Record Shmecord

Terrapin Station is majestic. Its lineage, probably, is the Weather Report Suite, but it also resembles in its twists and turns the early songs, with their crudely welded-together bits (Looking at you, New Potato Caboose.) Not Terrapin: each section flows logically from the previous theme, like a an elegantly proven math equation. It slaloms like whatever louche aristo is the skiing champion this year. It requires finesse and exquisite timing to pull it off; some nights they had neither. But when they did it was the emotional highlight of any show. It is a grand entry into the canon.

Terrapin Station, a bit less. This was the album wherein, no longer able to generate drug addicts in-house, were forced to draft a drug addict from another band. They also tried to trade Keith for a speed freak and an alcoholic to be named later, but the deal fell through.

Terrapin Station was produced by Lowell George from Little Feat Keith Olsen, as much as anyone can produce the Grateful Dead. He tried to erase a percussion track of Mickey’s, and if you’ve been a loyal reader of this blog, you’ll know what happened next: everybody’s favorite fun game, Mickey Physically Assaults Business Associates. None of their records were any good. Common knowledge.

So: we can either spend 400 more words mocking In the Dark, or we can check out Phil (with GREAT HAIR!) leading the way through a 1972 China>Rider in some city that had been occupied by Nazis within the decade.

Good choice:

Addendum: In the comments below, a Fellow Enthusiast points out that I originally conflated Lowell George, who was actually the producer for Shakedown Street with Keith Olsen, the true producer of Terrapin Station. This commenter is correct and wins a year’s supply of  “Brent Mydland’s Silky!” The hair products for men with silky hair. Keep it Silky, boys!

The Wheel Is Turning

Ever listen to the Dead and your attention slips just as they start to jam and then you come back to the music and realize you have absolutely no idea what song they’re playing? And then you realize, they don’t know, either.  THAT’S why it’s all worth it: the clams, the time signature disagreements, the tuning, I Fought the Law–it all rolls away when they hit that Moment.

…and…

I have, for the past two weeks, not downloaded a single show. Not one. But have I received the intended grace for my absolution? Has there been even a dent in the backlog of shows taking up space on my full-to-bulging* hard drive that I haven’t gotten to yet?

No. Of course not. I have begun listening to the streams at archive.org.

*This was Billy’s constant rejoinder to the question, “How are you, Billy?” It would go like this:

“How are you, Billy?”

“Full to bulging.”

And then he would fake punch you in the dick and then he would actually punch you in the dick because Billy’s nickname on the road was Dickpunchin’ Billy and a man without a name is nothing, nothing at all.

Play It Slow

This game thing…this goddamn game thing. I would rather have Billy speedbag my nuts while tie-dyed ninjas force me to watch them delete all the beautiful Shows from my computer and replace them with audience tapes of 1995 than have anything to do with this goddamn game thing.

First off, the site looks like CompuServe’s Brazilian-raised clone, flashy and zitty and with music that starts playing when the page opens. Genocides have been started for lesser insults than playing music I didn’t ask for when the page opens and then HIDING THE FUCKING MUTE BUTTON IN YOUR PASTEL NIGHTMARE OF A WEBSITE.

Plus: it’s SHIT music. There’s a drums>space vibe to it, but there are two problems there: 1. That’s what you want to open up with, Grateful Dead Game? The thing that even hard-core fans of the band only barely tolerated? Not, say, an upbeat catchy number? And, 2. IT’S NOT EVEN THE DEAD PLAYING. It sounds like a guy with a Korg M-1.

Okay, fine, the site looks awful. Hell, this site looks awful. But we get to play a game! Except the game doesn’t exist. Not yet. So far, we’ve just voted on the Top Ten Dead Shows Of All Time In The Universe. Guess which show won.

The Book Of Bobby

Grateful Read

Used books on Amazon are, like, a buck. Figure three to ship. Four American dollars can get you a brand-new used book about, concerning, or by the Grateful Dead. These are the ones that are currently in my home. Actually, they’re not just in my home, they’re piled right in front of me, right next to the computer, which is playing the Dead (4/1/88) while I write this nonsense about the Dead. Out of the six tabs I have open, three are in some way Dead-related.

If the cries for help had previously been implicit, they are now made flesh. Yes, on one hand, it’s better than sitting there watching TV, but just barely.

Anyway, so these are the books I own (currently, but we’ll get to that) about the Dead, along with thoughts on the Dead books. (Did you see what I just did there? I worked my brand into the mix and resold it to you. I have mastered the bloggings!)

Here we go:

Long Strange Trip, by Dennis McNally. This one’s the big swingin’ dick of Dead books. The Official Saga.

Garcia by Blair Jackson. This book has sad.

Dark Star: An Oral Autobiography of Jerry Garcia by Robert Greenfield. There’s a great intro by Bobby in my edition. He almost immediately mentions his days ropin’ and a ridin’. Bobby spent a summer on a ranch once. Bobby had gotten thrown out of three boarding schools that year and his parents had had about enough of his bullshit and shipped him off to some friend of their cousin’s cow-shit factory and for 50 years, we’ve had to politely go along with the fact that Bobby actually thinks he’s a fucking cowboy.

Searching for the Sound by Phil Lesh. Very tough to make fun of this book, even though making fun of Phil is so satisfying. He comes off as a sincere Musician and Seeker, who lived through some groovy–but also very dark and sad!–times who was saved by a Waffle House waitress named Jill and is now a devoted family man. Which is, of course, the problem: Phil’s writing the book for his fucking kids. He takes the high road: the word “anal” does not appear anywhere in the book, which is odd because Phil had this thing he liked to do to groupies that was called a Phil Bomb. I want to love Phil’s book; I root for the guy. But, wow, is Scully’s book more fun. Which is sad, because Phil reaches for nobility with some rather lumpy prose while Scully is the worst scumbag that ever managed the Dead. DO YOU REALIZE HOW HIGH THAT BAR IS SET?

Living with the Dead by Rock Scully and David Dalton. In which we learn that Mountain Girl was a Mean Girl, Bobby was a cheesedick, Billy was a ephebophile, and Garcia smelled.  The existence of this noxious gossip is only tempered by the knowledge that Scully wrote this with a gun to his head, an actual thuggish man shoving a Ruger into poor Rock’s temple and demanding that he write the book.  What? He did it for the money? He supplied his friend with heroin for a decade and then wrote a book about his hygiene for a check in the mid-5 figures? There’s a Yiddish word for a guy like that: asshole.

Going Down the Road by Blair Jackson. Interview with the band, plus lots and lots of padding that no one–and I am including the author of said padding–has ever read.

Playing in the Band by David Gans and Peter Simon. Pictures and interviews. Great cover photo: they are all so greasy, unshaven, and surly-looking. They look like a gang rape about to break out. They scare me, but I like it  a little bit; they’re gonna have their way with me, but I’m gonna let them: that sort of vibe. (Did that just get weird? It got weird; I apologize.)

Skeleton Key: A Dictionary for Deadheads by David Shenk and Steve Silberman. A nifty little time capsule from 90’s Deadhead-land. A little skewed towards prep school douchebaggery, but entertaining and charming.

The American Book of the Dead: The Definitive Grateful Dead Encyclopedia by Oliver Trager. So much cool stuff in this thing. I wrote a post about it here.

Dead to the Core: An Almanack of the Grateful Dead by Eric F. Wybenga.  I’m going to write a whole post about this guy’s book, it’s so great.

The Book Full of Nonsense Sam Cutler Wrote by Sam Cutler. This is just a joke. I have read Sam Cutler’s book, and enjoyed it thoroughly without believing for one second that even a plurality of the stories aren’t complete bullshit. But I no longer own it, so looking up the title would require research. And you all know my stance on that.

White Lovelight, White Heat

The Velvet Underground thought the Dead were sexist and homophobic and probably imperialist and definitely goofy. Most of the thing can be understood nearly instantly by realizing that the VU was made up of over-educated New Yorkers, with all the connotation that “over-educated New Yorker” entails.  Yeah, I went there.

Were the Dead homophobic? I’ve never read any stories about them acting untoward. Although–and I always thought it was odd for a band from San Francisco–there were never any stories about the Dead vis-a-vis gaiety at all.

Now, sexist?

From September of ’79 to March of ’83, Billy invoked the ancient rite of Prima Nocte over the backstage area, but luckily for all involved, Billy usually just wanted a rubdown and a tugger. And he would always share his coke: Billy was good like that.

The Dead were kind of hairy and macho. Sure, they had Donna in the group, but she was really just Keith’s old lady that Bobby was banging. She was incidental. No one ever made a mix tape called Donna Jams, nor has anyone ever sold a bumper sticker with a clever Donna-inspired pun.

“Who’s your favorite member of the Dead? Garcia? Phil?”

“No, man, it’s the chick who looks like Sacheen Littlefeather who caterwauls nine or ten times a show. She’s all the Dead I need!”

They did employ more women than most rock outfits of the time, and in creative positions: Candace Brightman and Betty Canter come to mind.

Apparently, the Dead had appeared on the same bill as the Velvet Underground and, of course, both bands brought their entire scenes with them and it turned into a full-fledged hip-off. The VU sat there in their leathers and sniffed condescendingly at the hairy baboons from San Francisco. (It was probably condescending: there was an enormous amount of sniffing going on.) Instant utter hatred.

Which is not surprising: a good hate requires a bit of reflection. Who can hate something alien properly? To truly hate, we need to recognize ourself in the person, place, or thing that has so struck our ire. Both bands played songs for 45 minutes while deliberately declining to make eye contact with anyone in the room. Both had a weird rich benefactor, a pretentious bass player, and a drummer with a vagina.

(That’s right: Mickey has a vagina. In the womb, he ate his twin sister and the ‘gina just showed up on his shoulder. It is fully-functioning and Mickey introduces it into love-making by asking if his partners would like to go to “ninth base.”)

The story also might be colored by the fact that, at the time, both bands were made up of raging drug addicts. The VU, notably, preferred to intravenously self-administer amphetamines constantly. Literally constantly: if they were not actively shooting up, they were helping you look for the money that they had stolen from you. The Velvet Underground liked to stay up for six days straight turning tricks and accusing each other of things. The Velvet Underground were just the worst fucking people in the world.

So, I’m not taking their word for it.

ADDENDUM: Rereading this post, I am ashamed to see that I have not linked to the essay that inspired it. My apologies to the author and to people in general and also ducks.

Is Very Bad When Drumming Stop…

Billy was the engine, even though he has never been seen in the same room as Brian Doyle-Murray. In between tours, Billy would yell and yell at those damn caddies to make something of themselves but they never listened. Billy had a Hawaiian shirt thing going on, and he spread it like a virus to successive keyboardists. Billy looks like he might have enjoyed starting fights. Billy is an Uncle: the ‘stache, the smirk.

But listen to ’73. No Mickey forcing everyone to sit there while he learns to play the kshdbviyus, the new percussion instrument he discovered in the village of extraordinarily foreign people, people so foreign that you secretly hate them because you sense they’re intentionally trying to be so foreign but whom Mickey will invariably refer to as “my brothers in drums.” Mickey was always saying shit like that when he wasn’t flying into rages and tackling business associates in restaurants. Mickey sounded like a lot of fun.

Now, when the two of them were on, they were unbelievable–this churning graceful giant. But, listen to 1973 when it’s just Billy out there. That motherfucker earns his mustache night in and night out.

I Need To Stop Buying Dead Books Off Amazon

Did you know Bobby wrote a children’s book? He did, in 1991. It was called Panther Dreams. Because of course it was. It had an environmental theme. Again, because of course it did. (Were the Dead that fucking famous in ’91? Children’s books are some high-level Regis and Madonna famous person bullshit.)

Tarot. Do you remember Tarot? It was the play TC left the Dead to score. Did you know it was a mime musical? This is a fact: I am not making it up.  Tom Constanten was the Crispin Glover of his time.

Bobby’s looks were becoming a problem. The problem was, Bobby was a pretty young man. Which meant he could essentially wear clown clothes and make them work, but when a man gets older, dignity should take the forefront. The pretty do not learn dignity.

Robert Hunter recorded an album called Amalgamalin Street. It was described as both an “audio novel” and a “rock-opera.” It was about a guy named Chet. WHAT THE FUCK IS WRONG WITH THESE PEOPLE?

Sweet heavenly hosts, I’m sitting here listening to them, while I read and write about them. These baboons have infiltrated my very Essence. they have befouled me like worse than Billy did that Holiday Inn that time in Des Moines when he got bored. No, not that time: the other time. No, the other time.

Mickey spoke in front of the Senate? The real one, not a bunch of dogs wearing human shirts Steve Parrish wrangled in the parking lot? The actual human Senate of the United States? In this reality? Not in some Quantum Leap type deal? (Billy could totally play Dead Stockton.) The same year he also produced an album called Honor the Earth Powwow? What a world we created.

The American Book of the Dead by Oliver Trager is awesome.

By the way: Mickey spoke in front of Senate about the benefits of drum circles for the elderly. Because of course he did.

Or-Not Coleman

Sometimes the Dead would try to sound like this record, Free Jazz. It was by Ornette Coleman and also featured Eric Dolphy and a bunch of other guys who wore clothes you could never in your wildest dreams pull off. Lots of chocolate-brown trousers with immaculate creases and cigarette ashes caught in the cuffs.

This music was to the Grateful Dead what the Grateful Dead was to keyboardists: a bad influence. Go back and listen to that nonsense again. It is skreeking and skronking and the odd thing is: they’re sure that they’re killing it. At least when Lou Reed made Metal Machine Music, you knew it was the simple combination of Being the World’s Biggest Junkie and Being the World’s Biggest Asshole.

When I hear this, I hear space, and when I hear space, I just want to go around slapping people. My hand would chafe until the skin just sloughed right off, like a snake’s–that’s how many slaps I want to give out when the Noodle Monster shows its mangy face.

The Other Ones

Bill Graham used to introduce the band by saying, “Not only are they THE BEST at what they do, they’re also THE ONLY ONES who do what they do: Ladies and Gentlemen, the Grateful Dead.” Which was elegant and eloquent but not quite true.

Miles Davis’ 70’s bands were doing the same thing as the Dead, except without any first set niceties. Miles and the Dead shared a San Francisco stage right after Miles’ masterpiece (that should probably read “right after one of the many, many masterpieces he produced), Bitches Brew came out. Miles had been working with an electric bass player since about the moment he decided, “I must destroy this concept of the song. There is no Song! Songs were invented by white devils! I’m just going to find a bunch of musicians and freak out for 60 minutes at a time.”

Miles, as usual, is not telling you the whole story. That “bunch of musicians” has to include Jack DeJohnette and Keith Jarrett and Herbie Hancock and Wayne Shorter or the entire plan falls apart. Plus, Miles’ bands are sometimes mired in the jazz tradition of laying back while someone solos, instead of the full-band improvisational composition that the Dead do. You know what I’m talking about: the stuff that’s worth sitting through all the nonsense and noodling for. When the boys flow from one song through another and back and you never realize what they’ve done until you’re already amazed; it’s a musical magical trick when they do it right.

Miles was sometimes accused of cynicism: that his ’70’s electric period was not purely a musical journey, just an excuse to go from his usual clubs to playing the much larger (and therefore more lucrative) halls and theaters that the bands on the rock circuit did. This might have been one reason, sure, but you can never discount the possibility that Miles just didn’t want to rehearse anymore, as it took time away from driving a Lamborghini packed with white women through city streets at 100 mph, then accusing the officer that pulled him over of being–dependent on the situation–“a racist cracker-ass cracker,” or “an Uncle Tom motherfucker.” Miles was a real piece of work.

There was another band criss-crossing the country in the 1970’s trying to Reconnect with The Holy through playing really loud and long: P-Funk. Whatever the hell George Clinton was calling whichever group of guys were in the room when they made the record: Parliament, Funkadelic, the P-Funk All-Stars, Funk-isyahu and the Klezmer Kids, whatever.

P-Funk was the answer to the question, “What if we gave poor black kids in Jersey and middle-class white kids in San Francisco the exact same drugs and massive amplifiers?’

And, of course: the leaders of all three of these groups are dead. I know George Clinton thinks he is still alive, but he died three years ago–trust me on this one.