Fashion Victim Or The Crime?

In his defense…no, there’s no defending those trousers.

My Old School

Listening to: 9/9/91. Testing out my Great Show-Adjacent theory.*

Reading:  Katie Harvey’s Master’s thesis from Tufts University, 2009.† A guided tour through the tapers–far more fascinating than you would think, giving truth to the claim that there are no bad stories, just stories badly told.

Contemplating: Love, baby.

*No theory can hold up to the randomness of  Vince playing tinkly-winks and Sleepy Bear turning himself down. Once again, I am reminded that all post-Brent successes are due to the Law of Averages.

† This is actually a wonderful piece of work; long but worth it: careful, researched storytelling about a subject that can get arcane quickly. Plus a long-ass interview with Healy at the end. Read it, dammit.

Motley Crew

Most rock road crew types were anonymous, but a few bubbled into the Creem magazine every now and then. Was there a Skydog? (People were allowed to be named Skydog back then, kids.) He was a famous roadie/road manager. Richard Cole, he was a road manager, but he started as a roadie. Lemmy famously carried Hendrix’s amps around. Yet, we can all name at least three of the Dead’s crew.

First off, they all had great, biker-dude names: Rex, Laird, Ramrod, Boogedy-Boogedy-Shoop, Monsterfishfucker, Ethelred the Unready, the Hmong Hmadman–names you could swing a bike chain to.

Secondly, they weren’t roadies, man, they were part of the family, man. And they were paid and treated as such. They had a vote. Once, a roadie for Bon Jovi spoke up at a meeting and Jon had that man’s children brought to the studio to be repeatedly tased in front of him.

The Dead’s crew didn’t want to hop from tour to tour with other bands. They would have been paid the actual going rate, not the “take this pile of money” salary the Dead was giving them, plus they would have been, you know, told what to do. That wasn’t going to work for Parrish and the boys, so when the time came for decisions, the clear path forward was always more shows, more shows, more shows.

If you overpay the roadies and let them vote, then they are sending you to Wisconsin, no matter what kind of shape you’re in, Mr. Just Out of the Coma.

Hell Of A Drug

I’ll only say this: at 4:14, you will see Phil do something utterly inexplicable. Do not attempt to explicate it. Then, at 7:20, something occurs that will blow your ass off.

Time Hates Us All #6

In The Army Now

Garcia was in the service, the Army. It was normal back then for most everybody except sissies, commies, or college boys in their raccoon coats. Mickey and TC were both in the Air Force (Mickey played drums in the Air Force, because the Brass didn’t let him play for three days or so and set fire to a mess hall, so they decided to just let the monster have his Slingerlands and keep the peace.)

Phil was in college and driving a mail truck while shooting speed, which seems like a lovely way to spend a summer at age 22, so no playing soldier for him. Billy got his letter and walked into the draft office, Pall Mall dangling from sneering lips under a newly-grown but already treasured mustache.

“You send me this letter?”

“Ye–”

SHWOKKATHOOM Dicks got punched, dicks got punched left and right, my friend. The sergeant, the lieutenant, the other hard-to-spell things: all of them down, dicks punched, just punched to shit, my man. Everyone got it; sometimes it seemed like he was going harder on the people who were just randomly there. A plumber just in the office got it the worst for some reason, perhaps because he begged. Ah, you think: if Billy hates it when one begs, then therefore, one must fight back to gain his respect.

No! Never fight back. You’re not understanding the main motivator here: when Billy gets to punching dicks, Billy gets to punching dicks. It’s not a competition: it’s a thrust, an urge, he MUST PUNCH DICKS. The thing that pisses him off is the time wasted: beg, bargain, fight, offer to slobber his johnson–these all just register on Billy’s radar as vague buzzing that, every second that it lasts, trends towards white-crazy lightning ruining his brain. You’re making it worse: just lie back and think of Sausalito.

Awkward

In Bobby’s defense, he has for years been warning others that stealing women from their men is not just a pursuit to while away the long hours, but his vocation and livelihood. Bobby doesn’t want to steal all these women, but it’s his job, man, and in this economy, a man’s gotta put bacon on the table.

Hell Brent For Leather

Douglas Adams had his Infinite Improbability Drive, but he didn’t go far enough: I introduce the Infinite Infinity Drive.

Assume infinity.

Assume the multiverse.

Therefore, if where you are is not where you want to be, then in one of the infinite universes where you are is where it is at. One can figure which is which by building a computer large enough to calculate infinity. Since such a computer would necessarily have to be larger than infinity, it might seem impossible, until one remembers that infinity must by definition contain, say, infinity+24.

It’s bigger on the inside.

You are teetering on the brink, my friend. 

9/5/79 at MSG (Do I favor East Coast show over West Coast? Am I a Coastist? Do I believe that the West Coast is fine and all, just as long as it stays over there? Yeah. Sue me.)

I am hissing at you. Hissing. Hssss.

It is, obviously, a Brent. Much like strangers at airport bars, I’ve always had an iffy relationship with Brent, but I’m going to give him a concentrated listening, at least until I can staunch this bleeding head wound. I woke up to vomit last night, like you do, and I THWACKED my head into the samurai swords I keep loose in the bathroom, the one room you’re almost guaranteed to roam around in like a piano tuner nightly. (I’m sure blind people must have gone to Dead shows, but did they bring the dog in with them? It seems mean to the dog, what with the dog-hearing and a Dead show had to be, like, the most INTERESTING SMELLING PLACE IN THE WORLD to a dog, but a guide dog has to be like those guards outside Buckingham Palace.)

(BUT, if you were blind, would you ever go to a concert or put on headphones without your dog, or the biggest, strongest, most loyal buddy in the world with you? Like, your brother just happens to be The Big Show. And I’d rather have the dog: some drunk asshole will have a go at The Big Show just because, but nobody messes with dogs. Music would cut off all your connection to the outside world; you wouldn’t be able to hear anyone sneaking up on you and people sneak up on blind people all the time)

My equivocation towards Brent lies with his playing and his voice. His playing is tremendous: he fit in with the band instantly and added new layers with his adroit B3. His playing stepped up everyone’s game and though his Rhodes could sound tinkly, it was still a welcome relief from the constant piano block-chords of the later Keith years.

I just never warmed to Brent’s voice. It always sounded like a hack comic doing a Michael McDonald impression. I’m sure there are those of you who disagree. I am sorry for your wrongness.

Up To Buffalo

3/31/73 at War Memorial Arena in Buffalo, NY.

Holy fuck, how broke were they that Buffalo in March was the remedy?

P.S. Except, HOLY SHIT Greatest Story is rampaging through Buffalo! The only thing more destructive was the shifting global economy.  Ha-cha-cha-cha. The weather might have been cold, but the band was HOT.

Okay, that’s your warning. That’s your warning right there.

What? What did I–

You know what you did. I know you know you know what you did. Acknowledge the warning.

I will not ack–

You will acknowledge the warning.

NO.

YOU WILL ACKNOWLEDGE THE–

GENTLEMEN, THAT’LL BE THE END OF THAT.

Sorry.

Sorry, boss.

Life is short: listen to ’73.

Kiss-ass.

P.P.S. I’ll come clean, I just picked this show to make the joke, but it’s really good. Someone–I’m not going to say who, but it was Bobby–remembered ALL of the words to Truckin’. Like a boss.

P.P.P.S. And then a China-less Rider? Just jammed straight into it? Dipping briefly into the beautiful descending 1973 chords that connected the two songs, harmonically, rhythmically, perfectly. BEST SHOW EVER

My Donna

 

Good evening, pretty lady: I heard it through the grapevine that looks aren’t a big thing with you. May I have this dance?