As Shortie said when we were discussing it, "You're body just isn't supposed to bend like that."
Shortie is a
huge fan of Jerry Garcia. And I do mean Jerry Garcia, not just Grateful Dead, though that may be her main love. She's loved them for ages, and I guess, who can really blame her. I went through a bit of a Dead phase in high school, but it was mainly their Skeleton's in the Closet CD.
I remember having a discussion junior year in college, with a bunch of pretty preppy girls, and they were discussing how everyone goes through a hippie or punk stage. I mean, this one girl was talking about her hippie phase in high school, and I couldn't even fucking imagine it.
I still think she was lying.
Perhaps a hippie phase is a rite of passage that everyone does take and some people just don't grow out of.
I now know, for certain, that some just
don't.
Due to the fact that Shortie was nice enough to accompany me to Iota for the Joseph Arthur concert, I agreed to go with her for the Jerry Garcia tribute concert on Tuesday.
And if anything, it was not all for naught considering I found out that August 9th is big because it was also the same day that Nixon resigned. Trivia fact I won't forget for at least a week.
I have never been to a Dead show, nor have I been to a Phish concert so I wasn't quite sure what kind of crowd to expect at the tribute concert, but I would have to say that Shortie and I were well below the mean age. Now there were some 'younger' people our age, some that were
hot, but not that many. It seems that those preppy boys in New England travel down south too.
The place was fucking packed to the gills. I was surprised to say the least. Most of all when there was a person who traveled from California.
California. For the concert. Like, dude, the man is dead and the person singing there on the stage
'sn't him. Not only that, but you're like at least mid-thirties and you've got a mouthful of fucking metal. I'm totally not standing next to you during a summer storm. When she was on stage for accepting her prize for traveling the furthest and she smiled, I thought I was going to be blinded by the reflection bouncing from her gaping maw. I know. It's a framed photo. It's cool. But try and not catch too many bugs.
As Shortie and I arrived early )she was taking pictures of the band for the band, so needed to be there early for a good spot), we found a space by the bar to order our drinks. Unfortunately it was next to one of the 'different' patrons who were excited about hearing Jerry's music. He immediately started blathering on to us about something, I can't even remember fucking what. I just remember thinking, a) where the fuck did the bartender go? and b) dude. Buy yourself some teeth. Everyone past the age of 40 does it. When there is nothing stopping any foreign object from getting into your mouth when it's in a closed position, it's time to look into some fucking options. There was also, of course, the last thought of, shut your fucking trap
fuckwit.
I was a little tired and cranky.
I remember that Vh1 earlier this year was running a spcial on like high school fads or something. Or my high school years or something, and then had stars talking about them. One of them was a hippie one, and it had people talking about getting stoned and going to the different concerts. One of them, I believe it was Jim Breuer (good choice Vh1!), talking about the stoner hippie dance that everyone would do but was atrocious.
I had never seen it before Tuesday night.
It only took one song before some dude with his tie-dyed shirt with the Dead and long stringy hippy hair with no shoes busted to the front and started doing the dance. I mean. I think you could scare away people with the dance. It doesn't go along with the music. It looks a-tro-cious and ridiculous, wrapped in a 'what the fuck are you doing still dancing like this in your mid-40's' all wrapped into one. I was standing there thinking, Are you fucking kidding me? Then the mobs started joining in.
I can't even quite describe it. It's sorts of like, you know where if you were walking in a sheet and pretending to be a ghost with your arms out and walking in a weird way? It's kind of like that with a vicious bopping added to it. And this one dude, who should totally be sore, was doing this aggravated bopping back and forth. I'm surprised he didn't actually
hurt someone.
Then of course there was the corporate sell-out trying to dance with his girlfriend. If you're wearing an ironed white short-sleeved button down shirt and front pleated khakis looking like any other geek drone, you're not allowed to try and rock out to Jerry's music. Or block my fucking view of the band, or almost step on me because you're trying to 'dance.' Fucker.
Then there was the other guy, clearly old, I mean count the number of hairs left on your head to tell your age, who replaced the annoying metronome dancer and starting doing a weird fucking fusion of the shake with a stoner movement. And get in my personal space and step on me. I was here first and you're just being obnoxious. Shake that flabby old ass
away from me and towards the stage!
When not infringing on my personal space it was really funny, and the band did a really good of covering the songs and sending a good vibe to the crowd. They had this one musician with them, who played with Jerry at a concert and was fucking awesome. He had more soul in his tambourine than the entire band combined with the audience. He fucking rocked, especially when he got the lead on some songs. The voice and harmonica playing was almost what really made it for me.
What was interesting as well, was the size of the band. They had all the instruments, and as I told Shortie in the beginning, which? To make this easier for me from now on, I'm reverting to her nickname Stretch gave her in college. Sorry Killer. Hope you're not confused. Plus? I got bored with Shortie. I digress. So, I was telling Killer that I was excited someone was going to be playing the fiddle, because I really do love me some good, live fiddle playing in a band. And the girl was really good at it too.
I think stoners might single-handedly be the reason why there is the stigma that white men can't dance.
Or maybe they should really restrict that to, white
straight men can't dance.
