Thoughts On The Dead

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

Tag: precarious lee (Page 9 of 11)

Lean And Mean

February 25, 2016 / / 5 Comments

band 1971 bw

1971 was the last time there were this few Grateful Deads. They were briefly placed on the Endangered List until someone realized the Endangered Species Act wouldn’t be passed until ’72, and by then there were either one or two more Grateful Deads depending on what month you’re talking about.

Also: Billy’s deaf, too, now? Right? You’re not allowed to be a young man that close to giant amplifiers without being an old man who leaves the closed captioning on his TV at all times.

Also also: Billy’s monitor may or may not be propped up with a hardcover book. Good job, Precarious. That’s some fine stuff-proppin’.

Eloquently

January 27, 2016 / / 0 Comments

boreal ridge stage construction
“We mint our own coin.

“Do you understand what that means? Reality is controlled via the franchise on violence. That franchise is secured by the creation of value. To create a new society using the money of the world you wish to leave behind is quixotic, at best.

“Our pennies are notes; our dollars, amplifiers; our rubber-banded rolls are the trucks that fly us through the night and up into the hills and mountains, far away from the women and children.

“We’ll bring our own women and children.

“Our freedom is purchased by the mile, and earned via each gas station hot dog. Our liberty exists for a few hours a day, for several days a week, for half the months of the year.

“That’s as free as we can afford to be; we mint our own coin, and the work is hard.”

That was a lovely speech, Precarious.

“Thank you.”

Is that guy wearing any safety equipment at all?

“I told him to be careful.”

Good enough.

Once Upon A Time In Mexico

January 15, 2016 / / 0 Comments

mayan temple
The white man was skinny and tall and wearing a Dead shirt with clothespins attached to the hem. He raised a soft pack of Kools to his mouth and withdrew one with his lips, then rolled the pack up in his left sleeve. There were new soles on his old boots.

He paced off the lawn in front of the temple, length and width. Then, after retrieving a notebook and pencil stub from his satchel, he paced everything off again and wrote down the results.

The bathrooms, he thought, could flank the crowd along the east and west. There was a clearing containing much shittier ruins a half-mile away; it was flat and grassy and there was a wide path connecting the two locations. That’s the campsite, the man figured.

No one for miles. All ours, he thought.

And then the man thought, I’m gonna wire that temple up and turn it into a sound system, or my name ain’t–

“Señor?”

“Ah! Jesus!”

“¡Pardon! No era mi intención asustarte.”

…

“Hola.”

“¿Qué estás haciendo aquí?”

“Uhhh…Me, Me, Me llamo Precarious Lee.”

“Eso no es un nombre real . Suena como algo idiota compone .”

“And, uh, we, uh…dammit…Muerte! Muerte!”

“¿Por qué estás gritando “Muerte’ a mí ?”

“MUERTE! YO SOY MUERTE!”

“¿Qué carajo te pasa?”

“EL MUERTE! EL MUERTE IS COMING!”

Love Drums In Spurts

November 10, 2015 / / 11 Comments

IMG_2706
“How many drums are we taking on this tour, Mickey?”

“How many drums are there?”

“In the warehouse?”

“No. In existence.”

“A lot.”

“That many.”

“Gotcha, boss.”

“Precarious?”

“Sure?”

“Also bring anything even remotely drum-like.”

“Drum-like, gotcha.”

“And then fashion some objects that had not been drums, into drums.”

“Fashion, check.”

“And polish my crotch-horns.”

“Crotch. On it.”

Little Too Much Perspective

October 12, 2015 / / 0 Comments

band 84 phil NASA shirt huge
Hey, Enthusiasts?

Wanna win the Deadhead game? Make this your desktop. It’s an enormous picture and would fit most screens.

Sure, other people have Dead wallpaper on their screens, but it’s always Baron Wolman’s shots or the Boys (and Mrs. Donna Jean) bundled up and free of charge at Lindley. This desktop, however, proves your cred.

You gotta really like the Dead to look at this picture every day. I don’t think the family members of the people in the shot want to look at this every day: fat Phil, sad Garcia; then you look at the rainbow behind them.

Is that a child’s skeleton? The one on the right, that’s tiny and cute? What the fuck, Grateful Dead? I’m getting to the bottom of this.

Precarious Lee?

“Yo.”

Did you have anything to do with the backdrop?

“Painted the fucker myself.”

Of course you did. Is that just a bad job with perspective or–

“Dead kid.”

–is that a…dammit, man: why?

“You know, man: pot of gold, rainbow, dead kid.”

That third thing doesn’t belong.

“Might’ve been a little fucked up at the time.”

Well, yeah.

“Looking at this photograph, I do have regrets.”

Good.

“I wish there had been more road cases to leave strewn around the stage.”

Nope.

“Y’got that big one by Brent, but there’s so much more space to fill.”

The band’s filling it.

“Hey, man: band does their job; road crew does ours.”

That sounds like an efficient way to run an organization.

“Haven’t missed a show yet.”

Give ya that.

Better Dead Than Red

August 26, 2015 / / 0 Comments

Red Rocks is aptly, if unimaginatively, named and the Dead loved playing there and the Deadheads loved seeing them there. Everyone else hated it: trucks couldn’t get in, so the gear had to be strapped to donkeys or convicts and walked to the stage; plus, the surrounding area is not so much bong-hits-and-skiing Colorado as it is Nazi-memorabilia-and-crank Colorado, so the fans weren’t particularly welcome. By ’87, the Dead had gotten too big for the venue and would never return. (Mickey came back alone in 1989 because he had lost his wallet and thought maybe it was there.)

But the band and the fans dug it while it lasted and here’s why:

dead red rocks
I’m sure all of you can see the appeal in an early evening spent like this:

red rocks dusk
Or a summer afternoon soaking up the sun with your friends and the Dead:

red rtocks deadThe above picture contains a rare glimpse of Precarious Lee’s greatest triumph. He had stacked things on top of other things, sure. There was duct tape by the mile, yes. But he had never before leaned a speaker bank against some rickety scaffolding. They told Precarious it couldn’t be done, and then they showed Precarious the math that proved it couldn’t be done, and while they were fucking around with their books and pencils, Precarious had screwed the stub of a Marlboro into the corner of his mouth and gotten shit done.

The TotD recommendation of the day is 8/31/78 from Red Rocks. Spencer was looking for a good Red Rocks show, and I answered him with authority.

Authority. Not, you might notice, accuracy. I was thinking of 8/30, with its first-ever Ollin Arageed (that they do not how to play) and one of only three (or so) If I Had the Worlds.

My allergy to research has seemingly screwed us, but not for a loophole: all the shows from ’78 (in America) were pretty damn good and the 8/31 is no exception. Big ol’ Terrapin. Scrumptious* Black Peter. Plus, first-ever Shakedown that only lasts six minutes, which I felt was rude of them.

So: yes, 7/7 and 8 are probably “better” and “more enjoyable” and “less not as good” but have a little love for an underappreciated show and give it a spin.

*Using scrumptious to describe anything other than certain foods deeply disturbs people.

“You see the game?”

“Fuckin-a, I saw the game. Guerrero’s curveball is scrumptious.”

…

“I’m gonna go drink my beer over there. Don”t follow me.

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