Thoughts On The Dead

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

Tag: phil lesh (Page 55 of 105)

Riding A Gateway Bus

February 19, 2015 / / 8 Comments

The cities of the American West have shopkeepers for fathers and whores for mothers. Of course, so does every other city on this planet, but the West is so young that there are photographs of the settlers. (Well, the most recent batch.) This puts a crimp in mythology.

The original city walls of Rome, we’re told, were laid out by Romulus after laying out his twin brother Remus in a fight over where the boundaries should be placed. Which is a rude thing to do, but he was literally raised by wolves.

And since this happened around 2800 years ago, we have no proof one way or the other. Common sense says that human nature is human nature and, therefore, Rome was originally a trading post situated near a river for easy access, a couple guys set up an inn and stables, a few women built a house, then a church came by a little later to collect tribute from the inn and tell everyone the woman’s house was one of ill repute.

Things begin, but nothing simply starts.

As is the case with the location of 7/25/72. Portland finds our heroes in town for the last two shows of an astoundingly good four show mini-tour, the first half (mostly) of which is available on Volume 10 of the criminally underrated and foolishly cancelled Digital Download series.

It’s a doozy, but instead of the usual review–

You’ve never seriously reviewed a show in your life. You pretend to have a philosophic/aesthetic disagreement with the practice, but it’s mostly that you can’t be bothered.

–I shall present the awesomess of this show in a somewhat novel way: I’ll list a fact about this show or the city of its birth, and you guess True or False. Ready? Go:

  • There’s a jam about 15 or 16 minutes into The Other One that would turn Miles Davis into a small white girl named Lucy. Garcia’s on the slide guitar and I will venture this: they never played this jam before or after and it’s a glorious piece of music.
  • Portland is the capital of whatever state it happens to be in.
  • This show might as well take place in Phil’s skull. There’s just so much goddamned Phil; a normal person might cry “Hold!” but we demand “More!” The proper amount of Phil is like the proper amount of money or tuggers or compassion: as much as possible.
  • The first set contains a twelve-minute medley of Negro spirituals that peters off into shame.
  • Trey played guitar.
  • Loser’s outstanding. No joke for this one: it’s just an absolutely HoF version of a tune that’s hit-or-miss for me.
  • The city of Portland is actually 21 miles inland and was named after its founder, Allen Portland.
  • The transition between He’s Gone and Greatest Story is hilariously muffed. Bobby, Phil, and Billy all roar full-throttle into the rocker after the gentle come-down of He’s Gone’s coda. Except they do it one at a time, and it doesn’t matter because Garcia needs to tune his guitar, anyway.
  • They do make up for it by utterly killing Greatest Story.
  • Four minutes after Portland acquires its first nuclear missile, Seattle will cease to exist.
  • A very rare BIODTL with π beats.
  • That it has the most strip clubs per capita in the country might seem fun, until you remember that strip clubs are depressing: not one person in that building is happy to be there. Strip clubs are the opposite of the Olympics.
  • Okay, some people enjoy strip clubs, but they’re 19-year-olds or guys with vanity plates on their ‘Vette.
  • Although, it could just be the strip clubs I’ve been to. They;’re always such dank, clearly mob-owned places with posters for Bud Lite and the DJ yelling at the patrons to hit up the ATM, or, as he called it, the “Ass and Titties Machine.”
  • So clever, those strip club DJs.
  • Maybe Portland–being progressive and sensitive and new age to the point of satire and parody–has eco strip clubs, where the ass is organic and the titties are locally sourced.
  • An artisanal, small-batch strip club is what I’m talking about here. Owned cooperatively by the dancers. Free admission for bicyclists. Poles made from recycled steel. Giant high heels made from salvaged lucite. All lap dances will be carbon-neutral.
  • But, in the end, it’s still just a lonely dude paying a pretty girl to stick her butt in his face.
  • Most of Sugar Mags is missing.

The correct answers are: TTFTFFTTFTFTTTF, though not in that order.

Grate Adventure

February 16, 2015 / / 4 Comments

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The theme park was doomed from the start.

The boffins at Alembic, geniuses at audio innovation that they might be, were particularly ill-suited to designing an amusement park, mostly because of their high tolerance for experimentation and system failure: they sent at least three fully-loaded roller coaster cars hurtling off the tracks in an uncontrollable death parabola in search of what they called “the gravitational sweet spot.”

One of the selling points of the park was the entertainment: the Dead would jam in the open-air amphitheater twice a day; admission was free to park guests. Phil showed up for the first show, got shit-faced on Bordeaux and astronaut ice cream, drove his Lotus home, called in with a family emergency. When Sue Swanson answered and asked what the emergency was, Phil relayed the sad news that his father had died. Sue then reminded Phil that his father had died in 1970 and he (Phil) had written a song (Box of Rain) about it (the dying.) Phil then made a CHHHSSXCH sound into the phone and pretended the connection was bad and hung up.

Also–and there’s no pleasant way to say this–Brent would do stuff to the characters walking around. This stuff was non-consensual, at best. Which is funny when it’s a keyboardist desperately humping an anthropomorphic duck in broad daylight, but not as funny once you realize that there’s a person–most likely a teen person–in the suit and you’re literally watching another human being get PTSD.

Send Six Copies To My Mother

February 14, 2015 / / 2 Comments

Things are happening, Enthusiasts. People are meeting and rehearsing and signing things and arguing with Phil: the Grateful Dead show is back on the air and one of the most important members of the cast is the new boy.

Trey sat down with a reporter from Rolling Stone, a magazine that–like certain choogly-type bands–has been coasting on its reputation for almost 40 years now. It is a good interview and Trey says the only thing that matters: that he’s taking this seriously and wants to do nothing other than make some good music this July Fourth weekend.

Trey did say some other things that were unfortunately left out of the article, but–due to TotD’s vast network of spies–we can now present Things Left Out of Trey’s RS Article:

  • He’s already started soloing.
  • Bobby keeps measuring his inseam and talking about how hot it gets in Chicago in the summer.
  • Trey won’t be playing Garcia’s guitar, but he will be wearing Garcia’s underwear. (There are holes and stain. To be honest, everything that’s not a hole is a stain.)
  • Just as he’s been spending his days learning the Dead’s repertoire, Billy has been listening to Phish. This is, Trey explains in the interview, part of Billy’s program of “every time you think you’re fucking clever and try to slip some of that Gamehenge bullshit in, you get punched in the dick.”
  • Mike Gordon keeps calling him and not saying anything and then hanging up.
  • Bobby keeps offering him pain pills to “take the edge off” and it’s going to end poorly.
  • The openers are (in order) Feel Like a Stranger, Bertha, and Shakedown. That wasn’t in the article: I’m just guessing, but I’m right.
  • Billy’s way of teaching people songs is to throw half-empty tall boys at them.
  • That is also Mickey’s preferred teaching method.
  • The rehearsals are going to be at Bobby’s studio. Phil had a great idea to hold them at his restaurant and charge folks $300 to eat short ribs while they watched, but everyone hated that idea, and it was Jill’s idea.
  •  Bruce Hornsby is a brutal and sadistic man who may or may not belong to ISIS.
  • There are actually no shows planned: the Dead will be cashing all the mail order MOs, fleeing the country, and resettling in places without extradition treaties or taboos about senior/teen fox humping. It’s all been a long con.
  • Mickey professes to dislike Indian food, yet aways smells of chutney, and it’s driving Trey mad.

A Ca Rolling Stone

February 11, 2015 / / 4 Comments

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After the success of Pitch Perfect and its upcoming sequel, Pitch Perfect 2: Anna Kendrick Remains Clothed, the Dead attempted a few a capella numbers, but Phil insisted on being the human beat box and wouldn’t stop making that “wikki wikki” noise. Also, after Garcia was told that a capella songs rarely, if ever, contain 17-minute guitar solos, he lost interest.

Two's A Crowd

February 11, 2015 / / 1 Comment

Some thing you don’t need more than one of: keyboardists. Other examples include…

  • Bassoonists.
  • Terrordactyls
  • Norwegians hiding under your bed with a hard-on.
  • Assholes. Out of all the body parts you’ve only got one of, your asshole is the most-necessarily singular. Guy with two dicks has a party trick and a potential career, that girl with two heads had a reality show, fellow with two livers can make some serious coin with just one phone call to Phil. Two assholes just means there’s shit all over the place.
  • Bowls of cereal. Show some restraint: you’re getting so fat as to be called “bulbous.”
  • Membership in a superhero team. Looking at you, Wolverine.
  • Barrel of monkeys, because that saying’s a trick. Even one barrel of monkeys will–depending on the species, obviously–be no fun at all. Monkeys are terrible and violent and clever and psychotic. They’re like hairy, naked Billys (okay: hairier, nakeder Billys) and they will exact retribution for perceived slights by eating your genitals and hands.
  • First off: what kind of barrel are we talking about? One of those giant whiskey suckers? Or a prop barrel you’d see at Disney in the Wild West section? That’s a huge range of possible monkeys, frankly. Are we talking six-eight, or 25 or so?
  • And, obviously: what type of monkey? Vervet? Macaque? Japanese Snow? Howler? Shit, even if the howler monkeys don’t get out of the barrel (which they will,) you’ve got another problem to deal with.
  • Howling.
  • And there’s the elephant in the room, which is that the vast majority of Americans* don’t know the difference between a monkey and an ape. (Here’s a quick rule of thumb: monkeys’ snouts are shaped like a “C” and their teeth can be seen when their mouths are closed; apes have leaves of three, so you should let them be.)
  • So now: fuck me as though monkeys weren’t bad enough, I got a barrelfull of enraged chimpanzees in my living room. Everything in a one-mile radius is now getting eaten, fucked, and killed. In that order.
  • Even if the apes weren’t violent–let’s say you got orangutans, who most certainly would be violent, but just going on their whole “stoner Buddha” vibe–you’d still have anywhere from a half-dozen to a score enormous shitmonsters scorching your nostrils with a smell so powerful it was nearly tangible.
  • So: two barrels of monkey? Fuck that noise, Chachi.
  • Drummers.

* “More fun than a barrelfull of monkeys” is an American phrase: it must be. Only a monkey-less culture would equate monkeys with fun, rather than thieving and spreading diseases.

The Long And Shorts Of It

February 5, 2015 / / 3 Comments

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This is a situation in which “Look at this bullshit here” simply won’t cut it, mainly because no two people would agree on which particular bullshit they were supposed to be looking at.

For there is so much bullshit to look at here.

  • “Acid-washed” did not mean what Phil thought it meant, but he wore the jeans anyway.
  • Donald Trump would think Bobby’s guitar was classy as fuck. (By the way: there is no phrase in the English language more self-negating than “classy as fuck.”)
  • Bobby’s got a tan line somewhere, but I’m not looking for it.
  • “ACE RACK.” Because “BOB RACK” would have taken so much longer to stencil.
  • Maybe it’s a good thing that Phil’s bass doesn’t have a head on it, because every other head in this picture has a ponytail or giant Aunt Lilian glasses attached to it.
  • Billy and Brent got into an argument about whether Bobby’s tank top was teal or turquoise and the show had to be delayed so they could swing weed-whackers at each other to settle the discussion.
  • “So, I can’t perform completely naked? Huh. So, what’s the next worst thing?”

Baby, Blue

February 4, 2015 / / 0 Comments

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“Bullshit. This is all bullshit. Where’s my house? The wet, warm place? The place I was built for, the perfect environment: regulated and temperate and salty. Put me back in there, dammit.

“I was happy in there. Now it’s cold and people keep dressing me to reflect their musical tastes.

“And sometimes I’m hungry and have to start screaming until the Lady comes. I never had to scream when I was in the lady.

“Pooping’s fun, though. I peed all over the Guy the other day when he let his guard down. That was awesome.

“Old Guy here seems all right. Dunno why waving me around at crowds makes him so happy, but whatever.”

Things That Don't Cause Autism

February 3, 2015 / / 14 Comments
  • Nailing dogs together.
  • Vegan barbecues. (I guess that’s just eating kale outside. No fire: it’s cruel to the trees.)
  • Reruns of The Love Boat.
  • Billy taking you to Knott’s Berry Farm, eating a shitload of ‘shrooms, and projectile vomiting on the loop-de-loop when the car is at the very top, so when you come down, it hits you in the face unexpectedly.
  • The all-new Surface Pro 3.
  • Polo. (Both kinds.)
  • An icy, withholding mother.
  • Slam poetry.
  • Two minutes for slashing.
  • Anything from the food court except those foul, butter-soaked pretzels from Auntie Anne’s that smell like junkie vomit. Those cause autism.
  • A well-turned double play
  • Butter knives.
  • Renowned nutrition expert Marion Nestle.
  • Twitter.
  • The never-aired television pilot Camping With Phil. Phil got as far as his backyard and proclaimed camping to be for “dudes who wanna jack each other off under pine trees and Hitler Youth.” He then got drunk and started firing his shotgun at random noises and the production crew.
  • Labrador Retrievers wearing bandanas.
  • The greatest show-biz memoir of all time, Yes, I Can, by Sammy Davis, Jr.
  • Vaccines.
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