Page 25 - the NOISE July 2013

Tonight’s the night It’s gonna be alright Cause I love you girl
Ain’t nobody gonna stop us now
street, it’s not really the thing, it never was the thing that was going on.
HH: It was just the thing that got the public- ity.
JG: Right, right, that’s the thing that people could talk about because it’s easy to remember. HH: Well ... about a summer ago, they held a
funeral for hippiedom.
JG: Right, right, and that was all of us saying,
“We’re not going to tell anybody anymore what we’re doing.”
HH: Start enjoying it again, huh?
JG: Right! Right.
HH: Well, I noticed that with your own group,
you’ve got kind of a stereo effect going on here with drums, two complete sets of drums and two drummers ... um, obviously for a purpose ...
JG: Right. Mutual annihilation.
HH: I see. In other words, the guys kind of compete with one another?
JG: Well, they more chase each other around. It’s like the serpent that eats its own tail and it goes round and round like that and if you can stand in between ‘em, they make big figure eights on their sides in your head.
HH: I don’t think I’m going to stand between ‘em, I think I’ll stay back a little ways ... but I no-
tice that the guys are near their instruments here and the kids have kind of settled down, I wonder if we could get you to do a number for us?
JG: Absolutely not.
[a half-second of silence, then laughter and applause]
HH: Good.
[Jerry walks to stage right and perches on an amp with his acoustic guitar]
JG: You bet, right you are. Uh, Mountains Of The uh ... Moon. That’s the one, the big one up there at night.
TC is at the harpsichord, while Bob Weir sits on the lip of the stage with his 12-string, chat- ting up a pretty blonde. The trio perform a deli- cate “Mountains Of The Moon” from the Dead’s upcoming LP Aoxomoxoa. The elegant couples sway in time as the cameras slowly pan across them.
Garcia and Weir then strap on their electric guitars and the full band launches into “St. Ste- phen”. Hef and girlfriend Barbi Benton watch, arms around each other tight with that “we just had sex in the grotto” vibe. The Dead’s two-drummer lineup is louder than hell and
Jerry Garcia
the weirdness starts as the acid really kicks in. Several of Hef’s guests, eyes wide, depart the premises, claiming illness. One of the dancing
bunnies disrobes as the group plays. Hef be- gins to suspect something is up, but Shel (who knows exactly what is up) assures his boss that this is the effect the Dead’s music has on their audience. Hef buys it and puffs his pipe. Bear lurks around, itching to dose Hef’s drink, but Silverstein is watching closely.
Meanwhile, there is pandemonium in the booth. The house sound engineer is useless, babbling about knobs and dials and electricity to his coworkers. He is sent home and a smirk- ing Bear is found, apologized to, and made an honorary union man for a day. Bear is used to mixing the Dead’s live shows with state of the art equipment while on massive amounts of LSD, and the CBS board, 20 years out of date, is a cinch.
On the monitor, Camera Three has the na- ked girl’s breasts in perfect focus and will not let them go.
“Camera Three, can you pan to a wide shot of the group?”
“OK, Camera Three, very funny. Now will you move off of her tits, please?”
“Camera Three, hello? Anybody home? George, what the hell is going on down there?” On the floor, the voices in George’s ear- phones appear to be coming from another
planet in some alien language. George drank a nice big cup of coffee about an hour ago and is enjoying the best day he has ever had at work. He’s never filmed a naked woman before and wants to be 100% professional and capture every moment. This band, the Dreadful Grape or whatever, was pretty darn good too. On one level, George knows that he is operating a cam- era on a crane, but another part of his brain is convinced he is actually riding a long-necked dinosaur. Just wait til the kids hear about this!
George’s supervisor stands on the floor yell- ing up at him. George has removed his shirt and headset and refuses to come down. Dam- mit, he has a job to do! He keeps the camera steady on the bunny’s chest.
The Grateful Dead are only scheduled to do two songs, but they jam for an hour. No one wants to stop them. The studio is full of subur- banites tripping their faces off and dancing like maniacs. Even Hef and Barbi leave their lovers’ nook to boogie. After making sure they have
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