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

You Say Tomato, I Say Your Wife's A Whore

It’s Thoughts on the Dead, not on the Psychedelic Sound or whathaveyou. I actively dislike most of the Dead’s contemporaries: I once saw Grace Slick in an airport and farted on her, just on general principle. Ditto for San Francisco and hippies and Woodstock and all of that self-congratulatory suckjob circus. One of the problems with liking the Dead is that you also like reading about them, which means you will inevitably read an article with a sentence in it that starts:

Joan Baez and her sister Mimi Farina… 

Murder sprees have started with less potent words than those.

Neither is this any sort of location for information on the jam band scene. Those festivals are not my land, nor are those dirty-soled fuckers pooping into a bucket any kin to me at all. First off, I am the opposite of Bear Grylls (What would that be? Truman Capote? Wendy Wasserstein?) when it comes to tents and sleeping bags, and if we’re going to be completely honest, I am one crying jag away from complete agoraphobia.

So, no festivals.

It is the Dead I love: their interplay, their evolution, their patently false mythology, their utter humanity. I can’t compare them to any other band because I don’t have the relationship with any other band I have with the Dead.

And I certainly won’t compare them to Phish, definitely not on the internet.

dead v phish

There’s three things I don’t argue about on the net: the existence of God, how many pictures of my dong I’m going to send you, and Dead v. Phish. (The correct answers, by the way, are: if He does exist, He’s got a lot of explaining to do; you will receive seven pictures of my dong; and, Dead rules, Phish drools.)

But there’s this:

[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2eBibggCibE]

Listen to it. Do you trust me by now? I mean, not when I tell you about how Brent used to hunt Beluga whales with an explosive harpoon in between tours because he insisted on using ambergris as a sexual lubricant, no: when I tell you to listen, to take a break, close your eyes. Get real high: so high your lips just fall the fuck off.

And listen to these four men (and Mrs. Donna Jean) at the absolute height of their powers. I’m going to listen, too, again.

p.s. Brent actually did that shit, The Cove-type shit. Yes, it was massively fucked up, but on the other hand, his B3 playing and high harmonies added so much to the sound.

p.p.s. I apologize for the title of this post, but lawdy miss clawdy, did it make me giggle when I thought of it.

PLUS at 21 minutes in, they tease Goin’ Down the Road. Go listen.

2 Comments

  1. Mark

    I’m on the fence with regard to Phish though I admit to warming up to them. There will never be a time that I prefer them to the Dead. However, I must admit that the Tahoe Tweezer is really, really enjoyable.

  2. Anchovy Rancher

    Cartman: “Phish Dicks.”

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