Lay Your Money Down

This book about How to be Like the Grateful Dead in the Business Places or Something: Business Innovations from the Long Strange Trip. Close to that, but the actual title is under the page on which I am working and I am just that committed to doing NOT ONE jot of research for these bloggings, even when now I kind of want to know. I shall, however, resist.

A book like this can succeed on two fronts: it might have cool new photos or stories about the band, or it might have a coherent and well-considered thesis that the presence of the Dead only augments. The book falls short in both categories. There are some good pictures, but nothing revelatory. There are, for instance, no photos of Billy in his Spring '85 tour alter ego.

Billy always adopted a tour alter ego, someone to transform into when the romping got to stomping and the hotel bar started eyeballing him. Billy's tour alter ego was usually a horrible, vicious man named The Chasm. Luckily for some, Billy would presage the arrival of The Chasm, announcing in the style of the delightful street urchins on The Wire, "Chasm coming!" and everybody would just clear right out except for one guy who would lazily wobble his head towards Billy and ask, "Chasm? Cool, man. Is he holding?"

CROTCH!

But 1985 was different. The entire band had been out of their heads on the MDMA that tour, but Billy had shifted paradigms on 'em again and undergone a massive change in temperament, renaming himself Slobber T. Johnson. He'd walk around pantless with his crank in his hand sweetly inquiring of anyone who passed by, "Hello, I'm Slobber T. Johnson. Are you slobbering johnsons? My johnson sure does need a slobber, you johnsonslobberer, you." and it just goes on like that.

So not only does it disappoint that there are no pictures of the event, it also confirms my skepticism about the whole project as just a cheapjack move to make some blood-money. [EDIT: In no way is the income derived from writing a semi-serious book about a country-rock jam band "blood money." We renounce the writer of the previous statement, and as all-powerful editor, replace him with ourself.] FREEDOM! [Who let him out? Who the fuck let him out?] I will DESTROY the SOUL of the UNIVERSE unless you RELINQUISH the GAUNTLET OF GANTHET! [Shit, he's fully capitalizing now. It's bad.] The JAWS of my DARK ANUS will CHOMP on your NETHERS until you--

Guys. Guys, enough. Thank you: it was cute until the "dark anus" and then...you know, we just can't be having it around the kids.

I am SORRY.

[My bad.]

Back to work, now.

The entire concept of this silly book is that you should take advice from a group of orangutans who had had more than one conversation involving the phrase, "He went where with the money?" Normal human beings might have that conversation once due to no fault of their own, but they never have it twice. You pay attention the second time. Not our heroes. For all we know, they might have chosen who to give the money to by who had the most pocket space. The Dead leaked a lot of cash. They behaved, in other words, completely contrary to every business practice known to man.

I'm betting the book is going to hit on the Dead's early adoption of fan clubs and mailing lists as some sort of evidence that the Dead "really were the first social networkers." Next time someone tries to tell you that the telegraph was the Victorian twitter or somesuch, headbutt that fucker til he dies.

Shit Grateful Deads Say

• I spent a million dollars on this thing.
• Hey, Healy? Could you turn me up a bit? I can't hear myself over Lesh and Weir.
• You smell like Heineken; let me have your liver.
• Fuckin' Weir.
• Fuckin' drummers.
• FUCKIN' DONNA!
• Healy, if I still can't hear my bass 60 seconds from now, I'm going to stab you. I will physically stab you with an actual knife. You need to bring it up at 800 cycles...that's it: Ramrod, bring me my knife.
• No, Ramrod: to ME my blade.
• Bring everyone their knives, Ramrod!
• Would someone pull Mickey off that cop? Just grab him, but be careful...OOH, I should have told you that Billy was probably gonna punch you in the dick. He does that and other human beings seem to just accept it.
• Jerry, get out of the bathroom.
• No, not "I need a million dollars." I told you that I have already spent a million dollars and now the million dollars is gone forever and we will almost certainly never get one cent of it back. What did I do with it? Stop hassling me, man.
• Yes, of course it seems perfectly logical that we allow the crew to have a full vote on everything we do. How can that be anything but a sound business practice that will, in no way, end in numerous deaths. Why do you ask?
• Who the fuck bought a harpsichord?
• Yeah, they call me Captain Billy; I'm kinda the captain. Would you like to touch the captain in a sensual way? Come! Let Captain Billy practice his sensuality all over you, my zaftig nightchild!
• Soooo...you should just assume that every single thing you see is just absolutely drenched with acid. All of it, even on the insides of things in defiance of all laws of nature. We encourage a culture in which is acceptable to drug one another at any time with any amount of any drug. Some workplaces have fantasy football; we have chosen to amuse ourselves through poisoning one another. We have almost definitely poisoned you already. Enjoy your backstage passes, Congressmen.
• Healy, can you--
• --Healy, you turn him up and I'm gonna buy, raise, and train attack dogs--like Michael Vick-type shit--and then I will set them on you and fucking LAUGH.
• --you're just, like, mean.

Can You Pass The Test?

Grateful Dead imbibing game. Pick a show at random. Not from 1995: have more respect for yourself, would you please?

The rules:

• If Phil plays an unaccompanied bass solo, drink a Heineken. If, somewhere in the solo he hits a note that makes no sense whatsoever, drink another Heineken. If you rationalize it by telling yourself that Phil is a musical genius and means every single note, so therefore you just didn’t understand what Phil was laying down, then drink the rest of the case and imagine Phil playing in Puerto Rico and giving the donor rap in halting, old white guy Spanish.

“Me llamo Philipe. Tiene oído absoluto. Dame tus hepáticas. DAME TUS HEPATICAS!”

• If Billy’s the only drummer, bet $50 that the Smails kid will pick his nose. If Mickey’s there, give your horse one hit of acid every time you can name the thing that Mickey’s hitting during drums. If he is hitting Ramrod, two hits. If he hits an executive from the record company, take the horse outside and free that majestic steed, who won’t survive two or three hours wandering through a town, especially after you fed it all that acid, you MONSTER.
• They play Might as Well and you think about watching Festival Express again–take a shot and demand your local diner give away their food “to the people, maaaaaaaaaan.”
• They play New Speedway Boogie and you feel like watching Gimme Shelter again–take a fistful of LSD and seconal, put on a bear hat, and beat Marty Balin half to death with a pool cue. (Who brings a pool-cue to a concert? Shouldn’t that have been, you know: a clue? “Sorry, guys, you can’t come in: I think you might be looking to cause trouble. Just a guess.”)
• If they play Dire Wolf–drink red whiskey for dinner. Then realize there’s no such thing as red whiskey so how did my whiskey get redOMIGOD SOMEONE BLED IN MY FUCKING WHISKEY.
• If Bobby screws up a lyric–do nothing. Mentioning that Bobby screwed up a lyric is like mentioning that Billy played drums: it’s not a bug, it’s a feature. If Bobby gets every single word to Truckin’ right, go buy yourself the tightest, Izod-iest shirt you can find and pop that collar, baby.
• If they tune for one minute–hit of Persian. If they tune in the middle of the song–burn yourself with a cigarette while you sleep. If they play a song in the middle of tuning–burn someone else with a cigarette while they sleep.
• If Pig’s in the band and they play Lovelight and you still can’t figure out what the hell “Box back nitties, great bigging on the vine,” means–get drunk off a pint of cheap whiskey you keep in the back pocket of greasy Levi’s, have shouty drunken sex with Janis Joplin, and then wear a series of ridiculous hats, but actually look really cool in them.