Short Form

Unlucky Chick – A One-Woman Show about my relationship with Bill Kreutzmann

ACT ONE – A RAMADA INN

Scene 1: The Hostility Suite

BILL

Hey, come here and lemme stick it in you.

THE END

Behind The Music (Video)

Someone posted this Making of the Touch of Grey Video the other day and I’m half-watching it now. This whole thing is fun, but the hilarity starts at 3:55 where Billy and Brent, both sloppy drunk and belligerent, discuss how much they love the song.  The video, it turns out, was filmed the evening after an afternoon show and the two of them have been drinking since noon and they’re both that kind of plastered that turns every conversation into a bellowed arugument.

What It Says On The Label

A visual representation* of the Scarlet>Fire transition from 9/2/78, heard below.

*But, seriously: the West is on fire.

Swing, Low

Bobby?

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Bob?

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Bobberino?

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Who’s the sledgehammer for, Bobby?

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Bobby?

Deez Nuts, Magnaballs; Magnaballs, Deez Nuts

If you were taken with Trumpforpresident Alfaromeo’s playing in Chicago or Santa Clara and want to hear him with his pickup band out in the woods somewhere, then this can be accomplished here.

Lucky Chick – The Musical!

With the rave reviews and packed houses that greeted Lucky Chick–Felicity Seidel’s one-woman show about a youth spent hunting down the worst human beings on the continent to get into relationships with, getting into relationships with them, and then being surprised when guns got waved around–it was no shock that the property was snatched up by legendary Broadway producer Scott Rudin, who immediately fired Felicity after screaming at her for ninety minutes about the carpet in a limo he had once taken. (Scott Rudin doesn’t even look for reasons to scream at people anymore; that’s real show biz power.)

Writers were screamed at; musicians tolerated; choreographers placated; decorum observed; Macbeth not mentioned; directors complimented; teamsters not fucked with: it was the full Broadway. Young, gay Jews scurried to get coffee and learn the steps; older, gay Jews yelled at the writer and hit on the young, gay Jews. Like I said: Broadway.

Julie Taymor presented her vision for the show. Garcia was to be portrayed by a thirty-foot tall beardmonster puppet, and there would be three Bobbies, all harmonizing with each other, and the only way you could tell them apart would be the color of their jean shorts. (Red, white, and blue.)

Also, the entire “girlfriend story” had been lost because Julie Taymor doesn’t get the point of source material unless lawyers are forcing her to. What had been added was a section in actors dressed as Deadheads were flung from the catwalks onto the audience; the lawsuits alone were estimated to run a couple million a month.  Plus, you’d certainly kill people.

Scott Rudin was intrigued, but balked at the murder: he wasn’t in the music business, after all.

A call was put in to Gilbert and Sullivan, but they’ve been dead for around a century, and Scott Rudin’s assistant should have know that and that’s why he got that chair thrown at his head.

A second call was put into the Grateful Dead. Bobby picked up the phone and made it very clear he didn’t like this whole thing and wished people would stop giving ex-girlfriends attention and ix-nay on the ifteen-fay and so on.

A third call was put in ten minutes later. Mickey picked up and, eager to screw with Bobby, let the Broadway folks use the Time Sheath to hire Bob Fosse. Previews are scheduled for October, and Thoughts on the Dead brings you–exclusively–some of the song titles from the heretofore secret project about what it’s like to be in stone-cold teen fox in love with a Grateful Dead:

• Swappin’ Spit, Sharin’ Short Shorts
• Billy Can’t Watch
• Sweet Little Sixteen (In Four Months)
• What’s The Cover Story, Morning Glory?
• They Call The Wind Keith Godchaux (This number will more than likely be cut for time and quality.)
• Climb Every Mountain, Immolate Every Hotel (Garcia’s solo.)
• Drums
• If You Want Me To Be Bisexual, Then I Will Be For You, Bobby
• Rum Tum Tugger
• Luck, Be A Bobby Tonight
• 76 Rusty Trombones
• (I Sing) The Bobby Electric

Is This Scarlet>Fire Fire, Fam?

In keeping with my stance on research (it’s for the weak,) I will not go digging through the comments to see which one of you it was that called the Scarlet>Fire from 4/20/84 the Best EVAR, but as there was a Charlie Miller available in the preferred FLAC format available on the torrents, I decided to give the show a try. (FLAC is the audio format in vogue with all the best Enthusiasts nowadays: the sound is imperceptibly better, but the files take up much, much more space.)

I will not lie to you: I have not heard the Scarlet>Fire yet–currently on My Brother Esau–but I can say this with 100% certainty: there is no best version of anything from this show. Seriously: Garcia sounds like he’s going to die, which he was, and he did.

It is a good show, though: Garcia could always (at least pre-coma) play the guitar even when he was too high to sing, and the set list is a great selection of ’80’s goodness, plus one of the Six Cumberlands of Power.

Check it out and cast your vote in the comments.

ALSO: a quick note about the comment section. It’s been getting meaner and cruder lately: I think we’ve all been egging each other on a bit. Let’s raise the tone.

More Dead-Related Theater Productions

The Wall Of Sound Of Music! This lavish 1976 musical told the story of a nanny twirling around in Austria while Nazis forced Christopher Plummer and some children to sing at nuns, or something (I have not seen this movie.) The production was hampered by several minor details: it told the story from the Nazis’ point of view, cast a giant, self-aware sound system as the lead Nazi, and made no sense at all.

Bobby! Little Orphan Bobby gets adopted by Daddy Garbucks. Half-hour nightly jams on It’s a Hard Knock Life, plus Bobby wore that little red dress. Featuring Otis as “Sandy the Dog”.

Oklahomo! Billy wrote this while he was drunk and someone from Equity threw a molotov cocktail into the theater’s box office when they were workshopping it.

Grease! This was an experimental play about Keith’s potato salad and I don’t want to talk about it.

Jamalot Mickey and Billy rented a theater and did half-remembered Monty Python skits at one another, then said “fuck it” and banged on stuff. The show closed at intermission.

American Beauty This reimagining of David Mamet’s prize-winning play American Buffalo was pretty much a note-for-note copy of the original. Problems arose during previews when everyone realized that Bobby talks kinda slow. And, you know: pauses? Right? And…um, the thing about that…as it, um, uh reverberates within the piece–if you follow me–is that, uh, it makes Mamet sound silly. Just silly.

Sex, Drugs, and Rock n’ Roll Phil performed this acclaimed one-man show by Eric Bogosian, except as you are about to see, Phil does not know how to act.

The show closed before the first show: they put the lights down, and then put those suckers right back up again.

Spider-Man: The Musical! (feat. the music of the Grateful Dead!) Stagehands just hurled young, desperate actors dressed in shoddy Spidey costumes at one another while the Dead jammed: it was the most entertaining thing anyone had ever seen.

Lucky Bobby

Today, Bobby apologized for beating that lady and leaving it out of his semi-biographical movie.

This is, of course, just silliness. The truth is so much better: the lady Bobby is pretending to punch is named Felicity Seidel, who apparently dated Bobby in the 80’s and has now written a play about it. You can read more about the play, entitled Lucky Chick, here.

TotD is launching a Kickstarter to get Ms. Seidel to perform the piece South Florida, more specifically in my home. Or, she could just send a video. Script would be okay, I guess.

I NEED TO SEE THIS.

Settle down, Beavis.

Ex-girlfriend stories about Bobby! Ex-girlfriend stories are always fun, and Bobby stories are always fun: this should be twice as much fun.

Good math.

Thank you.

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I kinda don’t wanna know what Ginsberg is looking for.

Well, he’s not making a pass at Ms. Seidel.

No.

A Disturbance In The Force

Bobby’s would read the rest of that week’s Top 40 in a moment; he had just heard the worst sound any man can ever hear.

Somewhere, an old girlfriend was writing things down.