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

Tag: phil lesh (Page 95 of 105)

FAQ (The ‘A’ Is For ‘Aoxomoxoa’)

What’s up with Donna? Why does she sing out-of-tune? – Phineas Phakenamington, Philadelphia, PA

What’s up with your mother? And her vagina, which displays a stunning lack of forethought as to its door policy?  Everyone is allowed in there and fights break out; the sheriffs get called all the time. Once, there was an outbreak of Legionnaires’s Disease that was found to have your mother’s vagina as the vector; that’s right, Mr. Phakename: people were Caribbean cruising on your mother’s vagina. Plus, she looks like your balls smell, also:  your father’s dreams continue to go unrealized. Unless he’s no longer with us, in which case you have my condolences: I’m truly sorry for your loss.

Maybe she sings out of tune because the human throat–unlike, say, a guitar–is an imprecise instrument. It lacks any output jack; it is an acoustic instrument that has been miked and when that is matched against, for example, a gaggle of ripped-to-the-tits nitwits who have built a wall to make their sound, it is difficult to intonate precisely,

PLUS, we must have consistency: yes, poorly-intonated playing is dreadful. I agree, and I agree across the board. So, if you’re getting mad that Mrs. Donna Jean–a Grateful Dead member–was out-of-tune and haven’t been outraged for years about Big Chief Second Helpings, then I’m looking at you with askance, you perpetuator of the patriarchy. For all of Garcia’s bad qualities, which have been catalogued in numerous well-shoplifted books, his attitude of “good enough” towards all of his strings tonally agreeing with both one another and the rest of the band was possibly the most annoying. Well, maybe the accidentally burning down structures.

How do you pronounce “Godchaux”? – Keith G., Palo Alto, CA  

Her-NAN-dez

What exactly is a new potato caboose?  – Abandoning  Thenamebit, Duetobored, OM

Something Phil used to do to groupies. Remember Zeppelin’s Mud Shark Incident? Like that, but with a Gaelic twist.

Really?

No, of course not: that’s not something a human would to do to another! It strains the bonds of decency and taints every piece of beauty on the earth. To know that somewhere, sometime, someone did this to someone else…if you knew it to be true, you would puke your brain straight of your ass. No human being is capable of this kind of horror.

Billy did it, not Phil.

What are the Dead really like?

Well, in the statistical aggregate, they’re around 41% deceased. Individually, I have no idea.

Are any of the stories captures so piquantly on these bloggings actually true.

For certain valuations of ‘true’, yes.

Why didn’t they play Ripple more?

Because it was just too pretty. Ripple was so pretty that Bobby kept demanding anal from it.

Smooth Like A Rhapsody

Check out Masterpiece from MSG, 9/18/87. Not Bobby killing it, which he always did on the Dylan tune. (Not so much in the blues number. Bobby’s blues number didn’t give you the blues, it made you genuinely sad.) Not even Phil winding and wending his way through the tale of a Grand Snarl through the  Old Country.

No, check out Garcia on the backup vocals. He’s yelpin’ and-a hollerin’, only to shut right up ‘n play this here GI-tar and play it right, boy. Garcia’s singing the high harmony line, almost up where Brent normally is. It’s just at the top of his range: notes you have to make an effort for, and he does, verse after verse. He’s in time with Bobby (kind of) and he’s in tune with Bobby (for a vast majority of the song) and it’s not just exactly perfect, because it’s better than perfect…

It’s human.

P.S. Here’s my favorite thing about When I Paint My Masterpiece: Dylan gave it away.  Other writers have made their reputations–their careers!–on far less, and he gave it to Robbie fucking Robertson. Robbie Robertson’s such a prick that three of his former band members preferred to die rather than spend anymore time on the same planet as him. Only Garth Hudson remains, and he is clearly some sort of immortal wood elemental.

Slow Down, You Move Too Fast

GODS ABOVE, do I love being wrong and fuckaduck, I should be at least inured to it by now, but sometimes my mistakes and misconceptions decide to destroy me with kindness, like when my long-held prejudice against ’76 was cured–a MIRACLE my brothers and sisters!–by this molasses-slow Peggy-O from Chicago’s Auditorium Theater on 6/29/76. Fist off, it’s listed as Mama Tried on the Archive, and second, Garcia’s a little out-of-tune, but SO WHAT, YOU BOW DOWN AND RUB HIS SWOLLEN ANKLES, PEASANT. He’s just killing it and there are eons–milllllllllennia–between beats. It drips over you like Billy’s lotion; it pools to fill every crevice; it is pristine and then, holy shit, it’s Mission in the Rain.

They only played it three times. Or five times, depending on whether you believe this sentence or the one previous. Garcia and Mrs. Donna Jean sing about whores and loss while the band swings behind them, then she duets with Bobby on a gorgeous Looks Like Rain that finds some astounding work from all of them, most of all Billy playing the thunder implicit in the song’s title. It’s transcendent and resplendent and other words, so many other words I can’t be bothered to type right now.

And then they tune up for, like, seven minutes.

This might be the rarest of all birds: a DONNA SHOW. Listen to her wee-hoo-hoo! during the verses of Lazy Lightning, melding her voice with Garcia’s (who was always a Galaxy-Class backup singer) for the “Myyy liiiight-nin’ tooooo!”

I didn’t see how before how hypnotic the Slow Dead could be–it’s not a dirge, it’s hypnosis.

Check this one out, if not for yourself, then for the Turks.

P.S. Great googly-mooglies, you must listen to the Playin’>Space Jam>The Wheel>Playin’ Reprise. One of these days, you’re gonna be dead, so liste to this right now. IGNORE YOUR CHILDREN AND LISTEN TO THIS IMPROVISATIONAL COUNTRY-ROCK PERFORMANCE.

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