Happiness Is A Warm Pun

It’s sequel time here in Fillmore South:

Things I love about the Dead, Part the II

• When Bobby would say “Thank you,” in that silly high-pitched voice.
• The end of China Doll where it generally dissolves a little and then Garcia comes in all by himself with the “Take up your China Doll” part, which is really difficult to sing, because the notes are weird AND you have to get the time right, since you’re basically counting the band back in with it AND it’s pitched pretty high, but he got it right far more often than not.
• The beginning of Truckin’ they’d do sometimes, with the whistles and the snare drums: BRUM-bum BRUM-bum BRRRRRR rum-bum.
• Occasionally, later in the career, when Bobby would (as is the running gag with both my bloggings and, you know, actual recorded-on-tape reality) forget the lyrics to Truckin’, Phil would start BOMBING away at him and then come in on the next part where they all sing just SUPER LOUD, so clearly seething at the fact that it’s been ten years: learn the words, man.
• He’s Gone. Not so much on the “Bop bop bop” coda.
• The jam after Seastones from 6/23/74. Seriously, try to listen to Seastones. Now, on acid. But listen to what Garcia does right after: he plays the sweetest, softest lines, and leads everyone back from the dark place where Ned Lagin touched them.
• The Baby Dead. The way they would take a riff and just brutalize it, tear it apart and put it back together, mostly the same but weirder for the journey.
• Their refusal to give in to peer pressure. Often, they would be the only ones in the room who wanted to smoke and bullshit and yell at Bobby for five minutes; the other several thousand people present preferred some form of entertainment. Because, holy god, do these baboons take a long time in between songs. Sometimes for no discernible reason: you can’t hear them talking, nor are they tuning. Were they just wandering around confused for three minutes at a time? It’s not unprecedented: Thelonious Monk did it.

Weir, There, And Everywhere

We need to talk about Bobby because I’ve been talking about Bobby and I need to know why, godammit. Admittedly, I go through phases: a quick glance through the archives will reveal the Mickey phase, the Keith era, and–real early on–a whole lot of Vince jokes in a row. But I always go back to Bobert W. Weir, like the swallows returning to Capistrano. (Also, if you wanted to go back to Bobby’s hotel room, you had to swallow his Capistrano. DICK JOKES!) Picasso had his Blue Period; I had a month where I made a lot of Phil jokes.

You can relate to Bobby more than the other guys, though: he was the Everyman, the Protagonist, the White Guy Abroad that Hollywood likes to make movies about. Tom Cruise in The Last Samurai? That guy.

You couldn’t relate to the others: Phil was intimidatingly smart and currently yelling at a roadie. It’s like that saying, “It’s 5 o’clock somewhere?” Well, no matter the time, somewhere, Phil is yelling at a member of some road crew, somewhere. That’s why he opened up the restaurant, to scream at busboys in halting Spanish, “TIENE OIDO ABSOLUTO! DAME TUS HEPATICAS!” Billy was scary: there was always so much blood and none of it ever seemed to be his. Garcia and Pig were…well, Garcia and Pig: one might admire or imitate or spurn, but relate?

But as everyman as Bobby seemed, he was anything but: an orphan, a rich kid, really pretty, in good shape. Wait! Bob Weir…Bruce Wayne. Huh.

Bobby was a guy who’d found a home, that family we all yearn for. Adopted, shipped off to boarding school. And, legendarily, a ranch for the greater part of a summer, hence Bobby is a cowboy, but that’s been well-established. (I make fun of Bobby for this, but what man doesn’t pursue their white whale into the sunset? People need the myths they choose; they filter them back out and it turns into Mexicali Blues, which you like more than you’re willing to admit, and kind of rules when those nutty drummers decide to turn it into a disco tune on 5/25/77

He made the Dead better, and they made him better. Bobby outside the realm of those other five or six guys was a mess with visions of Hollywood in his head, and had he been able to come up with some hit singles and gotten the right backing, Bobby could have been just as big as, say, Bob Seeger. But, like a flawed diamond, Bobby’s beauty only truly shone in one oddly-shaped, custom-made setting: the Dead.

Beyond the superficial, speculative, and shit I’ve just made up entirely, there stands the inarguable fact that Bobby was a master musician of the highest caliber, dueling it out with Phil and Garcia every night and walking away proud. He adapted this oddly-voiced, syncopated approach to rhythm guitar, finding a path that isn’t self-evident under Garcia, over Phil, and side-by-side with the keyboards, but he wasn’t flashy: like Billy, he was often at his greatest only upon second, careful listening.

But what about his songs? Lost Sailor sucks, dude! More like ‘Velveeta’. Heh heh.

Yes, what about his songs, made-up straw man? You mean like Sugar Magnolias, Looks Like Rain, Greatest Story, PLAYIN’ IN THE GODDAM BAND, One More Saturday Night, and a little thing called The Other One? Not so italicized now, are you? Like those other fuzzy burnouts were contributing anything towards the end in terms of new material? You want to hear Eternity again? No song has ever been more properly named.

Now, of course, there was this kind of bullshit:

He learned, eventually, but at first, Bobby was convinced that, gee willikers, it just wasn’t a slide solo without going ALL THE WAY up the neck to make those horrible, metallic screeches.

So, we raise our whatever’s-at-hands to Bobby. We love you, you goofy bastard. And you know what it is they say about our love…

Haiku #1

Sometimes Bobby sang

Truckin’ just like this: Bum buh

Dah da duhda da.

 

 

 

 

The Cute One

 

Three guesses whether Bobby remembered all the words to Truckin’ the night this photo was taken.

Hi, I’m Bobby

There’s this new tumblr I like, Phil is weird, I think that’s the name. Funny pictures of Phil and funny captions and Phil is exceedingly goofy, just all the time and I haven’t seen most of these pictures: this Tumblr guy is a Google ninja and I salute him (or her, but let’s be honest, him.)*

Are you shitting me? When you saw the site, you sulked for an hour, muttering darkly, “Somebody’s being funny about the Dead on the internet: that’s MY thing, I invented that.” You whined like a kicked kitten.

None of that is true.

And then you stole all the pictures you could and reposted them on your little site, didn’t you?

I did that. Yes, I did.

But Phil’s just an amateur, man.

* It’s a lady. A pretty, pretty–

I’m warning you, buddy.

–lady. I’ve already planned our Wedding. The groomsmen have to wear Bobby shorts, then the Best Man locks himself in the upstairs bathroom for three hours.

I’ll Still Sing you Love Songs

Take all rumor as truth. For the sake of argument and thought, take all rumor as truth. So we accept that Buckaroo Bobby was putting the spurs to my golden-shanked filly Ms. Donna Jean right under Keith’s coke-ruined nose. (We hope. The possibility also exists that Keith was involved somehow, perhaps like that crippled foreign guy making his wife do sex in that movie: orchestrating things, directing, discreetly applying the necessary lubes and balms while rubbing himself. i choose not to believe that possibility.)

So, anyway, even Keith isn’t oblivious enough not to notice what’s going on, especially when Ms. Donna Jean keeps leaving notes on their hotel room door reading, “Gone Bobby Banging.”

And now you’ve got to go onstage and sing love songs written in the letters of your name as Keith cries the quiet tears of a cuckold onto his piano keys.

Awkward.

Who Wears Short Shorts?

I need to stop watching these videos, because…I hate to say this, but: looking at Bobby and his choices distracts me from the music.

He is wearing a too-tight purple Izod, and his short pants. They are the type of short pants that suggest a bikini underneath and a long, soapy afternoon washing cars to raise money for Cayden’s cousin Rex who’s got cerurul pawsy. or something–it’s bad. He is playing not his ultra-cool 335, but a Casio guitar. Not a joke, that: it was seriously made by Casio.

Bobby, why won’t you let us love you? You know we do, Bobert. But, these fashion shenanigans (fashenanigans?) are going to have to stop or you will have to start letting me out of the car at least two blocks from school.

It’s 9/10/91, MSG, NYC. Ok? It’s one of the only Vince-related things to hold up at all, and as I’ve stated before, it’s tough to sound too bad when you’re being propped up by Bruce Hornsby and Branford Marsalis.

Anyway, I won’t do my usual dissection of the thing, except to point out one bit that I BEG you to watch because it will make you very happy, I promise: it happens at  1.15.30–Branford is coming out of this wonderful solo and plays this figure, ascending sixteenth notes, pretty but nothing mind-blowing, except Bruce starts playing it, so Branford goes back to it and the Phil picks it up, but he’s playing it going down the scale, and Garcia finally just reaches up the neck of his guitar, effortlessly, to where he knows the notes have always been, waiting for him to play them, and he picks up the figure twice and launches into his solo and yes I said yes I said yes.

California

“Hi, I’m Bobby and this is my shockingly age-appopriate wife.”

“Wendy.”

“Look at our feet!”

ADDENDUM: We have been informed that the woman caring about the earth to Bobby’s right is his sister. GORGEOUS. The bone structure, the cheeks, the lips. I want to watch them make a mouth sandwich with me as the meat. My meat and my summerberries: they’re ripe, ripe for you and you alone, my summerberry Princess Leia. You’re my girl-Bobby now, yes you are. That’s why I had to eat–

That’s enough. He’s got to go. Sorry pal, we tried.

But, Billy  keeps punching me in my summer–

He does that. Christ, why does this job keep driving them insane? 

The irresistible force of longing vs. the immovable object of mortality?

That or the drugs. Next up.

Garcia?

Earmuffs

No caption necessary, is there?