Don’t You Come Around Here Anymore

The British have a word, anorak. It means geek, but without the social acceptance the geek dollar has bought itself here in the States in recent years. Japanese, also: otaku. Otaku has a much more indoors-y vibe, though: an anorak might go a-rambling, but never an otaku. I can’t think up any other foreign equivalents, which might make sense, seeing as how the U.S., Japan, and the UK are really out in front of the rest of the world geek-wise. Italy has made some items of geek worship (cars, cowboy movies) but the national character just doesn’t lend itself to the sweaty-palmed need of the true geek, neither does the French: their most famous thinker walks around with his shirt unbuttoned to halfway down the shaft of his coq. Obviously, the Middle East is light on geeks: while they might have the obsessive nature and strong opinions, they lack the emotional restraint and real-world tethers to avoid being That Guy at the Con. That guy who makes us all look bad. Africa is…Jesus, man, you’ve seen what’s going on over there. They have better things to worry about than Doctor fucking Who.

Australia also seems like a geek-unfriendly culture. It’s still legal to punch homosexuals in the face for no reason at all down there and the whole place is trying to kill you constantly: the cookies have fangs. South America is also out: those fuckers get way too excited about things. Any group of more than seven people is automatically classified as a riot in, say, Bolivia. That is a true fact that, while teetering on the shiny edge of being racist, is definitely offensive to Bolivia, and the second they learn how to use computers and put down their ooga-booga sticks and…

DUDE! NOT COOL!

That one got away from me.

The whole thing, really. 

Yeah, okay.

Just dove into the seas of racism immediately upon hitting the beach, and then swimming with all of your might to leave the shores behind for the chance to finally be alone.

…what? 

And so oddly specific. What do you have against Australia?

Criminal stock.

It’s…it’s just that we’ve talked about this.

You couldn’t be righter. Over and done.

I hope so.

Over and done, chief. So, anyway: the Grateful Dead was–LATVIANS TOUCH GOATS IN THE ASSHOLE–

DONE!

–hey get offa me, man–

Bring in the next one! Sigh. Did I just say, “sigh?” Who’s writing this crap now?

I am, sir!

Who the fuck are you, you sniveling little…ah, it’s too late for either the Neidermeyer or the Dr. Doom: who are you and why should you be the new man?

Who am I? I am the Spirit of Shows Past and I am magical, oh, I am magical.

Every goddam time…

Wherever a crotch gets punched, I’ll be there. Writhing around on the ground, due to the whackle to my tackle. Whenever a harmony is deemed “good enough,” you’ll see me. Whenever at least three of them are playing different songs at the same time, around is where you’ll find this guy right here.

You’re hired.

YOU’RE HIRED!

Tat doesn’t mean anything…oh my god: Bobby?

MWAH-HA-HA!

Big doings, Fellow Enthusiasts! Bobby the Word-Monger? Italics Voice Guy remarkably underdeveloped? Dead barely mentioned? Check in next time on…The Fantastic Six (or five or seven or eight, you know the drill.) Arrondissement, kids!

Used To Be The Heart Of Town

Did you know about this website? It leads you to the utter GENIUS that is this Shakedown, and if you’re reading this twaddle on even a semi-regular schedule, sometimes you just need a Shakedown.

Even though it’s the only one of the disco songs that ever really worked, some are snobbish about Shakedown. These people deserve to be dorm-mates with the Monkeys of Time!, a group of chimps (fuck you, LaMarck) with access to time teleportation technology, but absolutely no concept of the ramifications of their actions, primarily because they are monkeys (Fuck you, apes: you’re all monkeys to me.) Continuity is loosed free from its moorings. And its Mormons. Shit gets fucked up, chronometrically speaking, is what I’m getting at.

DON’T GIVE MONKEYS TIME MACHINES!

Creamery Of The Crop

By 1972, Bobby had learned how to play. Not just play, but lead the band in his big-boy pants. Bobby was carving out a little space for himself and turning into Sergeant Major Clap-Yo-Hands and it was a good thing. Listen to 3:20 in Greatest Story: 8/27/72 is a Bobby show. Arguably the perfect versions of all of his Cowboy tunes, especially the soft landing he gives Dark Star with a counter-intuitive saunter into El Paso, and a great Promised Land, when he’s allowed to get to it.

The announcer is so stupid that he grew up to be Bill O’Reilly. Don’t tell people they were about to be sprayed with shit, man. His stupidity does lead to one of Bobby’s brighter moments. For some reason known only to his gods, Doofus decides to announce the location of the lost children tent over a loudspeaker. Because that’s information that everyone needs to know. Nothing bad could possibly come from broadcasting the location of our most vulnerable. Cleverly, Bobby cuts him off. Bobby was always sensitive to the welfare of children: his adolesence was rife with incidents resembling the Tragedy of Koko from the 1980 musical film Fame. Bobby now paid good money to ugly strangers to recreate the squalid de-pantsenings because, if pressed, Bobby would admit to enjoying every second of it. With Bobby, it was better to focus on actions; intentions were–at best–murky to all involved.

By the end of the show, you want to hurt the announcer. Physically. Methodically. Strategically. You can keep a man alive for such a long time while you introduce him to new worlds of PAIN (Scary music: oooh-AH-ahh!)  His groovy dude patter sounds like a passage from the upcoming Ken Burns 32-hour documentary Summer of Love/Edgar Winter of Discontent: The 60’s; it will be read by Russell Brand doing a bumptiously fucked North California…accent.

(An aside, a flash-forward to the real, or at least realistic: America picks the worst Brits. We’re offered Eddie Izzard, we pick Piers Morgan. Piers Morgan is the Devil. No joke, no exaggeration. Foe the sake of the country, someone should plant heroin on him. And in his house. And car. Spider-Man had a bad guy named the Sandman who could turn himself into sand (Don’t think about it.) Like that, that much heroin. Just make him go home.)

1972 was a rock-solid year: it wasn’t flashy. If you said the word “swag” in front of ’72, it would hold you down and–using only his rough and manly stubble–flay the skin from your haunches AND your flanks. Forget about the loins, the loins are long gone, for these men were so very hairy in 1972. There was no grooming, no manscaping (well, sure, there was…just not in that part of San Francisco; couple miles away, freshly shorn was cute-and-kissable) back then, and their northern European bristles permeated everything and the music grew Teddy Roosevelt mustaches all over itself  and the mustaches were made of balls and the BALLS WERE THEMSELVES HAIRIER THAN YOU’VE EVER THOUGHT BALLS COULD BE.

PS  In keeping with my new pet theory about listening to the shows around the great shows, I present you with 8/24/72. Berkeley Community Theater. Setlist-wise, it’s comparable to the Veneta show, but with a great Morning Dew and far longer stretches of everybody being in tune.

PPS  8/24 blows the Veneta show away.

He Is Still Doing This Shit, Part II

Oh, good: someone let Mickey near the children.

Perhaps They’re Better Left Unsung

It wasn’t like roulette, you see. The casinos have made fortunes since they installed those immaculately legible tote boards listing the numbers that have landed previously in red with big ol’ tempting empty spaces in between and they’ve been raking cash in because your dumb ass has evolved to think 15 is gonna hit because it’s due. It makes sense to believe that present events are based upon past observation: that’s why people instinctively shielded their crotches whenever Billy came around, for al the good it would do them. Billy was like Gretzky: he could always find your five-hole.

But just as it is a logical fallacy to think that the rules of real life apply in the casino, it is also a mistake to think that Hoyle has any say over the world. (It’s called the Ludic fallacy, which I know because it is one of those facts that gets lodged in my brain instead of, say, how to find love.)  So, why do we forget that about the Dead? Why do we lionize certain shows only to ignore the rest of the week? These men were, appearances to the contrary, human. They had good runs. But the forest is invisible but for the trees, especially when some trees are, y’know, Barton Hall or Red Rocks. They suck up all the light.

Talking about the Dead is to talk about overshadowing. Garcia overshadowed the rest of the band, Mickey’s overkill overshadowed Billy’s light touch, ’77 and ’73 overshadowed all the other years, and Vince’s playing overshadowed the charitable work he did as a participant in the saddest Make-A-Wish event ever. Even Vince knew enough to be embarrassed.

We let ourselves think the greatness appeared as weird happening, crepuscular beams from a murky sea. Not so. 5/19/74 is rightfully well-regarded, especially the raging Truckin’>Mind Left Body jam. but listen to the very next show, 5/21/74 at UCLA the University of Washington* where they proceed to pull out a GODDAM 45 MINUTE PLAYIN’. Give the kids some Robotussin, shoot the dog and LISTEN to this thing, to the peaks and valleys that spring like Zeus out of inchoate spaciness one after another. (And, since it’s a GREAT matrix mix, listen to the appreciative audience cheer every twist and turn. Listen to ’em ROAR for Donna in Playin’. hell, listen to Donna!

Yeah, 2/14/70 is historic, but 2/11 is better. Yes, 1977 was THE year, but y’know: ’78 kicks more ass than an avowed lover of kicking ass who had spent his last dime to enter an ass-kicking contest in an attempt to win enough money to open his own business, a high-end Ass-Kickery.

 

*Thanks to a comment by an Esteemed Enthusiast, the location of the 5/21 show has been amended to note the actual location. For his Sherlockian abilities, he will receive a lifetime supply of Bobby Weir’s Shorts Shorteners. Shorts too long? Shorten ’em with Shorts Shortener!

Just Like Jack & Jill

The Dead wrote about 135 songs, and did probably half again as many covers, except that doesn’t tell the whole story. Mainly because some songs, they wrote three or four times.

Jack-A-Roe and Peggy-O are–thematically–the same song: doomed love, hyphens, Game of Thrones vibe. Ramble On Rose and  Tennessee Jed are musically the same song, while Ramble On Rose and U.S. Blues are lyrically the same song. Eyes of the World and Help on the Way could be mistaken for each other in a dark alley.

The Dead are lucky that they premiered Iko, Samson, Throwing Stones,and Women are Smarter after their mind-blowing Europe ’72 warm-up show at the Brooklyn Academy of Music (Dick’s Pick 30). Otherwise, jamming with Mr. Diddley might have been a little more awkward. (And if you haven’t checked out this offering, you’re just a sillypants: the first disc* alone is worth the price of admission, featuring the five song Bo Diddley jam, a version of Are You Lonely For Me, Baby that defines “ragged but right,” and the only GD performance of How Sweet It Is**–which is odd, because they really rock the hell out of it, but perhaps the three chord tune was a bit boring for a certain bass player.)

To Lay Me Down, Must Have Been the Roses, and Ship of Fools are identical cousins; Black-Throated Wind and Looks Like Rain a bit more distantly related, but still clearly available to donate organs to one another. (Don’t tell Phil.) Chinatown Shuffle and U.S. Blues aren’t fooling anyone.

Now, don’t take this as any sort of chastisement, of course. Hell, a lot of really, really popular bands ripped themselves off: for example, AC/DC has only written, like, three songs in their entire career, which puts them two ahead of the Ramones.

*I hadn’t listened all the way through that first amazing disc when I wrote this, but you MUST check out the Smokestack Lightning, which is usually kind of a drag, but cooks right here PLUS the added fun of–about 8 minutes in or so–hearing Bobby try again and again to drag the rest of them into Truckin’, but the rest of them are simply not having it.

**I mistakenly thought that Bobby and Garcia played How Sweet It Is on Letterman, but it was actually Second That Emotion, because, in keeping with the theme of the post, they are also pretty much the same song. Check it out, anyway: Garcia with Tiger, Bobby with Pepto Pink, and the MONSTROUS Will Lee holding down the bass and backup vocals.

This Couple They Got Married So Why Not You And Me?

That’s all there is to say about it: why not you and me? This world, it tends towards indifference and cold cruelty. When you find someone to love, hold on to them as tight as Phil held his Heineken and anyone that tells you different, Billypunch ’em in the nards.

So, good for you, Mr. President.

obama-affirms-support-for-same-sex-marriage-29242313.html

Oh, and check out this GREAT acoustic Jack-A-Roe from the ’80 Radio City run.

Thanks, MCA

MCA died today. Well, not MCA: I doubt MCA had been around for a year or so. Cancer strops that whimsical shit out of you, toot sweet. The horror, on its face, of cancer is the multiplying, the duplication, the encroachment. But it is a zero-sum game, there is only so much space in a person and every day there’s not even that space anymore. As the cancer takes over, you dissipate: ain’t you no more, that’s cancer where you used to be. The King is dead, long live the King.

So, Adam Yauch died today, and I realize all of our “how did you find out” stories are going to suck from now on: “Well, I opened my browser and there it was.” 

When Garcia died, people told each other, or it was on the radio. We still played those out in the street, especially in August. My RA from my freshman year called me. It was noon, so I was still in bed and I remember listening to the message he was leaving on my machine with a strange equivocation. I had seen them 5 times in the last year and hung a big Stealie flag by my bed, listened to the few tapes I had constantly (although I was developing an obsession with P-Funk, mostly the Eddie Hazel band version), and dated more than one full-on Hippie Chick. I was, you might say, a duck.

But no tears, nothing like that. Nor for when Freddie Mercury died, and there was no bigger fan in the greater suburban Essex County area then me. (A friend of mine has long been spreading a myth of some sort of “armband” in some sort of color, possibly “black” being worn by a certain bloggist  after the death of Mr. Mercury, but that so-called friend is a filthy-minded prevaricator and scofflaw. A penniless, poisonous, cretinous cur of a fool of an abolitionist of a suffragette of a communist of a fool. Double fool and a pox upon his tiny, tiny dishwasher-less apartment in Little Mozambique.  I say this about him: His drawers are wet and his blade is dry.)

47 is young, let’s not lie. Too young, although a 97-year-old would cane-whack you for suggesting that any age is the right age to go. Now, for certain occupations: not young at all. I am looking at a certain piano bench that has claimed far more lives than the Hope Diamond.

Thanks, Adam.

thoughts on a show

Halloween, 1991

Kesey’s son just died*  and with the band raging behind him, he goes into ee cummings Buffalo Bill:

Buffalo Bill's

defunct

        who used to

        ride a watersmooth-silver

                                  stallion

and break onetwothreefourfive pigeonsjustlikethat

                                                  Jesus

he was a handsome man

                      and what i want to know is

how do you like your blueeyed boy

Mister Death

Try writing another joke about Dickpunchin’ Billy after that shit, man.

* This is not true, as noted in the comments. Bill Graham had just died, not Kesey’s son; Kesey’s son had died seven years prior.

Just, Y’Know: Thoughts On The Dead

We forget how long ago it was, what a different world it was. To  understand my point, you must listen to Pig absolutely fucking KILLING IT on It’s A Man’s World. That was April 15th, 1970. Listen to how crisp and present the recording is, how clean and separate the instruments sound: I would wager most lay-listeners wouldn’t be able to tell the difference between this recording and an official release from the era. Marvel at how such a recording got made in the same world where there is absolutely no record of a show from that same month: no tape, no poster, certainly no film but there is a contract and cancelled check, so it must have happened. There are shows as late as 1973 just…gone. Compare that to today’s DeLillo Barn of a culture, all of us pointing our iThings at each other the second anything notable happens. Holding our phones vertically, all of us.

_______________________

Everybody’s new favorite fun game: Play in One Key, Sing in Another!

_______________________

Is the most terrifying moment of your day the Silence that comes before the Fretting that comes before the Waffling that comes before the Choosing? An ’89? Surely, a Summer ’71! The wrong choice–it’s like throwing the i Ching, only to lodge the coins in your cousin Kevin’s throat and Kevin dies right in front of you and you just LOSE IT and decide that you can’t get in trouble if EVERYONE ELSE IS DEAD, TOO, so you kill your way halfway down the street before they take you down. No matter which Ching translation you use, that’s an unhealthy omen.

I almost had one of those rolls today. I chose an ’85 (4/27/85 Frost Amphitheater, Palo Alto, CA) to start off the morning. The 80’s are a giant tushee: fun around the edges, but dangerous in the middle. (I apologize for that.)

_______________________

I’ve written before about Garcia’s guitar tone being friendly, but the entire band had an ethos of friendlyness-ship. (Of course that’s a word. And if not a word proper, at least wordish.) All those references to following and leading and sharing (women, wine (Not Persian, though. Persian was not a share-y kind of substance.).) There was very little aggression in the music: no one will ever enter the Octagon with Brokedown Palace blaring. This made them a different band then–say–Slayer, who once wrote a song about Josef Mengele from Mengele’s point of view.  While many Dead songs featured unreliable narrators, none of them were so unreliable as to have committed war crimes. Committing war crimes is the very definition of being unreliable: you need to be watched, apparently. The second everyone turns their back, BOOM: you’re sewing twins together.

Slayer’s always been a bit of a mystery to me. Not the “why are they popular” part: there will always be ugly 15-year-old boys and money to be made catering to them being all evil and shit. I’m referring to the actual music. A friend burned me the Compact Disc. My good friend, Inter-Natalie. You should see her record collection. I like to listen to the hard-charging angry stuff when I am up in the gym working on my fitness, Sabbath and Titus Andronicus and the Boom Boom Satellites, so I tried a little Slayer and halfway through the third verse describing what can only be classified as “atrocities,” I quietly bowed out. I prefer to keep my tunes free of graphic descriptions of torture labs. Cartman was right: hippies hate Slayer.

_______________________

Who was it, precisely, that was clamoring for the return of Dupree’s Diamond Blues?

_______________________

In May of 1969, the Dead jammed with legendary conga player Mongo Santamaria.  Also legendary was the lecture given to Bobby afterwards concerning his giggles upon hearing the name.

_______________________

Merl should have been the keyboardist after Keith. They would have looked like the Celtics in the 80’s, racially. Also, Walton.

_______________________

I don’t care if Putin has turned the place in to a Latveria-of-the-mind: THEY’RE THE BAD GUYS, FUCK THEM. They were THE BEST bad guys: evil enough (gulags, proxy wars), but not, you know, too evil (that thing that made the 40’s such an inherent downer.) They had an ideology and an aesthetic, none of this “at night, it is my bed; during the day, my clothes” bullshit these Al Qaeda fuckmuppets smell up the room with.