How could you go wrong with Keith’s first trip to New York, Pig singing Run Run Rudolph and Billy quite literally speedbagging the prehistorically large dong of a police horse (not pictured)? 12/4/71 from the Felt Forum, which is in Madison Square Garden, which is in New York.
A detailed analysis of minutes 11.45-40.30 of The Closing of Winterland (See previous post). We’ll talk about Bobby’s glasses later, I assure you.
11.45 What the fuck, Phil?
12.33 Donna thought it was the Halloween gig and came dressed as a woman ripped to the gills in an awful dress.
13.15 LISTEN TO FUCKING DONNA: SHE HAS THE VOICE OF AN ANGEL.
14.20 …but she should probably knock it off kinda soon.
16.00 What the sweet potato pie is Garcia doing? Oh my god, I’ve seen that before: that’s MOVING. GARCIA IS FUCKING MOVING. He is no longer in precisely the same spot Parrish duct-taped him to an hour earlier.
17.25, Oh, Mickey, why?
18.50 Garcia is two seconds away from twirling the guitar around his body while Angus Younging across the stage to emotionally bully Bobby. There is only one word, fellow Enthusiasts, for what is going on right now: rock star. Shut up.
21.40 Mickey is wearing a Dead shirt because of course he is.
22.26 Mickey is just terrifying.
22.48 Mickey just drum-fucked us all with his eyes and mustache, but mostly mustache.
23.29 We will get to the glasses, Bobby.
24.00 We’re all thinking the same thing, but let’s have some respect, ok.
24.30 Except i cant stop looking at them–oh, thank god, a wide shot.
26.30 Garcia has gone loopy. Now, I know he’s Jerry Fucking Garcia, man…but isn’t anyone else in this band? A certain dickpunching manager of the caddies at Bushwood? Mm, Danny? (You just read that in his voice, didn’t you? Predictable.)
13.05 There he is! Hey, Billy! What’s with the hair, Billy?
32.50 Bill Graham!
33.15 Sometimes i like it when Bobby talks. Sometimes.
37.10 There’s Phil aaaaaand no more Phil.
37.44 Keith exists!
40.30 I’ve decided I don’t want to discuss Bobby’s glasses.
Things that would get you thrown out of the Grateful Dead’s backstage:
As with the last video I posted, embedding is impossible so I will just link to 11/24/78 at the Capitol Theater in beautiful, downtown Passaic, NJ. If you don’t have time to watch, just listen: the sound is spectacular.
Re-read Cutler’s great (not true) book (true) about his time road-managing the Dead. What I came away with was that Sam Cutler was some sort of poisonous frog that, whenever threatened, doses you with acid. Seriously, go read the book: Cutler charges through backstages and airports secretly giving near-strangers heavy psychedelics. Any time anyone at all needed to talk business with him, he would immediately slip them a massive dose of LSD. It’s a genius negotiating tactic, really.
But, you can’t do that kind of thing anymore. This is no longer a nation where grown men are allowed to wander around out of their gourds calling themselves Country Joe and the Fish. You get drones sent to your house for that kind of display now.
Found this and thought you’d like it, but before you click on it, know this: you will be going to a desert, a ghost mall of the internet, a junction far, far across the Rio Grand (EeyOoo): MySpace. There exists a MySpace. Still. I wonder if their office still has the half-pipe and yoga studio? Didn’t “Tom” die in an auto-erotic asphyxiation thing last Winter Solstice? (That’s how I mark time, because of my beliefs. TOLERATE ME.)
So, you have to go to MySpace because, well, it’s on MySpace, but mostly because I don’t know how to grab the video, so just aim your clicker over the blue letters–not the blue thing, the blue let–good aaaaaand: there’s your bank account, Grandma. Love you, Gam. NOMNOMNOM your face Gam. Gonna kill you in your sleep, Gam. NIGHT!
EDIT: I’m not even going pretend to know what went wrong there. It’s beyond just apologizing and moving on: this is High Crime or Misdemeanor time. Fuck…WHOO, where was he even GOING with that? These are decent folks out there getting high and listening to the Dead while reading about the Dead. Fuckin’ stoner-ass stoner asses. Who am I again? Am I the Reader or the Faithless Narrator? Sometime, he uses italics for one, and sometimes…sometimes, I think this is all just a bunch of obscure lies and silliness, man.
SUPEREDIT: Play the video or I’ll teach you what the word ‘flense’ means.
So: the Grateful Dead playing Saturday Night Live on 11/11/78. (You should open the video in a different window or, you know what? You’re bright and capable and more than equipped to wrangle the doodads. Just be yourself all over the place.
And we start off with everyone’s favorite secret genius, Buck Henry!
And Billy!
.26 It’s called conditioner, Garcia. Plus–and I’m just saying–for a guy who always bitched about being on TV, he certainly does play adorably to the cameras.
.38 Here we see Donna, who for some reason is easy skanking.
.50 Was Phil just yelling at the drummers on live TV? Seriously, can no one get Phillip Lesh to exhibit anything even resembling human behavior?
1.05 Donna was always dressed like your grade-school art teacher that time you ran into her at the supermarket.
1.15 We need to talk about Bobby’s pants. Young man, are you wearing jodhpurs? Or are they riding pantaloons? Are you playing Young George Washington? Will you golf later? If so, is your caddie Bagger Vance? Are you the renegade scion of the House of Bourbon? How are those socks staying up–is there a garter in play here? EXPLAIN YOUR PANTS.
1.45 Although if we’re going to be honest, they do hug his ‘tocks quite nicely. Bobby’s sexy and he knows it.
2.00 The slide. That’s a choice.
2.22 Hey, there are other people in this band! (None of whom are attractive enough for a close-up, apparently.) And a great shot of both drummers, um, drumming.
3.00 Donna gives me boners.
3.12 It’s Rowlf the dog!
3.27 Hey, Mickey’s in this band!
Phil’s new hash-house/gin joint, Terrapin Crossroads, looks pretty swanky. I understand that they’re going for a more upscale vibe, but I think there are a few marketing possibilities that have been overlooked:
Eat your Phil!
Phil ‘er up!
Phil my mouth with goodness!
This week’s exotic meat dish: Box of Reindeer!
Our food won’t give you Lesh-maniasis!
Lesh is more, due to rising food prices!
Phil-ling the long afternoons between tours!
Our kitchen is not Phil-thy!
No, sir: Mr. Daley no longer dines here, sir. No, sir: we serve no liver whatsoever at Terrapin Crossroads. It sets Sir off. He kind of Hulks out. Except, you know: it’s Phil, so when he gets like that, we call him the Phulk–oh, totes behind his back, we just text, he doesn’t understand–and he rampages through the place demanding people show him their organ donor cards and then he strips to the waist and challenges men and women to fight and somebody always take him up on it and then it gets sexual and–why am I telling you all this? No reservations!
Y’see this is the kind of thing that I write and then I wait and NO ONE from the Grateful Dead calls me and says that I should be in the family and put on salary with a car. I know back in the day, everyone had BMWs, but I know times are rough, so an Audi would be perfectly fine as long as it’s got leather seats and you pay for my gas.
8 – Hallelujah hatracks (Really?)
4 – Dead keyboard players. Not 4 keyboardists for the Dead, 4 dead keyboardists. How is it possible that the mortality rate for musicians in an improvisational country-rock outfit is higher than that of those guys who parachute into forest fires? The family crest of the Dead keyboardist read Pertransiit sine me (Go on without me).
3 – Fancy little shoe racks for TC’s fancy little ankle boots.
210,000 – Number of dollars Lenny Hart stole from the band while “managing” them.
40,000 – Number of dollars Lenny Hart stole during the meeting to try to explain the financial irregularities when someone left the door to the safe open. They were trusting men, at first, our Dead.
88 – Keys on a piano.
176 – How many Keith usually saw.
1 – Number of times a crew member looked Phil directly in the eyes. Just that once.
95 – Live albums released, 110 if you count the Digital Download series (One of which I’m listening to now, the Donna-tacular 4/30/77 at the Palladium in NYC. (Audience copy, if you’re into that sort of thing. Harumph. But, seriously, it’s an AUD: think about whether that’s the person you want to be. AUD guys are to Enthusiasts what fat guys fluent in Klingon are to Trekkies)
13 – Studio albums
2 – That were any good at all.
0 – Number of times the question, “How many fingers does the Grateful Dead have?” can be answered with a whole number.
12,000 – Amount extra versus a standard P.A. it cost to tote the Wall of Sound around. Luckily, it was worth the price because it was “the righteous thing to do, man.” That is an exact quote from Blair Jackson, who was actually talking about something else entirely, but FUCK CONTEXT.
6 – Months it took the righteous thing to do to break the band’s back.
2 – Drummers.
1 – Drummer.
2 – Drummers.
12 – Teenage male hustlers found horribly mutilated throughout the 80’s in a pattern correlating to the Dead’s tour schedule. The culprit was never found, but was described as having luxuriously thick blond hair and singing the high harmony part. The pattern stopped briefly in 1989, but picked up again–far more rapidly now–in 1990, except this time it was females and there’s a weird theory that there were two guys based round this mystery man they call Suburban Lanky. Doesn’t make any sense at all, if you asked me.
40 – Milliseconds after Bobby asked, “Tonight, what if we open…wait for it…with the encore?” that his dick got punched.
300,000 – Dollars spent by Mickey in the winter of 1977 to create his most ambitious percussive masterpiece to date. Mickey planned and rehearsed diligently. He spent over a year writing the score and hired musicians from all over the world, building them a brand-new studio. Then he locked them in that brand-new studio, set it ablaze, and recorded their dying screams. Lou Reed is quoted as saying, “Why didn’t I think of that?” The album was never released, except in Norway where it reached #31 on the Billboard-flurgen charts.
14 – Bucks for the Oven-Roasted Shrimp and Sun-Dried Tomatoes at Phil’s new hotspot, Terrapin Crossroads. Come for the food, stay for the Phil!
Thoughts on the Dead 