Thoughts On The Dead

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

Tag: phil lesh (Page 99 of 105)

Misguided By Voices

April 25, 2013 / / 11 Comments

First thing I did when I got back to the bloggings was to check on the internals, the numbers, the data dammit. Analytics, they’re called. They are called this because it is remarkably easy to become anal about them.

That is not true.

The first thing I did when I got to Tokyo was buy a Japanese guitar.

Are you kidding me?

What?

You’re making Cheap Trick jokes now? Cheap Trick’s one of those bands you see by accident.

The second thing I did is check whether anyone had cracked the cipher I’ve hidden within the posts that, when cracked, leads to the hidden cache of cash, fine narcotics, and solid B+ whores.

There is no such cipher, nor are cash, drugs, or…wait, why are they B+ whores? Why not A+?

Because all whore grading is situational. I’m just gonna TELL the whores that they’re just B+ and that’s gonna make ’em work that much harder. It’s gonna make ’em want it. I’m gonna whitewash their fences.

Maybe coming back wasn’t–

That has a double meaning, what I just said.

–such a great…Yeah, I got it. I see what you did there, chief.

It was a Tom Sawyer reference, but I was also referring to my gift. I’m going to give the B+ whores my gift.

Are you done?

…Yes.

Then do you think we might–

GIVE IT TO THEM ALL OVER THEIR PRETTY BOOBIES!

Bang!

Wow…that is the quickest we’ve needed a replacement. This one must have had a bad motivator or something. Well then, below is a small collection of the best search terms people have used to get here recently. They’ve not been altered in any way. Also, when the police ask about me shooting the other guy, let’s all say that he was coming at me with a knife and he also looked Chechan.

We’ll have some auditions real soon and, anyway, we were thinking about going in a different direction for Mark II, so–

I’M NOT DEAD, MOTHERFUCKER!

Cut to the list! Cut to the list!

Close, but no cigar – thoughts for someone who is deceased, thoughts to be dead, thoughts for someone who is diseased.

All of it – how much did lenny hart steal?

Actually, a pretty good idea for a post – dead logical fallacies

Weir, I know you’re out there googling yourself – phil lesh yelling at bobby, hey bobby? i was hoping you’d play slide tonight, bobby problem

You gotta have a gimmick – billy kreutzmann dick punch, billy kreutzmann dickpuncher, dickpunching billy

Whatever you’re on, I want two – furrybooru fireon, bagger vance i am your caddie, gamma fuck prone.

Go to a doctor right now – total nipple refraction

This one is–completely on the level–oddly affecting and beautifully melancholy – i was called a pretty panther

It means you need to sit down and drink fluids – what does it mean when they said that the telegraph plat dance better to the grateful dead?

It wasn’t good in the first place – is 2 year old coors light still good?

Oddly specific – two dogs in communion #3

I don’t like your tone, pal – garry w. tallent jew

 

 

 

Paramount

April 24, 2013 / / 2 Comments

They screwed Vince, let’s all agree on that. The sounds they made him use were one thing, but it was the personal stuff that really led to Vince’s failure and eventual demise. Before joining the band, Vince was named Cock Money and combs would snap in two immediately upon entering his thick lustrous mane. On Vince’s first day at Front Street, Mickey shaved him and gave him a loser’s name.

(Try saying it like Jerry Lewis: Vince WELLLLL-nick. Glaben.)

Vince didn’t want to dress like that either, but Jon McIntire would wire his Hawaiian shirts to explode if they were removed. This hurt Vince and he went to the band–except Garcia because he was in the bathroom–and told them that if wearing the shirts was so important to everybody, he would just do it. No C-4 necessary.

So Billy punched him in the dick. (In his defense, Billy hadn’t been paying attention in the slightest and just wanted to punch the new guy in the dick. Now, that was certainly not how Vince read the situation; he cried for 90 minutes. I’m just relaying facts here.)

The sounds, however, were truly the crux of the problem: wheezy, hollow tinklings made by primitive synthesizers. The aural equivalent of watching a clown car get raped to death.

A clown car get…what the fuck is wrong with you? This is the comeback special and you’re talking about Vince and a forcibly penetrated harlequinade? 

Is that not the show business way?

It is not, no. Welcome people back. Maybe a list. An update on your mental health.

Doesn’t the clown rape kinda give a clue about my mental health?

Point taken.

Anyhoo, imagine if someone pulled the bullshit on you that they pulled on Vince: “Here’s your new office and your desk and you know your responsibilities, so I’ll just let you dive right in…oh, that guy? That’s the guy we hired to also do your job. But better. And everyone’s gonna love him more. Oh, and he’ll be able to get away with things you wouldn’t even dare to THINK about.”

Because there were no rules for Bruce. He was allowed to waltz into the house at all hours and turn the basement into his room and  his girlfriend slept over sometimes. So unfair. Listen to the cavalcade of Dark Star teases in this show from ‘Chicago ’91 .

Seriously, if Vince had ever tried teasing Dark Star, Phil would have smacked him with a rolled-up newspaper. And a chair.

Bad Weather At Merriweather

July 17, 2012 / / 0 Comments

Rage on, you cataracts and hurricanoes, rage on. We take a break from our tour in progress to match the show to the day: thick and rainy and hot and weird and that can only mean one thing: the Wharf Rat>Sugar Mags from 6/20/83 at the Merriweather Post Pavilion.

The lightning was hitting the struts and buttresses of the sound system and Phil was answering God right the fuck back with his own thunder and the crowd was swimming in mud and Bobby was dosed out of his head and starts babbling about Aborigines.

So, a Grateful Dead show.

Boo

July 13, 2012 / / 0 Comments

Oooooh. OOOOOooooooOOOOOOooooh. (What’s weird is that if you use two ‘h’s, it’s no longer spooky. Well, yeah, it’s spooky, but in an unclean way: Ooooooohh.  Right? Just got fifty shades of creepy in here.) It’s Friday the Thirteenth. Oogie-woogie.

The origin of our dreadful fascination with the date arose when Jesus was 13 and Joseph came in from a hard day of being a fictional character offscreen and said “Thank God it’s Friday,” and Jesus leapt up and screamed “You’re not my real dad, I hate you.” and stormed–well, I was going to say into the other room, but the Christs* probably had more of a loft thing, right? The open floor plan was big in Judea in, well, I guess it would have been 13, wouldn’t it have been?

So, then Jesus opened his religion and after that there were Knights Templar, who liked to roam around Europe building hospitals and having gay orgies. That got the Pope mad so he killed them all and, even though none of this really happened, it took place on Friday the 13th which is why on this date, we kill black cats on sight with impunity.

(There is a good possibility that none of that is true.)

So, tonight is filled with horror and foreboding (totally out of context, check out Bobby’s slide solo in Werewolves of London). Jason would have cut a swath through the Dead like Mrs. Donna Jean through a Holiday Inn, as would Michael Myers, mostly because Jason is a blatant rip-off of said Mr. Myers.

Freddie Krueger would have had no luck with the boys; there was nothing he could conjure up in their dreams that was scarier than things they had seen while awake.

Draculas of all sorts were known to avoid the Dead for fear of catching something. Or, more likely, catching everything. The weird, quickly evolving bacterium and viruses that followed each tour did some wonderful things (from a science point of view). There was one pathogen that caused a nearly 80% result for an incurable disorder called Total Nipple Refraction. TNR, man! So, like pretty much anyone with three or four brain cells, the draculas stayed away from the tour blood.

Werewoofs also would have been no sweat. A guy who turns into a raging beast once every 28 days? So, like, half-a-Billy?

It doesn’t matter anyway: Bobby still demands his nightlight to sleep.

* Until the age of 25, I thought that Christ was his last name. Like, “Hi, we’re the Christs. I’m Joseph, and this is my wife Mary.”

Ebony And Ivory

July 11, 2012 / / 3 Comments

The Dead had so many options after Brent’s all-bullshit-aside tragic death and they went with the worst. They apparently had this weird did-you-call-me/should-we-call thing with Merl that is far too Mean Girls to relate in good conscience and more’s the pity because maybe Merl would’ve kicked Garcia’s ass just a little, being a straight-laced man and proud deacon of the Mt. Holy Oak of Zion First Macadamia Church of the Redeemer in Christ. Plus, the Dead would have had a black guy in it. And as commercials have taught us, people hang out exclusively in carefully diverse groups.

There were others they could have at least auditioned. Elton John was hitting a rough patch at the time, perhaps he could have helped out. Something tells me Bobby would love to play Crocodile Rock. The flaw in the plan is that the first time Sir Elton threw one of his legendary tantrums, Billy would punch him in the dick, because this time I’ve gotta stand up for Billy: grown men throwing tantrums deserve a thorough dickpunching.

Rick Wakeman was also in a bit of a fallow period since wasting all of the money in Britain on an ice show to play arpeggios to. I have a feeling that the first time Rick opened his spangly cape to play two of his army of keyboards at the same time, Garcia would freak out and think he was a dragon and set him on fire. So, that’s a no for Rick Wakeman.

Stevie Wonder wouldn’t have worked because Phil still owes him $60 from a poker game and is ducking him.

Random Thoughts On The Dead

July 11, 2012 / / 4 Comments

The Timi’i people have only five words for colors, which seems odd until you realize that they live in a triple canopied rainforest and the colors are Green, Really Green, Thing That’s About To Kill Me, Sun’s In My Eyes, and Night.

In Phil’s secret language of dreams, his word for “roadie” is the same as his word meaning “one about to be chastised.”

—————-

I sometimes need to hear five or six versions of the same song in a row. Part of that last sentence was a lie: I sometimes need to hear Mississippi Half-Step  five or six versions in a row.

 —————-

Bobby was never more than two or three feet away from the note he intended to sing. Sometimes, this was an exciting musical choice–listen to Sugar Magnolia. Sometimes. Garcia’s voice was too fragile and sweet for the rockers, but it was in tune far more often than Bobby’s. Phil’s voice had a weird barbershop quartet thing to it, plus Phil’s larynx had not been informed of the fact that Phil had perfect pitch. At shows in the ’80’s, Enthusiasts hoisted signs reading Let Phil Sing. Note that these signs did not say Let Phil Continue to Sing: it was clearly seen as a one-time thing.

Pig wasn’t so much good at singing notes as he was at singing songs.

——————-

I’ll give the Dead this: they wouldn’t have put up with that My Little Pony shit at all.

The Dead did not subvert gender roles: they rejected your post-modernity and replaced it with a system that encouraged calling your wife “your old lady,” out loud and in public and getting away with it, which if you think about it, is a pretty good trick the guys played on their old ladies.

——————–

Could it be a coincidence that Roe v. Wade occurred in 1973? Is it chance that the landmark reproductive rights decision took place the VERY SAME YEAR that the Dead was just, y’know, killin’ it?

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