Tag: Bob Dylan

R.I.P., Bob Weir

~ Patrick O'Grady ~ 13 Comments
Bob Weir fronting the Grateful Dead in Switzerland back in 1972.

“Lately it occurs to me / what a long strange trip it’s been.” — Robert Hunter, Jerry Garcia, Bob Weir, Phil Lesh

Bob Weir is off truckin’ for real now. The Grateful Dead mainstay was last seen headed west at 78. Years, not miles per hour.

I was never a huge Grateful Dead fan, though for years I looked more or less like their target market.

But who in their right minds, or even the wrong ones, didn’t love “Truckin’?” I mean, other than Robert Crumb, who came to hate his iconic “Keep On Truckin'” cartoon after it took off without him seeking someone else’s fortune, copyright law be damned.

I saw the Dead just once, on Sept. 3, 1972, at Folsom Field in Boulder. No idea how I got there — I may have had a driver’s license by then, but certainly no car. Could be I caught a ride with my old high-school bro’ and fellow music lover Bruce Gibson, if he wasn’t already in the Navy by then. I was in my first year at Adams State College in Alamosa, missing the dean’s list by light-years but probably making it onto a few less sought-after rosters.

We were way up in the cheap seats, and someone in the band — Jerry Garcia, maybe? — started throwing shiny objects to the crowd. Couldn’t quite make out what they were, thanks to our distance from the stage and the platoon of brain invaders setting up a perimeter in my cerebellum.

“Hell’s that?” I mumbled. “Cans of beer? Silver dollars?”

Nope. It was lids. Of weed. Oh, how I wanted me some of that San Francisco treat. But I seemed to have been lag-bolted to my seat in the nosebleed section and my mind soon wandered off by itself, muttering, “Forget this dude, he ain’t going nowhere.”

It came back, of course. Hence this blog.

It may be a while before we see Bob Weir again, Dog willing. But when we do, he’ll be jamming with Jerry, Phil Lesh, Pigpen, Robert Hunter and the rest of the old gang. Peace to him, his family, friends, and fans.

Today’s forecast: A hard rain

~ Patrick O'Grady ~ 12 Comments

Oh, boy, it’s gonna be fun driving a high-profile vehicle on the I-5 in California today as the 155mm artillery rounds from Camp Pendleton sail overhead.

The good news is, it should be awful quiet at the National Nuclear Security Administration come Monday. Or so we may hope, anyway.

Some people voted for this shit. I sure hope they like the taste.

And what did you hear, my blue-eyed son?
And what did you hear, my darling young one?
I heard the sound of a thunder, it roared out a warnin’
Heard the roar of a wave that could drown the whole world
Heard one hundred drummers whose hands were a-blazin’
Heard ten thousand whisperin’ and nobody listenin’
Heard one person starve, I heard many people laughin’
Heard the song of a poet who died in the gutter
Heard the sound of a clown who cried in the alley
And it’s a hard, and it’s a hard, it’s a hard, it’s a hard
And it’s a hard rain’s a-gonna fall

Sun of a bitch

~ Patrick O'Grady ~ 16 Comments

Doctor, my eyes. …

El Rancho Pendejo in The Duck! City was the perfect spot to catch the 2023 annular solar eclipse.

Herself scored some paper safety goggles and we inspected the celestial event at our leisure, from the back patio.

Things grew dark and chilly, the birds went all radio silence, and the sun looked like a big Power button just waiting for Someone to click it off. Happily, no one did.

And you bet your ass I howled at the sucker like a werewolf. Got to keep the neighbors on their toes.

The light throughout was truly weird, with acid-flashback shadows on the brick pavers and concrete walkway. Put me in mind of Mark Twain’s “A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur’s Court” it did.

You see, it was the eclipse. It came into my mind in the nick of time, how Columbus, or Cortez, or one of those people, played an eclipse as a saving trump once, on some savages, and I saw my chance. I could play it myself, now, and it wouldn’t be any plagiarism, either, because I should get it in nearly a thousand years ahead of those parties.

But unlike Hank Morgan, I couldn’t derive any profit from the eclipse; our modern lords and ladies mostly keep their heads where the sun don’t ever shine, preferring to work their mischiefs in the dark. So I just enjoyed it.

All along the walkway, princes kept the view.

Happy birthday, Bob Dylan

~ Patrick O'Grady ~ 28 Comments

The Master’s eighth studio album.

I backed into Bob Dylan, the way you might bump into an interesting character at someone else’s party.

“Mr. Tambourine Man?” The Byrds sang me that one. “Blowin’ in the Wind?” Peter, Paul and Mary. “All Along the Watchtower?” Heard it first from Jimi Hendrix. I don’t think I really got into the guy that Chazbo Pierce calls “The Master” until “John Wesley Harding” came out in 1967, shortly after my family moved from San Antone to Bibleburg.

My friends and I played the shit out of that one, and then I started rooting around through his back catalog.

I lost interest after Bob found the Lord, though I dug “Gotta Serve Somebody” and “Everything Is Broken.” These days I only have the old stuff — “Blonde On Blonde,” “Blood On the Tracks,” “Bringing it All Back Home,” “The Freewheeling Bob Dylan,” and “Highway 61 Revisited.” You’ll find more killer tracks on those five albums than most singer-songwriters could produce in five lifetimes.

As Thomas McGuane put it in “Nothing But Blue Skies”:

No one compares with this guy, thought Frank. I feel sorry for the young people of today with their stupid fucking tuneless horseshit; that may be a generational judgment but I seriously doubt it.

Extra-Credit Dylan:

• At Esquire, Charles P. Pierce discusses the old soul of The Master.

• At The New York Times, Jason Zinoman calls Dylan our most underrated comic, arguing that he belongs “in the pantheon of great Jewish funnymen.”