Dead Songs in Depth

    
Right! That's a good thing. And I will definitely keep in touch with
this topic.
  

    

Talk to us of FENNARIO.  It's the title of an old folk song, also known as
"Pretty Peggy-O," but it is also a locale mentioned in the original song
"Dire Wolf."
  

    
Back when the band would play four or five nights at Winterland
between Christmas and New Year's, I'd always try to make at least one
of the shows. Never NYE, though, because that night always felt to me,
like, well, too much hoopla, too little music. On a night like Dec. 28
or 29, the band seemed to me more focused on constructing an
interesting set list and stretching out in unusual directions. In any
case, these several-nights-in-a-row stands reminded me of the great old
years when jazz greats like Miles and Duke and Count and 'Trane would
set up camp in a club like the Blackhawk for a week or two and really
get down to business. I miss them terribly, just as I miss the four-day
runs that were the norm on the Fillmore schedule back in the day. The
institution of the one-night stand has really altered rock and jazz, I
think, and not at all for the better.  

Over at Yoshi's jazz players still come and play extended gigs. And
there is the once-in-a-blue-moon occasion of someone like Tom Petty
playing an extended run at the Fillmore. But it's not like it was forty
years ago, when there were several jazz clubs in San Francisco and
both the Fillmore and Avalon hosted rock bands for multple-night runs. 
 

Slip of Fennario David
  

    

It was axiomatic that New Year's Eve would be an anticlimax, although there
have been a few exceptions - or maybe I should say that the recordings tend
to put the line to the notion that the NYE shows were bad.

The night before New Year's Eve was usually good, and I know dozens of
Deadheads whose lives were changed on December 29, 1977.  That really was a
peak performance.
  

    
The music on NYE was often pretty good, even terrific. It was just all
the other stuff going on that was, for me anyway, distracting. I liked
listening to the live Dead the way I loved listening to the Ellington
and Basie bands live: it was all about the music, nothing but.
Everything else surrounding the band and/or the band's performance on
certain nights meant little to me. I just wanted to hear the boys
really listen to each other and play. All the rest could be enjoyed by
someone else (and was, of course), as far as I cared. That's why the
non-NYE shows in December interested me most.  
  

    
My one NYE, '72-3, wasn't bad, in fact there were several excellent
passages, and it was the first time i took a ..bus ride to the
show:-),but the guy climing down from the ceiling and hanging right
over the stage, who then had a verbal fight with Bill Graham, put a
strange twist on it, i think that's a big reason i never went to NYE
again.
  

    
My experience and esthetic were very close to Steve's--no doubt we locked
eyes once or twice over the years in this last week of December. The other
thing about NYE is that tickets were never available...
  

    
I used to call Fenario "Peggy-O" until I found out the band
called the song 'Fenario'.
  

    


Bill Nay writes:


> I have always been a Grateful Dead fan, but from a distance.  Your book has
> brought them up close.  I was enjoying skipping about in the book so I
> decided to find copies of your earlier books.  They were not easy to find.
> It appears those that bought them are not willing to part with them, espe-
> cially the 1997 book!  I did find them both and am looking forward to
> spending 2006 coming out of the closet.
  

    
Here is one for you David - but I think I already know the answer...
I was hoping that you might have placed "Monkey and the Engineer" in your
book - but alas, it's not there.  Would you care to share your
thoughts/reasonings?


And While I'm groving the annotations - Your misheard lyric for Hell in a
bucket had me laughing out loud... "Police on a Joyride"  indeed!!!
  

    
I don't know the GD version, but "The Monkey and the Engineer" was written
by "Lone Cat" Jesse Fuller, who lived and performed in Oakland for many
years before his death in 1976. His best-known song was "San Francisco Bay
Blues," which was a required part of the repertoire for guitar-and-banjo
trios in matching striped shirts.
  

    

Bobby Weir actually took some lessons from The Lone Cat, if I recall
correctly, and there are some concert recordings in which Bob introduces the
song by describing the Fotdella, etc.
  

    
What? It's not really called "Peggy-O"? I knew there were variants of
the name but I thought that was the settled GD version, at least as far
as publishing rights.

Slipped by <tnf> with some Jesse Fuller details. 
  

    
I thought so too, re what titles on Dick's Picks say, for example (eg
5/19/77) 
Fuller of course also responsible for BIODTL.
"Peace, love, and joy and the rock" was another interpretation of
Bucket lyric.
  

    
I had a whole section for the book with compiled mis-hearings, some of
which were truly wonderful, but we scotched it at the second draft or
so, partially for space reasons, partially for reasons of dignity and
what Alan Trist called "weight." I liked that. 

But I managed to leave a few in as specific annotations.

"Monkey and the Engineer" just didn't make the very tight cut we had
for including non-original numbers. We decided early on to include only
those covers that seemed more like Grateful Dead songs in some ways
than songs by their original artists. "Morning Dew." "Me and My Uncle."
"Not Fade Away"--well, of course, that's highly debatable, but it is
truly an emblematic GD song. "Lovelight." Again, debatable, but
necessary to have. And Alan really wanted "Beat It On Down the Line,"
so we do have that Jesse Fuller aspect included. 

Does that make sense?
  

    
Very good points, David. 

A online depository of misheard lines would be great. So would really
misinterpreted lyrics.
  

    
Called mondegreens, I believe.
  

    
I have a bunch of those, including several personal ones, but would
rather wait till a depository is formalized.
  

    
And I would say I will now formalize said depository, but my ftp access to
my own website has been non-functional for over a month, hence no recent
updates to the site. I'm sure it will be worked out in the near future, at
which point I'll create a space for the mondegreens!
  

    
maybe work out a deal with Scot Hacker of the Archive of Misheard
Lyrics (http://kissthisguy.com/) to clone his database and interface?
  

    
Yes - David it does make sense - weight an all.
I'm glad you left a few mondegreens in there...  This book is really a fun
read.
  

    
Returning to the wonderful topic of Jim Carpenter, the book's
illustrator, for a moment. Take a look at the page for The Coolest
T-Shirt YOu Can Buy Online at
http://www.horizonscreenprint.com/buy_deadguy.html. It features the
book's cover, and several illustrations from the book's interior on the
back of the shirt. Great fun!
  

    
Nice shirt! I ordered one for my brother.
  

    
It's funny, but I noticed the shoes as I poured my eyes over the
image. That ghost understands the importance of comfortable shoes.
  

    
Another event for the book coming up, on Tuesday, January 31 at 7:30
pm at the Belvedere-Tiburon Library. See their website for directions,
etc.: http://www.bel-tib-lib.org/.