the problem Attic, shall we, and instead enjoy Radio Busterdog streaming from the free–seriously!–show at TXR this evening. Phil and his Phriends are playing and maybe if you ask real nice, they’ll play the Creature Cantina song in honor of Star Wars Day.
“C’mere, Bob.”
“Are we hugging?”
“Oh, yeah.”
“Okay.”
“Feels good to hug.”
“This is happening.”
“We’re pressing our friendship together.”
“How long is this lasting?”
“Shh.”
“Please don’t–”
“Shh.”
“–‘Shh’ me in my ear and you did it again.”
“Hold me closer, Tiny Bob Weir.”
“I’m not tiny and lemme go.”
“Go with the moment.”
“let the moment end.”
“Go with the moment.”
“Let the moment end.”
“Go with–”
STRUGGLESTRUGGLE
…
“Okay.”
“Sorry.”
“It’s okay.”
“I felt a bit claustrophobic in there. Also, you know: people are taking pictures.”
“Who?”
“Guy named David Clark.”
“David W. Clark?”
“Yup.”
“They let him out?”
“Apparently.”
“Hey, Brent.”
“Hey, Bobby. Been forever.”
“Well, you know: whose fault is that? We have a time machine. You’re always welcome to come by.”
“Yeah?”
“Sure, of course, yeah. Would you wear the outfit?”
“Can’t really just walk around in 2016. I died a million years ago.”
“What about once you’re in the house?”
“Well, in the house I would just prefer to wear the suit.”
“Uh-huh. Is it comfortable?”
“It’s the real me, Bob.”
“Ah.”
“It makes sense: I’m slow, and shy, and get arrested a lot. Just like a turtle. I’m a turtle, Bob.”
“I think you’ve been fucking around with the Time Sheath too much and you’re going a little nuts, buddy.”
“That’s absurd and offensive. I am not crazy.”
…
…
…
“I’m a turtle.”
“Dammit, Mydland, you’re not a turtle. It’s just a suit. You’re a dead keyboardist with inexplicable access to a time machine. And also, you know: you’re getting a bit gamey.”
“That’s my musk. It attracts lady turtles.”
“Turtle foxes?”
“Hey, man: turtle or not, I’m still a rock star.”
“Sure, sure. Brent, can I talk to Lesh for a minute?”
“Of course.”
SIDLE SIDLE SIDLE
“Phil, uh, did you know Brent had gone nuts?”
“He’s not crazy.”
…
…
…
“He’s a turtle.”
“Oh, not you, too.”
“If a fully-defunct choogly-type keyboardist identifies as a turtle, then who am I to deny him his truth?”
“What’s your angle?”
“I’d have to pay a kid to wear the suit. Brent just thinks he’s a turtle that lives in my backyard: he’s free.”
“Being a business owner has changed you.”
“It’s all about the margins, man.”
“Are you feeding him?”
“I assume so. He’s still alive, isn’t he?”
“Where’s he going to the bathroom?”
…
SIDLE SIDLE SIDLE
“Mydland, I got a question for you.”
“Sure, Phil.”
“And don’t lie to me.”
“I’m not a liar.”
…
…
…
“I’m a turtle.”
“Fine, whatever: I want you to look me in the eye.”
“Okay, but my actual eyes are in the turtle’s neck.”
“Noted. Have you been pooping on the bocce courts?”
“Absolutely.”
“MOTHERFUCKER! Why!?”
…
…
“Enough with the fucking ellipses! You’re not a turtle, or you are a turtle, or I don’t give a shit! Stop shitting on my lawn! Use the toilet!”
“Toilets are for people, Phil.”
“YOU’RE A PEOPLE!”
…
…
…
“I’m a–”
“Oh, fuck you.”
“–turtle.”
“Thanks for coming, Bob.”
“Hey, you know: couldn’t miss this. Hell of a day.”
“Sure is.”
“Who’d have thought Grahame would coach the Lakers?”
“No, Bob.”
“I didn’t even know he was involved with the sport.”
“Walton’s kid. Walton’s kid is gonna coach the Lakers.”
“Ah.”
“Luke.”
“That makes much more sense. What’s Grahame doing?”
“Hanging around the house, playing guitar.”
“Sounds like mine. Heard you got a new place.”
“Where’d you hear that?”
“Few posts back.”
“Right. Oh, hey: Brent’s here.”
“Should he be?”
“He’s disguised.”
“Ah.”
…
“You see what’s going on behind you?”
“Weir, I saw her before you got here. I saw her before you got up this morning. ‘Do I see what’s going on behind me?’ C’mon, man.”
“I used to have shorts like that.”
“You did.”
“You just like drinking out of green bottles, don’t you?”
“A little bit, yeah. How you liking the Apple Watch?”
“It’s a thing. Nifty little gadget. It monitors stuff.”
“Do you have any idea how it works, Bob?”
“Well, it hasn’t fallen off my wrist, so I got that part down pat.”
“Here: press the button.”
“This button?”
APPLE NOISE
“No, Bob. You just sent me a picture of your dick.”
“Oh, that’s not mine.”
…
“Whose is it?”
“That’s–
“Billy’s dick.”
“–Billy’s dick, yeah.”
“I understand that he sends you pictures of his cock, but why do you have them saved on your watch?”
“If you don’t save them, he gets insulted and threatens to cancel the tour again.”
“I keep telling you, Weir: put some more money into Sweetwater. Turn it into your place like I did here. If you show up two or three nights a week, the Deadheads show up seven nights a week. Stay home.”
“Lesh, God love ya: that sounds like a living hell.”
“Okay.”
“I go on tour, man. Maybe I’ll stop one day, but not now. Figure if I’m going to be doing shows anyway, might as well play the biggest rooms and get the biggest check. This requires, you know: putting up with the drummers. So be it.”
“Sounds fair.”
“Besides: you go and buy a place, take the time to make it nice–you know, a classy establishment–and somebody’s just gonna poop on your bocce courts. If you stay in a hotel, you don’t have to worry about your bocce courts because you don’t have any. You don’t miss the road?”
“Fuck, no. I miss being a kid, and when I was a kid I was always on the road, but: no, I do not miss traveling and strange beds and soundchecks in freezing hockey arenas. It was fun when we were 25, and a job after that, and out of the question now.”
“You don’t miss rocking Cleveland?”
“Nope. Truly, truly, truly do not. Or riding in vans. You know what I don’t miss and never liked in the first place? That cold some jackass would bring along on tour that everyone would pass around from nose to nose. I wanna be home.”
“You go to Vegas.”
“I own a home in Vegas. What part of ‘I sleep in my own bed’ are you not getting, Weir?”
“All right, all right.”
“Plus, I wouldn’t have busboys on the road. I don’t know if I could live without them at this point. Another reason for you to reconsider the restaurant: they’re invaluable.”
“They just clean the tables and bring water, don’t they?”
“Fuck, no: they do everything. It’s like if the road crew were expendable.”
“Where do you get them?”
“I don’t know.”
“Okay.”
Hey, who’s that shaggy guitarist standing next to Phil? He looks so familiar.
It’s Bobby! (And Ross James playing an utterly gorgeous what-looks-to-a-Gibson ES-150, but Ross James is at Terrapin Crossroads all the time, so he does not get an exclamation point.) Phil is to the right, and the three of them played an acoustic set; Deadheadland provides us with pictures and a set list, and if you’re not following Deadheadland on your social media platform of choice, then you don’t know what’s going on in Deadhead Land. It’s that simple. (Plus, he’s got videos of the afternoon’s music over there. Go, watch, enjoy. I’ll be here when you’re done. I won’t be lonely. Abandon me. I’ll lie down and die like an animal. I’m fine.)
This was for a ceremony honoring something. The backyard of TXR and the city of San Rafael are now partners, or maybe one bought the other. Has Terrapin Crossroads been named a national park? I have no idea: the point I am trying to get across is that something happened. People were happy, and proud; a representative from the city may or may not have made a statement.
Another shot of some hippies playing in the park in the middle of the afternoon.
Of note: the trio played for 35 minutes, which means each of Phil’s bass pedals got seven minutes to itself; Phil has fully committed to his Apple Watch; Red Metal Stool did not make the gig.
Another shot in which we learn that the three played Monkey and the Engineer and On the Road Again, which Bobby sang; and Ripple and Friend of the Devil, which Bobby and Phil shared vocals on. We also learn that Bobby and Phil get bottles of water, but Ross James receives no water. Sorry, Ross James: water is for Grateful Deads. We learn further that the roof of Phil’s outdoor stage has been built in a way to enhance hallucinogens. We finally learn that the stage is well-protected by those metal stanchions with the nylon straps stretched between them. (The nylon is of Italian import.)
Time for everyone’s semi-favorite semi-regular feature: TotD clears his desktop! I’ve had these tabs open for what seems like eons and none of them are of particular interest to me, but I’ll pass them along just so I can hit the Close buttons with a clean conscience. Here we go:
1.
Garcia made a record with a guy named Harold Whales; the album had an inscrutable name and the two of them held up a copy of Scientific American on the inside cover. It looked like this:
First of all: this looks like the first thing you’d see when you came to, chained to the bed, in an abandoned cabin somewhere. Second: a diligent writer dug into the archives of SA and found out that the reason Garcia was most likely promoting the magazine was an article in it about “marihuana.”
There you go.
2.
Phil is moving. Well, not really: he’s selling his house. Kind of: he’s selling a house. It’s in Ross, California, which is a tiny town in between Larkspur and San Anselmo, which are also pretty small. It’s near San Francisco, basically, but nothing at all like San Francisco: no bums, no techies, etc.
Sure, that drunken legacy pledge Irsay owns Tiger, but for a cool ten million, you can own Phil’s old toilet. (They’ll throw in the rest of the house for free.) Houses are usually cleaned pretty well between owners, but there’s gotta be a little DNA lying around. Maybe you could clone Phil?
A NOTE: Please do not clone Phil. Leaving aside the surely-nefarious reasons for why you’re doing so, Clone Phil will almost certainly escape and find Real Phil and try to take his place; this will lead to thrilling setpiece in which Jill is trying to shoot Clone Phil, but she doesn’t know which one is the clone and which one is Phil.
“Shoot him, Jill! I’m me! Phil! Phil Lesh of the Grateful Dead!”
“No, I’m Phil! Phil Lesh! Of the Grateful Dead!”
And Jill’s pointing the gun back and forth.
“SHOOT HIM!”
“NO! HE’S THE CLONE!”
The music is blaring:
BAAAAAAAMBAM BAM! BAAAAAAAAAMBAM BAM!
And then Bobby wanders in; he is eating ice cream straight from the carton.
“Why don’t you, um, just have ’em take their shirts off? Clone doesn’t have any scars.”
…
“That’s an excellent idea, Bob.”
“I try.”
And so on. This is what the house looks like:
It is called the Bridge House, because when a property costs a certain amount, you’re allowed to name it. If you live in a three-bedroom split-level in Roseland, NJ, and you call your house Barnswallow Manor, then people are going to laugh at you. There are more details here, but be warned: this is one of those articles in which the author jams Dead lyrics into sentences they clearly don’t belong in.
ANOTHER NOTE: Obviously, Phil and Phamily aren’t moving into a tiny house they’ll be parking in the back of TXR; they’ve got a new place. I think I saw an article about it, but I also think that people and sites who give out anyone’s current address are complete assholes. You know I enjoy playing Man Of The People as much as the next comrade, but here I have sympathy for the rich: just because a house cost a few million (or way, way more) doesn’t mean it needs to be in the fucking paper. The only people who need to know where anyone–not just the rich–live are the people who need to know.
So don’t go posting that bullshit in the Comment Section.
3.
I found this on Reddit and it’s the most tragilarious object, story, and backstory I’ve ever read. A guy mononymically (and perhaps pseudonymically) named Andy customized Zippo lighters for the discerning drug addict: there was a little bowl in the top with a telescoping stem, so the whole thing turned into a marihuana pipe, plus more bullshit. It looked like this:
Which is where it gets sad: this is a terrible object. First of all: if you need this, then what you really need is to stop doing drugs and find yourself a nice church girl. The doohickey on the right that looks like an Allen wrench is a coke spoon; it fits in a little slot on the bottom.
Andy has also managed to misspell “Greatful Dead.”
Garcia got it in ’84–whether given to him personally or just sent to him–and sent it back ten years later to fix the typo, but died before the lighter could be returned; he was not thinking of it on his death-bed, I’m sure. He chucked this thing in a drawer, if he saw it at all. I can’t imagine Garcia would have thought this to be at all cool: it looks like something a fat kid who hates his step-father made in shop class, and then burned down the school with.
I am also fairly sure that Garcia would not have carried around a lighter festooned with charms bearing some dude’s name, or this piece of incriminating evidence:
“That’s not my lighter, officer.”
“Then why’s your name on it, Mr. Garcia?”
“Fuckin’ Andy.”
Zippos are quality products, durable and American and classic like Stratocasters or Colt M1911s: they got the design right decades, and trying to make them better almost always makes them worse. You can paint them, or inscribe them, or chrome-plate them, but you’re not going to improve on the standard model. Plus, Zippos make the best noise and fit into the right-hand change pocket of Levi’s 501 jeans so perfectly.
Don’t do this to them.
Anyway, I promised not just comedy, but also tragedy; I would never lie to you. (I totally would, and do all the time.) This is from the page I linked to about Andy, and it is the saddest sentence I have ever read:
Apparently Andy lived in Los Angeles, Laurel Canyon in Hollywood / West Hollywood, Venice Beach, Ventura, and then committed suicide in Bakersfield some time in the 1990s.
Do you see how the vague (“apparently”, “some time in the 1990s”) combines with the specific (and there might be no more specific a phrase in the language that “committed suicide in Bakersfield”) to produce a maddening gestalt? Could there be a better way of reminding us all of the world’s attention span, and how quickly we’ll be forgotten? Is committing suicide in Bakersfield redundant?
So many questions, all of them so dumb.
4.
Rich ladies need something to do with their days. Mostly, they choose to fill the time by being rich at other rich ladies: rich ladies have figured out how to weaponize their rich ladyness. Some of them try to throw the best parties, and others try to win Instagram, and others try to get the biggest stars in the world to sit ringside at their fashion shows.
(In keeping with the evening’s cessation of class warfare: rich ladies are just people with too much money. Give a broke dude some money; he’ll be a rich lady in a week, writing cookbooks. Humans gonna human.)
My point being that a near-critical mass of rich ladies assembled for designer Stacey Bendet’s Alice + Olivia “see now/buy now” show featuring clothes from their new Grateful Dead-licensed line. It looks like this:
If you’d like to purchase a piece, you could go to Bergdorf Goodman and pick up this sweater for $400, but it’s sold out. so you can’t:
I was unsure as to why a shirt would cost that much until I read the copy on Bergdorf’s website, and then it made sense.
Alice + Olivia
Grateful Dead® Bear Cropped Intarsia Pullover Sweater, White/Multicolor
BGS16_TCJVG
- Alice + Olivia cotton-blend sweater features Grateful Dead® dancing bear intarsia with sequin embellishing.
- Round neckline.
- Long sleeves.
- Relaxed fit.
- Hem cropped at waist.
- Pullover style.
- Cotton/nylon.
- Imported of Italian material.
Intarsia is a way to knit colors together, so the bear isn’t an iron-on; also, the nylon is “imported of Italian material,” which is not English. Does the writer mean “material imported from Italy” but wanted to say it all fancy?
(Also: is Italy really where they grow the nylon? Is it still a family business? Old guy in a hat with a mule patrolling his ancestral nylon fields? Plus: is nylon a seasonal crop? Is there a harvest, or does nylon get picked? Should I be worried about GMO nylon?)
Anyway, they had a fashion show and some very important rich ladies showed up. They looked like this:
Kim was unavailable. (L to R: two socialites with ridiculous names, Pretty Lady Doctor from Dr. House, M.D., my bae, Not-Kim, blonde woman, Anna Paquin with a lamp growing out of her face.)
As for the clothes: I’m both biased and unqualified to opine. As you know, I hate those fucking bears; plus, I agree with Garcia’s view of fashion: ten black t-shirts, two pairs of jeans, drawerful of underwear and socks; call it a day.
Designer of the line Stacey Bendet’s husband is Eric Eisner, who is producing the upcoming (and upcoming and upcoming) documentary about the Dead along with Martin Scorsese; he is a big Deadhead and Stacey became infected by the Dead’s music, as opposed to the old days, when women used to be infected by the Dead’s penises. (Penii? Penes?Purim?)
I mention her husband for only one reason, and that is to challenge this canard of him being a Deadhead. How can one be a Deadhead without reading my site? And–if one were a big Hollywood mover and shaker–dropping a production deal into the Donate Button? Are you going to sit there and tell me that someone from Hollywood doesn’t recognize talent?
But there is no production deal in the Donate Button, not even a holding deal. Ipso fact: Eric Eisner is not a Deadhead.
And those are the things that I had nothing to say about.
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