You Drive Me Back

 

Their only excuse is that they were Muppets.

All Hail Kezar!

Hey, kids! want to start your week off in just the weirdest goddam way possible? Try 3/23/75 at Kezar Stadium, where Bill Graham put on a benefit for the underfunded schools of the Bay Area called S.N.A.C.K. (Students Need Athletics, Culture, and Kicks.) (Kicks? Wow, the 70’s were weird.)

Anyway, it’s not like any Dead set you’ve heard before: it’s just a 40 minute Blues for Allah jam, but with Merl and Ned on the back up keys and Keith on the heavenly Fender Rhodes.

Wondering how Bobby’s hair looked?

Play ALL the keyboards!

And you can come up with your own fellatio-related caption here, I suppose.

And, holy shit, just listen to Garcia lead the transition back into Blues from at 30 seconds in to the fourth track. That’s why he doesn’t get called by his first name

Grateful Dad

 

No posts today, fellow Enthusiasts. Here’s a pic of Phil and his boys for Father’s Day.

We Could Be Heroes

The Dead neither dated nor married for effect. There are no reports of Phil squiring, say, Joyce Dewitt into the Whiskey while wearing an enormous trenchcoat containing Mickey and Billy for some reason, I don’t know, it’s just a funny visual: the two of them LEAPING out from within the coat like that was Phil’s mutant power, to be able to generate two rampaging cashfuckers at will from his vestments. Phil was actually an X-Man briefly, but chafed under the authority of Professor X and got Colossus killed again, so…

He had to transfer to Garcia’s School for Exceptional Youngsters. Garcia was a benevolent presence that infused the grounds with his personality, riding around in his Alembic-made $400,000 wheelchair; he wasn’t crippled, just lazy. His mutant power was to bring people together and spread love and cheer so that everyone in the room was having such a good time that no one saw him sneak off to the bathroom, which he would invariably burn down.

Bobby takes down villains and keeps the peace with the power of his muscular thighs.

Donna is capable of emitting a banshee wail powerful and strident enough to paralyze an enthusiast at ten paces away from a good ’74 Playin’. (Wait, she’s not a mutant? She just sang like that? Huh.)

P.S. Despite my general distaste for most of the dirges of ’76, here’s a goodie from this day in Dead history: 6/15/76 at the Beacon Theater in money-making, heart-breaking Manhattan.

Any Man Alive

Someone got to the bloggings yesterday by searching “Did Brent Mydland like groupies?”

My friend: if you don’t like ’em, they ain’t groupies.

Trouble Ahead

Well, since y’all were so helpful with the last one, here’s another shot from the Nudie show (3/19/73?) with Donna looking particularly fetching.

Garcia Totally Nudie

 

You’ve been seeing a little bit of this one every time you read the bloggings, but here’s the full glory.

Sunday In The Park

Can anyone place this? From the guitars and thrown together look of the stage, I want to say it’s one of those wierd-o Hiatus gigs they did.

Bobby Problem: Still Unsolved

Night Of The Living Dead

I will soon be decamping for human climes, back to the only land a mutt-mix of Irish and Russian Jew could tolerate. Brown hills, grey skies, no goddam monsters in the Sadd Lake my concrete development abuts. Everything has to be concrete down here; the wood rots instantly. The humidity is–do you remember the Celestials? They were Marvel Comics characters drawn by Jack Kirby that were so big that they dwarfed even the mighty Galactus and his heralds, amongst them the tragic Norrin Radd, who–

Stop that.  Or we sauce the goose.

Please don’t sauce–

Then: Schnell! Schnell! I have bolded and italicized, so you must take me seriously! Don’t make me play with the fonts, because I simply don’t know how, I lack that skill set and maybe it’s been holding me back in my search for fortune and a woman who’s just crazy enough, y’know?

May I?

Ja.

Why are you German now? How did–the point being that I’m going back to where mammals are at the top of the food chain; and seasons, instead of “a little bit too goddam hot,” and “living in a giant’s ass.” Which is where I was going before, with the Celestials: I just needed an enormous man with a relatively enormous ass. Right now, Boynton Beach, FL, is the precise moisture level as inside the rectum of a being made up of a stuff to challenge wielder of the Power Cosmic himself, the Silver Surfer!

And I say this to get to my point: maybe you’ve heard of the Zombies. They have infested these swampy marshes and fetid fens, possibly due to the malodorous Bath Salts that are sweeping the nation.

The Dead would have been awful in a Zombie Apocalypse. Garcia would be the first to go, let’s just agree on that: he wasn’t the most…aware…of people at times, but he might have had a good defense against the ghouls: accidentally setting them on fire as he nodded off.

Vince would immediately Stockholm Syndrome out, campily rolling his eyes back while moaning a little off-key, “MRAAGH,” and chomping down on random people’s arms, except that zombies, like Enthusiasts, see through Vince’s bullshit rather quickly and then it’s just shreds of flesh and Dad’s Vacation Shirt.

The Crew would do well, managing to do the load-out in only 14 hours, and thus escaping out the doors of the arena just as the hungry zombies crested the ridge. Unfortunately, the trucks were so laden with gear that could not have been left behind, because Denver is in two days and Zombie Apocalypse or not, the Dead don’t cancel shows, man, that to lighten weight and distract the fiends, the Crew had to give them Phil off the back of the truck, like that Russian family in that painting giving the baby to the wolves.

Mickey and Billy go down swinging.

P.S. Bobby is left alone by the zombies, as they only eat brains. (CHEEEEEEEEEEAP! BOOOOOOOOOO!)