Can You Pass The Test?

Grateful Dead imbibing game. Pick a show at random. Not from 1995: have more respect for yourself, would you please?

The rules:

• If Phil plays an unaccompanied bass solo, drink a Heineken. If, somewhere in the solo he hits a note that makes no sense whatsoever, drink another Heineken. If you rationalize it by telling yourself that Phil is a musical genius and means every single note, so therefore you just didn’t understand what Phil was laying down, then drink the rest of the case and imagine Phil playing in Puerto Rico and giving the donor rap in halting, old white guy Spanish.

“Me llamo Philipe. Tiene oído absoluto. Dame tus hepáticas. DAME TU HEPATICAS!”

• If Billy’s the only drummer, bet $50 that the Smails kid will pick his nose. If Mickey’s there, give your horse one hit of acid every time you can name the thing that Mickey’s hitting during drums. If he is hitting Ramrod, two hits. If he hits an executive from the record company, take the horse outside and free that majestic steed, who won’t survive two or three hours wandering through a town, especially after you fed it all that acid, you MONSTER.
• They play Might as Well and you think about watching Festival Express again–take a shot and demand your local diner give away their food “to the people, maaaaaaaaaan.”
• They play New Speedway Boogie and you feel like watching Gimme Shelter again–take a fistful of LSD and seconal, put on a bear hat, and beat Marty Balin half to death with a pool cue.  (Who brings a pool-cue to a concert?  Shouldn’t that have been, you know: a clue? “Sorry, guys, you can’t come in: I think you might be looking to cause trouble.  Just a guess.”)
• If they play Dire Wolf–drink red whiskey for dinner. Then realize there’s no such thing as red whiskey so how did my whiskey get redOMIGOD SOMEONE BLED IN MY FUCKING WHISKEY.
• If Bobby screws up a lyric–do nothing. Mentioning that Bobby screwed up a lyric is like mentioning that Billy played drums: it’s not a bug, it’s a feature.  If Bobby gets every single word to Truckin’ right, go buy yourself the tightest, Izod-iest shirt you can find and pop that collar, baby.
• If they tune for one minute–hit of Persian. If they tune in the middle of the song–burn yourself with a cigarette while you sleep. If the play a song in the middle of tuning–burn someone else with a cigarette while they sleep.
• If Pig’s in the band and they play Lovelight and you still can’t figure out what the hell “Box back nitties, great bigging on the vine,” means–get drunk off a pint of cheap whiskey you keep in the back pocket of greasy Levi’s, have shouty drunken sex with Janis Joplin, and then wear a series of ridiculous hats, but actually look really cool in them.

Turn On Your Light

I don’t know who the audience for this nonsense is: in my previous post, there was a joke that literally only makes sense if you have seen one specific picture taken at Mickey’s ranch. I am betting, somehow, on the fact that someone else in the world has, filed in the same mind they keep the location of their keys and childrens’ birthdays, a memory of a photo featuring John “Marmaduke” Dawson.

Planet Dumb

Mickey once convinced his father to retool a music store into an all-drum extravaganza named Drum City. Mickey once made an album called Planet Drum. Mickey was not well-rounded.

The unholy spawn of Oates and Baba-Booey, Mickey Hart was the Other One of the Dead’s rhythm section. Astonishingly, he also manages to be the silliest man in a group full of deeply, almost constitutionally silly people. There are no stories concerning Mickey in any of the multitude of books about the Dead that do not end one of two ways: with fortunes disappearing in exceedingly foreseeable ways, or Mickey attacking another human being in public.

Money was allergic to Mickey, in the sense that anytime he got near any appreciable amount of cash, it would flee into the night, generally after gathering up any other money that just happened to be in the area. If Mickey had gone on a tour of San Simeon, it would have burned down immediately. We can only assume that, even though he grew up in the Bay Area, Bill Gates never happened upon Mickey Hart. We know this because had it occurred, Gates would today be gulping dongs to get paint to huff. Such is Mickey’s magic, because he thought big.

Rick Wakeman once took a book of finger-limbering exercises, renamed it after King Arthur, and rented a hockey arena so otherwise unemployable 35-year-old former Olympic ice dancing hopefuls could salchow their way through three hours of arpeggios played by a man in a spangly cape. Mickey thought Rick Wakeman was a piker. In 1984, Mickey spent 2.5 million trying to get all of Hands Across America to clap along to a 15-beat bouzouki rhythm. The album was never released.

As for the random–yet entirely predictable–violence, perhaps you’re saying, “But rock music has always been fraught with explosive personalities.  What about the fights between the Davies brothers or Daltrey and Townshend or Metallica and their reputation?” Yes, yes: all true. Except you will notice that the examples, and all the other fightin’ twosomes you’re thinking of are basically long-running personality disputes. Sure, the Gallagher brothers are, statistically speaking, punching each other as I write this, but if they weren’t rock stars, they would be doing the same thing. If they were Liam and Noel’s Plumbing Service and you called them, your house would be rapidly filling with feces as they rolled around on the floor biting each others’ necks and using their adorable Brummie accents to transform the word ‘cunt’ into something that sounds like a pet name.

That wasn’t Mickey. Mickey tackled producers in studios. He choked crew members in delicatessans. Accountants in auto-supply shops. Florists in winnebagos. The only person, I believe, he didn’t attack was his good ol’ pop. You know his dad: the guy that stole so much money from the Dead that instead of precisely calculating the figure, the FBI just rounded it up to “all of it.” The rat in the proverbial drain ditch.

Every time I see a picture of Mickey at his ranch, all I can picture is the guy raising his camera and Mickey going, “Wait!  Let me get my serape!”

The Other One

Who was the most useless member? Musically speaking, obviously. In a serious crisis, like a fire or a cruise boat disaster, you would want precisely none of them around. Garcia might keep a cool head, but that’s it. Bobby’s presence would result in a vast increase in casualties due to the time expended by having to explain over and over, in increasingly simpler language, what was happening and why it was a bad thing. Brent would lose the will to live immediately and just walk into the flames.

Which brings us to Tom Constanten. TC is no one’s favorite Dead member, but he is also not anyone’s least-favorite. No one puts on a tape of 1969 and admonishes his friends, “Dudes, listen to the Bach-flavored calliope noises way in the background. LISTEN TO TC TRILL FANCIFULLY!” TC seems to have been included in the group for three reasons: to make Lesh seem like less of a pretentious dick, his clothes, and mustache. Let us examine these things:

Phil Lesh is unbearable, we all know this. If you can read an interview with the man where your hand does not involuntarily start making the jerk-off gesture, then you’re a more tolerant man than I. If Phil were a modern-day hipster, he would work the fact that he didn’t own a television into the first 30 seconds of every conversation he ever had. Phil’s one of those New Atheists that likes to start internet arguments. TC demanded that the group buy him a harpsichord. We have a winner.

As for attire, the only thing to be said is that TC thought he was dressing to play Hippie at a Dinner Party #2 in the flashback scene of a random ThirtySomething episode. TC owns a cape. It is not his first cape. In fact, TC has a “cape guy.”

But the Fu Manchu was pretty sweet.

MexiBobby Blues

“How long are you going to play Eyes tonight, guys?”

“From immediately after drums until the heat death of the Universe.”

“So, the same as last night, then?”

“Yes.”

I once heard a ’74 Playin’ that is still being played at this moment.  It has been going on for nigh-on-40 years now because Phil is, and I am quoting a man who belongs to several tough-guy unions and yet still allows other people to call him Ramrod, “really feeling it.”

The only reason to play a song for as long as the Grateful Dead played several of their’s is if the lack of music will trigger a bomb. Like the Grateful Dead were in Speed, and Bobby is Keanu so he is pretending to be a Cop On The Edge instead a Cowboy With A Broken Heart this time.

As we’ve discussed, Bobby actually thought he was a fucking cowboy. Now, each of the Dead’s singers had a certain persona they delivered their songs through: Jerry was the Gambler, Bobby was the Cowboy, and Phil was The Guy Who Couldn’t Sing. Now, when Jerry did Deal or Loser or whatever, he was delivering these songs from a uniquely American perspective, one that he and Hunter had crafted to serve as an avatar for the Dead’s sheer Americanness.

For the Dead were the most American band there ever was: far too loud, prone to ridiculous, money-losing foreign entanglements, drugged out of its mind, and dying of diabetes. But also capable of the most astonishing grace–American. And what’s more that than the Gambler, armed with his six-shooter and his wits? Garcia and Hunter recognized this metaphor and wrung all they could out of it.

Except Bobby actually thought he was a fucking cowboy. He apparently spent part of one teenaged summer a’ropin’ and a’rasslin and a’rompin’ and a’ridin’ and whatever the fuck else gentiles do in the summer. You can imagine Bobby traipsing through the fields, shirtless, asking the farmhands if they thought he was pretty.

Thereafter, Bobby was a fucking cowboy and we had to sit through Mexicali Blues every other night

Hulk vs. Superman

1977 is something that must be dealt with; its little brother is ’73. Speak to me not of 1974, when Billy decided that they were gonna be a damn jazz band if he had anything to do with it. Leave ’76 in your pocket, when tempos dragged and everything was a dirge. Yes, the Beacon shows were outstanding, but they were still figuring out what to do now that they were less of a fighter jet and more of a bomber.

You’re going to bring up the Old Shit, the Primal Dead Shit. The before-they-learned-how-to-write-songs Dead. The Dead that had, like, four riffs that went with three different sets of lyrics, each more ridiculous than the last, and would just trip their balls off while holding instruments in front of audiences really loud? We all love that Dead. You can’t not love that Dead. It’s like the Baby Jesus. We love the Baby Jesus simply because he’s gonna be Jesus, but right now: he’s a baby! Yay, we love babies! And that’s what the Pigpen era was: Baby Jesus.

If the Dead hadn’t learned how to write songs, they would have ben the Quicksilver Messenger Whatever. Or Jefferson Airplane. Just endlessly jamming with some nonsense lyrics about The Man, or the Shire.

So we must leave Primal Dead, to refocus on 1977 and 1973.  1977 and 1973. They are the Batman and Robin of the Grateful Dead’s output.

Some will say it is the historic availability of the high-quality Betty Boards that bias the long-time Grateful Dead listener: these shows were taped so well that they were invariably the best sounding thing in anyone’s collection. Huge bass, crisp separation–these tapes were a joy to listen to, as opposed to the murky 4th and 5th gen Maxell’s cluttering up your basement. No matter how “warts and all” your stance, you couldn’t help appreciate the sound that rivaled some of the Dead’s official releases. (I’m looking at you, Skull & Roses.)

Perhaps ’77 is so esteemed simply because listening to it doesn’t give you a headache? This would have been a valid argument years ago, but after 32 Dick’s Picks, two dozen Road Trips and Digital Downloads, we have fearful amounts of Dead available, all at a sound quality that any one of us would have once killed for. Yes, you can quibble over the “punchiness” of this release versus that, but these are, when it comes to using the Dead to feed the hunger of your burgeoning OCD, light years beyond what we used to deem acceptable

We have not mentioned any year past 1977. There is a reason for that. (We’ll get to Brent later, you can be assured.)

Spinal Dead #2

Tap built a set for their song, Stonehenge, but of course things went wackily awry: the crew built Stonehenge too small and it was famously in danger of being trod upon by a dwarf.

The Grateful Dead also built a Stonehenge, the difference being that they made it out of the largest speakers on Earth and it weighed 85 trillion tons. (I am estimating that precise tonnage.) In ’74, something called the Wall of Sound came into existence. This happened because the Dead’s policy of nearly spending themselves bankrupt on obviously retarded shit was a sacred one. This band policy was taken even more seriously than other Dead policies such as, “Please wear the most comfortable clothes you own at all times no matter how absurd you look,” and, “Only hire criminals to look after the payroll.”

In high school bio class, my friends and I would play a game to see who could break the most glassware during the period without it becoming obvious that this was the intention. It required timing–you couldn’t just break a smash a beaker every two minutes, it would be obvious. You couldn’t smash too many things or it would become apparent that you were destroying things that other people were trying to use to better themselves on purpose. Too few…well, what’s the point? The men who put together the Wall of Sound were clearly playing this game.

“So, how many speakers do we need?

“400,000. Plus, they must be the most expensive, heaviest speakers ever built. If they are not heavy enough, we will fill them with concrete. It must be such that it requires more man-hours to prepare to rock Cleveland than it did to conquer Poland.”

“So, 400,000 speakers, then?

“Well, if we’re being precise: 800,000. Because it’s so ass-kickingly heavy and complicated, we’re going to build two so we can play on one while the other’s being set up. In fact, we might very well build three and just set the third on fire for no reason whatsoever.”

“This sounds like a plan! What do you call this thing?”

“The Wall of Sound.”

“Brilliant! It’s not as if one of the defining characteristics of a wall is that it stays in one place no matter what. One question, though: will it be so electronically complex that keeping it running for more than an hour straight will defy the very laws of physics?”

“What do you think?”

My Second Sets Are Shorter Than Yours

I’m not listening to space. Definitely not drums. Never. This part of the second set irritates me on a deeply personal level. When I download a show and throw it on the iTunes, the first thing that happens is drums/space gets jettisoned. This is how space sounds to me:

“Ooh, Garcia just went ‘blorp,’ so I’m gonna go “fleep.” For ten more minutes. Man, those people going to the bathroom are missing some good shit! Squizzle glop! Nah-nah-nah WANG! Ba-DOOM fwop fwop gTUNk”

The only reason people didn’t go to the bathroom during space is because they had just gone during drums.

We indulged these men, you and I did, by letting them fuck around for a good half-hour a night. We should have elected an audience captain to tell the band, firmly but politely, that this kind of nonsense must stop. No more MIDI-fueled Ornette Coleman-offs. Play something, anything. One of Bobby’s cowboy songs. One of Brent’s tunes. Fuck, man, play Wave to the Wind. Just stop doing whatever it is you think you’re doing.

And don’t think I’ve forgotten about you two in back. Here’s every single drum solo you two–or any other drummer ever anywhere–have ever played: whacka-whacka-whacka-whack. That’s it. It’s a drum: it only makes one goddamn sound. You do not need to make that sound over and over and over and over while Garcia is doing whatever he does in the bathroom for two hours AGAIN.

Welcome To The Old Firm

When the Grateful Dead hired Vince Welnick, do you think they just openly said, “Please don’t die. Like, um, everyone else that’s done the  exact job you’re about to do. And whom you even physically resemble, to make it creeper-still. In fact, don’t even think of this as a keyboard gig, think of it as a not-dying gig where you also play keyboards. But keyboards really, with this kind of abysmal track record, should be at most secondary to your every single thought from the time you sign this contract until your untimely, yet entirely predictable death some time in the near next decade. Please at all times try not to be dying. Thank you, and put on a hat.”

Ready for your Close-Up, Vince

“Hi, wardrobe? Welnick here. Show’s in an hour, so bring me the Ugliest Shirt in the Entire World, please. No, not that one, the other one. Ugliester!”

…

“And dad sneakers.”