Tag: this is all a dream we dreamed (Page 1 of 2)

Chapter 7 looks interesting, as well.

Tuckered out, pardner?

Reading is for suckers.

Sure.

This may or may not continue tomorrow, but it should be noted that this chapter contains the first intraband shit-talking, and I hope to see more of it in the last half of the book.

I would be inclined to scoff at the mystic destiny firmly interwoven into the tale of how Keith and Donna joined the band is it weren’t truly the only version of the story that’s ever been told. Multiple contemporary accounts of people vaguely trustworthy and kinda sober all corroborate that “it just kinda happened, maaaaan.”

Sam Cutler was, and possibly continues to be, a very smart man. Rock Scully was, but does not continue to be, a very smart man.

Page 196 and Bobby has not mentioned McCoy Tyner.

How is it possible–and you will notice this is a recurring theme–that no one noticed that Ron Rakow was full of shit? He just showed up in the book and I knew he was full of shit. If the Grateful Dead had read this book, then being the Grateful Dead would have been much easier. More bands should read their own oral histories before starting their careers.

Oral histories can get monotonous quickly, but Jackson & Gans vary the tempo of the speakers well, letting some ramble on when they’ve got a point to get to and other times intercutting and this is pleasing to me and it merits a plug: go buy book.

I do have some professional jealousy, though: I offered numerous publishing houses my idea for an oral history of the Grateful Dead, but was rejected due to the fact that I wanted to tell the story of the band through beejers they had received: from the inexperienced and exciting first slobberings of the early days, to the coke-fueled and professional knobjobs of the 70’s, to a seedy and dispiriting rimmer with Dan Healy in the room.

My calls were not returned.

Spoiler alert: Pigpen dies.

GRADE SO FAR: 38

Every single woman recognized that Lenny Hart was a crook the moment they met him; not one guy picked up on the fact that when there is money missing, you question the newly-hired sweaty guy yelling about the Lord. It’s amazing the Dead didn’t have all of their money stolen more times.

Although, unlike other people (Billy Joel comes to mind), the Dead got all their money stolen from them relatively early, when there time to make more money. (Which was then stolen.)

Lenny even stole poor Pig’s savings. Pig didn’t trust banks, so he socked his pennies away with Lenny and the thief stole that, too.

He even took the furniture.

Mountain Girl says about the roadies, “That Oregon energy – it works hard, it drives long distances, it’s a hard trucker,” and that is a goddamned beautiful sentence.

• I know Bear didn’t look like Curtis Armstrong of Booger fame, but that’s who he is in my head.
• When Alton Kelley and Stanley Mouse found the drawing that would become the famous skeleton and roses poster, they tore the page out of the book; I did not know that, and I would never endorse such behavior, but it is adorable.
• Sue Swanson and Eileen Law and Rosie McGee and Mountain Girl (and other women) are interviewed and this is a good decision, not for some nebulous feel-good fairness reason, but it is both an excellent narrative choice and a better reflection of whatever reality might have been than the previous method, which was “asking the dudes in the band.”
• The Diggers seem like interesting people, but whenever I hear them discussed, there is a better-than-even-money chance that Peter Coyote will be involved. There is no Peter Coyote in this book: I checked.
• There’s a great story–I won’t tell it to you; buy the damn book–about a guy named Brian Rohan, the lawyer who negotiated the Dead’s first deal with Warner Brothers that teaches an important lesson: always be unreasonable with people in suits. Anything else is taken as a sign of weakness.
• Wait: one of the people in the oral history is David Gans.
• But he wrote the oral history.
• We’re through the looking-glass here, Enthusiasts.
• Bobby, while at the Monterey Pop Festival, becomes best friends with Jimi Hendrix.
• Then Mickey joins the band and everybody gets busted.

Listen, I’m just gonna come right out with it: I truly never need to hear the Grateful Dead’s origin story again. Now, J&G have told the story well and made it fresh via the addition of voices not heard before (this will be an ongoing theme, I hope), but holy shit, if I gotta hear about that fucking dictionary one more time, I’m going to lose it.

Did you know that if you jam 500 people into a hall with a sound system built by speed freaks and give them acid, then the party will be memorable? Did you know that Bill Graham once tried to fix Garcia’s guitar? And Los Angeles and being cowboys and being naked and whatnot? These are the sacraments of the Grateful Dead Origin Story liturgy.

Also: the sixties–at least the little part of the world we know as The Sixties®–were a macho kind of time, for all their equality this and community that. The new paradigm the hippies were always talking about was an implicitly male one, where women’s value was talked up but they were still cleaning their old man’s shorts.

GRADE SO FAR: UNCLE BEN GETS SHOT BY A CRIMINAL PETER COULD HAVE APPREHENDED EARLIER

I hope this doesn’t get whatever this turns out to be off on an ill note, but I’m not reading introductions. No preludes, forewords, notes to the reader: just do the thing. Don’t tell me about the thing. Do the thing. (Unless it’s butt stuff: then, you should absolutely work your way into the evening gradually.)

GRADE SO FAR: Incomplete