Two Dogs in Communion #2

Look: someone’s trying to start a Phish/Dead fight on the internet.

Steak?

Two Dogs in Communion

Tell me again how 1989 was the Dead’s best year.

You playing that Hofheinz from ’77 again, buddy?

Garcia?

 

Nice Scarf, Bill

Using my laser eyes on you, using my laser eyes…hey, there’s a song.

Cover Me

The Dead played a billion covers. Some they played forever: Me & My Uncle, NFA; some just the once: How Sweet it Is (from the DP 30 Academy of Music shows that I’m always honking on about). Some songs, though: it’s better the Dead never sat down to figure out the changes.

Dubstep would not have worked; Phil would probably like it. If you haven’t heard dubstep, it’s the sound of a Transformer getting raped. Actually, Mickey might have liked it, too. This is what dubstep is: it get interesting 90 seconds in. I understand why half-naked teens on drugs would love dancefucking to this, but it’s not for listening.

Itsy-Bitsy Teeny Weeny Yellow Polka Dot Bikini (fuck you all for making me type that) would be a poor choice as Bobby would fuck up the chorus so badly that everyone would think it was a Dylan tune.

Any of the particularly tricky Rush tunes: La Villa, YYZ, By-Tor (not the Snow Dog, oddly enough.) The Dead had the chops to pull it off, but those tunes required precision and practice. Even the Dead’s more complicated tunes, like Terrapin–if you missed the musical turn, you could wait for it to come back around again.  Plus, there were twice as many people in the Dead as Rush, man.

Devo. Any deconstruction-type stuff. The Dead did not dismantle, in fact they piled on, always. They were rococo and baroque. Also, broke, but that’s for a different post.

Ars Gratia

Any artists out there? Like good ones, who wanna make a Dead comic book? Any lawyers out there wanna tell me precisely where on the scale from happy ending to prison girlfriend (the ugly one) that action would fall?

Also, if you mix up the letters in the word “dead”, you can make Dade, which is a county in Florida or Edda, which is Old Norse hoolihoo.  Perhaps you can make some other words it you’re some sort of Boggle nut, but if that’s the kind of nut you are, I’ll have no truck with you at all. Nut.

Elvis Has Left The Building, Entered Our Hearts

AH HEAR YURR LOOKIN FURR A NEW WRITER FOR THIS HURR NEWSPAPER.

Aw, man: you just made the spell-check kill itself.

DIRTY SOUTH! SKRILLEX!

Those two things are not related except for tangentially at best.

YEAH! KING! YEAH! ELVIS KING!

You’re not listening. This is a job with the Grateful Dead. I’ve heard there have been incidents.

MORE LIKE A NON-INCIDENT, HEH-HEH-HEH.

Why are you laugh–

HAIRY GARCIA WONT KARATE WITH ME, EVEN THOUGH I TOLD HIM TO!

That actually seems to be the precise way to get him to not do something. Maybe if you–

AH’M AUDITIONING NOW

—Great.

THE GRATEFUL DEAD WAS JUST SOME CHOOGLY-TYPE JAM BAND WITH NO DISCIPLINE INSTILLED IN THEM BY THE STUFF NECESSARY TO BECOME A BLUE BELT IN PRES-LEE-DO, WHICH IS A MARTIAL ART I MADE UP. THE FACT THAT EVEN I, ITS CREATOR, HAVE NOT MASTERED IT SHOULD SHOW ITS FIENDISH DIFFICULTY. AH AM HALFWAY THROUGH ‘KICKING.’

That’s gonna be all I need to hear.

SO ELVIS HAS THE GIG?

Sure: we start at 8:00 AM.

ELVIS PASSES.

Audition

Okay, E.H.?

The Dead was a good band, fine and manly. They first met as volunteer firemen in the Boer War. That was a fine war: manly as all wars were, except the French-Indian War, which was some totally homo shit.

Okay, we’re fine with stretching the truth, but that’s just wrong.

But I look like your guitar player.

Thank you. Next: E.D.?

When Etna purrs

I tremble

Have not left my room

since I discovered the Archive

So, it’s just poetry and frilly blouses and your meals being brought to you, right?

Essentially.

Thank you, sweetie. Next: R.H.

The Dead were like my testicles: hairy and they knew how to swing, man. Check out this MONSTERLICKER–

You sound familiar.

–of a show from 2/15/70 in Philly, that I haven’t actually listened to yet, just pretty much picked at random and will bother you with P.S.’s about in the coming hours.

Ah, fuck it: it’s you. I thought Billy…?

Oh, hells yeah, he worked my sack: I’ll never play the harmonica again, but as it turns out, you can’t truly fire me.

Why not.

We are the same person. It’s just…it’s just that the fonts change, buddy.

…

Buddy?

Why won’t you play along?

Oh, I’m sorry, man.

You always–

–You’re right–

—you do this–

I know.

And it’s why we can’t have fun, y’know?

So, let’s have fun!

I want to go skiing.

We’re gonna go skiing.

YOU KNOW I HATE SKIING!

OKAY, EVERYONE OUT OF THE POOL.

Imperfect Pitch #3

Okay okay okay: what if the Dead were mattresses? Garcia would be soft and fluffy, Phil would be firm and ungiving, Vince would be blood-stained and lying by the side of the road in an industrial section of town.

Are you mocking your own tropes are have you genuinely just run out of gas?

80/40.

That is not a thing.

70/40?

Nor is that. Look, I’m going to need the ball. We’re going with the lefty.

Wright?

Yes, yes: Lefty Wright.

Doesn’t he also switch-hit?

Yes and no.

KNOCK IT OFF WITH THE ABBOT AND COSTELLO ROUTINE.

Sorry, boss.

Life is short: listen to ’73!

You are just the worst kind of suck-ass that there is. What you do is shameful and whether or not you feel wrong about that like normal humans have evolved to do over millennia doesn’t matter: your actions have shame attached to them and will hound you not just here, but in all the worlds to come.

How about the boys as olde-time comedian? Bobby could be Lucy and get into situations because Garcia don’t wanna take ‘er to da show. Garcia, Ricardo, same shit, right.

BILLY!

NOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOthump0000000000000000thump00000000.

Audition time!

Must…Not…Call…This…Jerry’s Kids

Kids, pay attention: this is how your parents were raised. Now, if your baby is onstage with the Grateful Dead (and that’s a big “if” because nowadays, babies are not allowed to be on stage with the Grateful Dead, metaphorically speaking), but anyway, if your baby was right now on that stage, you would give him those horrible little baby earmuffs, In the 70’s, if your baby was on stage with the Grateful Dead, you gave him a tambourine.

(Those baby ear protectors are the worst. It’s a baby. Don’t bring it the show, huh?)

P.S. I stole this picture fair-and-square from some loser-breath monster pants.