Once, a master asked his student, “Why does Billy punch dicks?”
And the student did not answer, because he had been punched in the dick.
That master also wrote a famous haiku called “Summer Tour”:
The shorts of Garcia
Have been put on–motherfuck!
He just punched my dick
You know the first of The Rules, don’t you? Life is short: listen to 1973. Now, you might substitute in 1977 or 1974 or certainly the hidden gem year of 1971. But you’d never throw in ’88, would you?
But then there’s this! (How am I treating this show like I discovered it? It’s fucking famous.) 6/28/85 at Hershey Park Stadium. Check it out, starting at the Brobdingnagian Music Never Stopped and it just gets better from there.
P.S. Except of course for Garcia losing his way through Terrapin, lyrically speaking. but aside from that, it gets better. For little gay kids and for a handful (at most) of weirdos listening to a specific musical performance given 18 billion years ago.
P.P.S. Holy shit, listen to Morning Dew and then realize that, had you been at this show, you would have been listening to this face-boiling Dew and not, like, 100 yards away is a rolly-coaster. God bless America and all her ships at sea.
P.P.P.S. So, of course, after 6/28 ends, I throw on 6/30 and there are some audacious moments: the Shakedown is outstanding, parts of the Stella are great, but my overall opinion is not swayed–Life is short: listen to ’73.
The Dead were not a Prog-Rock band, as that required hours of rehearsal, which was impossible when the phrase, “Let’s try that one again,” led at least three men to start wildly swinging their fists without even looking to see where they were going. The Dead were like Sinatra: one-take. If you allowed them back at the material after the first try, they would fiddle with it endlessly, eventually disappearing up their own asses entirely.
The Dead were not a Boy Band. Boy bands feature young, girlish men who conform to pre-slotted roles as the Cute One or the Shy One. The Dead was made up of men whose appearances might have been put on cans of stew. Yes, Bobby was the Cute One, but there was also the Locked in the Bathroom One, the Punching One, and Phil. Tiger, yes. Tiger Beat, no.
The Dead were not Alternative. I think it might have been the attitude towards guitars. Since Johnny Ramone threw his plastic Mos-Rite in a shopping bag and carried it into CBGB’s, one of the key signifiers of “cool” in the punk/alternative status game is who can find the shittiest, most obscure guitar. Garcia did not like that game, not one bit. He chased the dragon with those guitars as much as with his habit. Elaborate, expensive and–most of all-heavy things that he could fuss over. And, as we all know, anything fussed with too much is shit and those last guitars, my god, the pomp and circumference!
Wolf! Wolf weighed–I looked this up–211 pounds.
The Dead were not a Country Rock Jam Band with Delusions of Grandeur. No, no: they were. That is what they were. And, damn they were good at it.
The Dead were not Electronic Music, even though they used to let Phil’s retarded cousin Ned Lagin finger his MOOG onstage occasionally. I’m talking the Ibiza stuff, KLF is gonna house you, that thing where the bass stops and then it makes this WUBWUBWUB sound, that sort of thing. First of, all the darkness would lead instantly to a round of stealthy dickpunching the likes of which this party’s never seen! WHOO! Second, the Dead would, upon seeing the other large, bass-heavy sound systems, immediately go nuclear, leading to destruction.
“Chief, what have those Grateful Deads done this time?”
“Mr. Mayor, they’ve wired the sewer lines and turned the very ground beneath us into one giant sub-woofer!”
“And what happens if something goes wrong?
“Mr. Mayor, do you know what a caldera is?”
The Dead is not Hip-Hop, although there are similarities: the guys whose job title is kinda loose, weed.
Okay, Grateful Dead cocktail party games. Annnnnnnnnnnd: go!
Dead as countries Phil is Germany, technical and peevish; Brent is Canada, adorable and drunk; Billy is Mozambique, because Mozambique’s flag has a fist holding an AK-47 on it. No secrets, there.
Dead as Wars, Ancient Phil is most certainly the Punic Wars, all of them: savage, righteous, salted. Mickey is the Warring States Period, just because I like the name. (I was thinking about reading about the history of China, so I looked at the shop and the smallest of the books was so heavy that the Dead lugged it around with them in ’78 “just because.” Plus, I know I should care about the place where a sixth of the world lives, but try reading that wikipedia page. I get three sentences in, tops.) Garcia is the Persian War.
Dead as animals(visual) Garcia is obviously a koala: just picture a koala, now add the glasses. (That image isn’t getting out of your head, sorry.) Brent is a hedgehog. Donna is a squirrel. Phil is halfway between an ostrich and a giraffe.
Dead as animals (metaphorical) Bobby: Springer spaniel. Garcia: silverback gorilla. Phil: halfway between an ostrich and a giraffe.
Dead as rivers: TC is the Danube; Vince is the CayuhogaCuyahoga; Billy is the Mississippi: mighty, proud, and difficult to spell.
Most appropriate Dead song for the funeral of a FTM transsexual He’s Gone.
Least appropriate Dead song for the funeral of a MTF transsexual He’s Gone.
Going through the Library to reorganize the shows and had some silly ol’ thoughts about the way folks were namin’ places back then, and I sure did wanna share some of ’em with you. Maybe it’ll getcha smilin’.
Lloyd Noble, Sam Boyd, Henry J. Kaiser, Roscoe Maples…who were these mysterious and brave people cutting swatches of life out of the broadcloth of the world? We’ll never know. (Oilman, gambler, shipbuilder, lover of pavilions. What’s weird is that Sam is short for Samantha and Roscoe is a family name, so these four names actually represent two men, two women and features a full range of ethnic diversity. Kidding: they look like political cartoon Robber Barons from the 1890’s.)
Everybody’s terrifying old favorite: War Memorial Stadium.
Was Red Rocks as bad as blue balls?
Legion Stadium is clearly where the end of Days will be kicking off.
The Mosque? In Atlanta?
Pirate’s World, Catholic Youth Center, gym, assembly hall, gym, gym, gym. They played a lot of shitty barns, didn’t they?
The Jai-Alai Fronton in Miami, which is redundant, because all a fronton is for is jai-alai. It’s like a velodrome or an aquarium or Billy’s second bedroom: only one thing gets done there and you should have realized it going in. Now, you’re sticky. (Jai-Alai is a great game: wiry Cubans who just barely sized out of jockey school whipping what amounts to a cue ball against a wall at 170 mph and catching it with wicker. Plus, betting.)
The hippie names: the Family Dog, the Great Highway, the Warehouse, the Euphoria Ballroom, the University of Oregon.
The beautiful ones: the Boston Music Hall, the Academy of Music, Winterland, the Great Western Forum, the Beacon Theatre.
The strangely generic: Atlanta Municipal Auditorium, Cape Cod Coliseum, Broome County Arena. (Was there not ONE MAN of the high standards of, say, Sam Boyd in the community? HARRUMPH.)
The cheery: Merriweather Post Pavillion. (Say it out loud. Fun, right?)
The outdoorsy: Buckeye Lake, Pine Knob, Alpine Valley
The Hellenic: the Greek Theater.
The Hellenistic: St. Paul Auditorium.
I have a crush on Donna. There, I’ve said it.
I want to write a book called Tuesdays with Mickey, in which Mickey shares life lessons about the power of drumming and then tries to choke me.
Show of the Day: 2/26/77 The Help>Slip>Franklin’s is terrifyingly good, especially the Slipknot! and, it’s the first time they’ve ever played Terrapin and they choose to open with it. You might wonder if Garcia nailed all the lyrics to Terrapin. He did, Bobby: first time. How about that?
The best big concert I ever went to was Pink Floyd. They played all of Dark Side and during On the Run, a model airplane zipped along a wire running the length of Giant Stadium, finally crashing in an enormous ball of flame behind the PA stack, whereupon 70,000 peoples’ heads just exploded from the amount of awesome that had just been placed in there. Later in the show, a massive disco ball eructated from the center of the stadium, opening like lotus petals to reveal Gilmour, coincidentally just in time to play the solo from Comfortably Numb.
The Dead did not do things like that. They engaged in virtually none of the tricks and antics that most other bands rely on; two reasons come to mind. Firstly, they were congenitally incapable of most show business bullshit. Of course, being the Dead, they felt the need to take this to its illogical extreme: sucking at big shows, punching record executives, and (depending on the lineup) being made-up of anywhere from 67 to 80 percent really ugly dudes. This is not how Jon Bon Jovi did it.
Second, the Dead’s audience could be counted on to provide at least half of their own entertainment. At any show, most of the crowd would have been just as amused by their own hands as by a flying drum kit, so why spend the money? While Tommy Lee’s roller-coaster drum solo was immensely cool, it wasn’t for Billy or Mickey. Drums did not fly in the Dead. Thrown? Quite often.
Not that they didn’t have their own little stage moves. Phil would march up three feet, then back three, then up. Garcia unconsciously pushed his glasses up his nose before he took most solos. Keith did this adorable thing where he would pass out in a corner, a pool of hot piss spreading slowly underneath him. They all had their thing, is what I’m saying.
It just wasn’t the usual way to rock. You know that move where the two guitarists stand back-to-back, as if they can no longer remain upright unassisted because of the sheer POWAH! of the rock they were laying down? Imagine Bobby trying to do that to Garcia. Now, in your head, did Garcia gracefully side-step, leaving Bobby to tumble onto the ground? Because he did in mine. I wouldn’t even let the Bobby in my head TRY to do that shit to Phil, because I need the Bobby in my head to keep doing silly things I can tell you nice folks about, and we all know that touching Phil leads to hiring attorneys.
There was never any of that happy horseshit about “how nice it was to be here in (checks note affixed to monitor) THE FINGER LAKES, YEAH! We been all around this country and nowhere rocks harder than the (double-check) FINGER LAKES!” No pandering nonsense about the local teams, we were not asked to put “them” up, nor was it demanded of us that we wave “them” in the air. No enquiries were made about our level of interest about waving “them” in the air, whatsoever. Paul Stanley would have been disgusted.
P.S. Credit does have to be given to the entire group for avoiding the most pernicious of rock tics: Guitar Face. I mean, occasionally Garcia would knit is brow in concentration during Slipknot! or something, but none of them ever came down with a full-blown case of Les Palsy.
Wanna laugh? Go listen to Ramble On Rose from the famous RFK show in 1973. Gentlemen, I know it’s impossible to always be playing the same song, but can we not at least play in the same key?
P.S. Wanna keep laughing? Keep playing the show until you get to Box of Rain, where you will learn that no one informed Phil’s larynx about the whole “perfect pitch” thing.
P.P.S And then, of course, keep listening to the way they take Stella Blue from train wreck to utter, tear-inducing revelation in less than two verses until, for the first time in the show, they’re in the groove and Garcia’s all, “I’m gonna fuck shit up now, fuck it up so very hard.” AND HE DOES. (The previous two sentences are to be known as Exhibit A in the case of Why Hasn’t UCSC Called Yet?
P.P.P.S Go listen to Billy on He’s Gone. Go back and listen to that man RIGHT NOW or we can’t be friends anymore. The only explanation for Billy’s prowess is that on days off, he secretly roamed the countryside cutting the heads off of other drummers and absorbing their skills through the Quickening.
There have been new visitors to the bloggings, mostly from the wonderful and masculine-smelling Reddit, which was exciting and sexual. Problem was, I think the last few postings on the bloggings have been kind of weird and insular and not really about the Dead as much as my wrestling with the Creeping Insanity and that fucker just having his way with me. No contest, just taking his sweet time.
Until I yearned for it.
That is the kind of shit we had the meeting about.
Right, right. Sorry. So: who is this for? If you fit any one of the following descriptions, you should dive into the archives.(Actually, physically dive into them. Running start right into the computer: I swear it will work. It is an app.)
Thoughts on the Dead 