should i give the grateful dead a chance?

as mentioned upthread, Mr Veg worked for Bill Graham in mid-late 80s...he worked pretty much every SF Dead show plus Electric on the Eel and all those hippy shows. And the 85 summer tour - Oakland, Berkeley, the whole Bay. The stories are 0_o ...and he still has all those laminates so you can kind of see the horror :) Smacked out hangers-on backstage and everyone is a "friend of Jerry's", Deadheads blacking out in the parking lot from too much nitrous and flopping all over the place, kids selling bunches of sage, stoned Deadheads raiding the hot dog/nacho condiments for "deadhead salad" ...and all the weird medical emergencies from bad trips, od's and dehydration..and 20 shows like that in a month...I cant even imagine.

Nitrous is "okay" in small doses if you a) limit the amount you do or b) do it with someone who can stop you going too far. Fuckwits with giant balloons or a tank all to themselves are just asking for trouble.

"I can't stand it backstage. Too many geeks."--Jerry Garcia

back on track:

the seastones thing linked upthread is pretty out there stuff!

Not that anyone cares, but my five favorite Dead songs:

Ramble on Rose
Brown Eyed Women
He's Gone
Brokedown Palace
Standing on the Moon

Yeah, I really like the batch of originals on Europe '72.

Those are great ones.

yeah those are some of my faves on that album. albums. great music.

One thing about Garcia is that he played slow better than anyone, like his cover of Dylan's "Senor," "Stella Blue," "Row Jimmy," "Must Have Been the Roses." And the aforementioned "Standing on the Moon," one of their last, great songs. Lovely lyric too ("I hear the cries of children") aside.

ooh i'd like to hear them do senor, that's one of my fav dylan songs

Garcia Band did a great, creepy version:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MTjjd4OZIz0

garcia was great covering dylan. his version of "it's all over now baby blue" is fab. almost as good as 13th floor elevator's. almost.

feel like there was some rumor that dylan was supposed to record an album w/ the dead as his backing band in the early 70s, but it never happened obviously. would've been better than "dylan & the dead," that's for sure!

One thing about Garcia is that he played slow better than anyone

This is so key and OTM. That Dylan and the Dead album still pisses me off which such squandered opportunity, considering some of the great performances that are out there. Lately I've been spending a lot of time with the Soldier Field version of "So Many Roads" which, surprisingly, is a real gem among the end-era stuff.

That was discussed at one point. Dylan loved Garcia and vice-versa, they drew from the same sources, though the story goes that Dylan started using heroin again with Garcia, for the first time since the '60s, while on the Dylan-Dead tour, one of those reasons why that tour sucked so bad. And according to the book "Dark Star" Dylan was visibly despondant at Garcia's funeral and looked like he'd been weeping a lot.

“There’s no way to measure his greatness or magnitude as a person or a player. I don’t think any eulogizing will do him justice. He was that great, much more than a superb musician, with an uncanny ear and dexterity. He’s the very spirit personified of whatever is Muddy River country at its core and screams up into the spheres. He really had no equal. To me, he wasn’t only a musician and friend, he was more like a big brother who taught and showed me more than he’ll ever know. There’s a lot of spaces and advances between The Carter Family, Buddy Holly and say Ornette Coleman, a lot of universes, but he filled them all without being a member of any school. His playing was moody, awesome, sophisticated, hypnotic and subtle. There’s no way to convey the loss. It just digs down really deep.”-Bob Dylan

^^^love that
i think dylan was just in a weird place in 1987. even though you'd never know it from that album, by all accounts, he was really into playing with the dead. or at least jerry. i think that he asked if he could join the band full time ... and they said no!

and i didn't know that dylan used heroin w/ garcia in the 80s? is that true? weird.

That's the rumor (in the book "A Simple Twist of Fate"), I really don't know if it's true or not.

Supposedly Phil Lesh hated Dylan and is the one that veto'd the idea of Dylan joining the band; the rest wanted him to, but in the Dead organization, any member had veto power (and no one uses it more than Lesh).

i would use veto power too, if my name was listed on dylan & the dead. seriously the only dylan album i would never vouch for.

I used to drink way too much in this dive bar that John Barlow (Bob Weir's lyricist) hung out at, and during one of our drunken conversations he said "The worst joke god ever played was giving a mean snake like Dylan so much talent." He also said of Bob Weir, "I wish I'd had a colloborator who had a sense of melody."

The Dylan-Dead rehearsal tapes are awesome though. Dunno what happened live.

lol, poor weir.
yeah, there's good stuff that i've heard from the rehearsals and other live tapes. but that album is terrible.

Indeed it is. And I love pretty much all Dylan - even his bad albums - but Dylan & the Dead is the worst of the lot by a mile.

xp love those moments in Stella Blues or China Dolls where it gets so slow and precious that time stands still and hanging out in the abyss, even if only for a few seconds, feels so good

Tyler, did you ever check out that Nashville Dead show on archive? I'm listening to bits of it again today; it's not start-to-finish great, but Jerry's guitar tone is ripping, and Bobby's playing way more slide than I'm accustomed to.

yeah i think i listened to most of that one, definitely a great jerry show.

Dylan started using heroin again with Garcia, for the first time since the '60s,

?!? where does this come from. never heard of Dylan using heroin ever. Speed, yes, but smack...?

yeah, i think there are just rumors about the 1966 period. nothing very concrete, though.

^^It should also be noted that Dylan's herion use was one of AJ Weberman's big talking points.

which basically means it's not true, right?

Probably, but I imagine Dylan at least tried it once at the time "to see what all the fuss was about".

Weberman's a kook, deeply mentally ill, though I used to buy weed from him. Until his giant delivery service got busted and he went to jail.

He also believes that Dylan has AIDS.

What do you suppose Dylan is on here?:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=94yx1VtVHGg

Alcohol, pills, weed, smack? He's definitely more than drunk.

yeah, i'd believe heroin there.

Somepeople in Dylan's most inner circle were junkies: Howard Alk (who lived on his property for years and edited 'Eat the Document' with him); Victor Maymudes, who was his main roadie / bodyguard throughout the '60s. Not to mention some of the alums of his never ending tour backing band, in particular Bucky Baxter. Tony Garnier, who is still in the band, was on it for a long time as well, though he is clean these days.

Oops drifted away from the Dead again, sorry.

Man, that is a great "Senor". JGB better than the Dead for me from 80s on, just got sick of all things Weir for the most part.

Just posted on the "Most Beautiful Songs" thread about the mightiness of "Stella Blue" and even threw out that it was a great converter for those who don't think they can stand the Dead. Just a flat-out gorgeous song.

Drugs, the Dead-same thing.

(x-post)

Agree on JGB, I like them better than the Dead - no Lesh, no Weir = better (for me, personally speaking).

i've been really digging the saunders/garcia live stuff from the 70s too.

And also, Jerry in control of all things=consistently good songs for the most part. Dead sets just included too many duds for at a certain point, but really I am a big 60s early-70s fan, slightly less so with each year of the Dead's existence barring a song here or there. JGB touched on some other things I could really dig and left the spotlight firmly on Jerry. Also I have a very low Mickey Hart tolerance, liked the single-drummer Dead in some ways a lot more as well.

I do like the JGB stuff, but I have a low tolerance for the gospel-style back-up singing. I can deal with it for a song or two, but in this context it doesn't always work for me.

Yeah, I get that. Always a trade-off it seems.

Ah this thread is reminding me of a guy I knew in architectural school that listened exclusively to the Dead and Garcia-related stuff. I mean, 100%, thats it. 85% of his stuff was live tapes, but when he felt he needed "a break" from the Dead, he switched over to like Garcia/Grisman stuff for a few weeks. Nicest dude ever, but I would find that stifling. For the most part, the Dead and/or Phish fans I knew back in school had really wide-ranging tastes.

Hah, the Dead and Phish fans I knew in school had generally limited tastes! There was a small world of "good" music which consisted of select Herbie Hancock and jazz (mostly fusion) records, a smattering of reggae, the Alman Brothers, Zappa, and a few random other things. Mostly stuff that facilitated imbiging something or had lengthy, virtuosic solos.

Yeah, I like them but i think listening to them (or anyone else, really) "exclusively" would be rough.

i really dig this album too! forgot about this one.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GswPO2eX_VI

I think I want to just live in Scott's store for a week and listen to whatever he does.

Very true about Dead / Phisheads and their limited musical range.

But the same could be said about a lot of kids I knew who were into punk. Punk and punk only, everything else crap.

One of my major eureka momenst as a teenager was realizing that it's possible to like the Dead AND punk. Wow! Negative capability! Sounds dumb but a big lightbulb went off in my head.

In the '80s and especially the '90s, there was nothing less cool than liking the Dead. By the '90s it was for frat boys, even. Interesting to see things come around again.

Uh, lightbulb went "on", I mean.

now playing:

http://www.vinylnet.co.uk/gallery/robert%20hunter%20-%20liberty.JPG

Which Hunter album has him doing Terrapin Station with a whole other section (Ivory wheels on a rosewood track or something) that the dead didn't use?

One thing about Garcia is that he played slow better than anyone, like his cover of Dylan's "Senor," "Stella Blue," "Row Jimmy," "Must Have Been the Roses." And the aforementioned "Standing on the Moon," one of their last, great songs. Lovely lyric too ("I hear the cries of children") aside.

― thirdalternative, Thursday, April 21, 2011 2:02 PM (1 hour ago) Bookmark Suggest Ban Permalink

china doll and ship of fools too. mars hotel is pretty great.