Skullfuck Vs. The Dancing Bears

I have this elaborate headcanon around the band The Grateful Dead, who I don't actually like, who I genuinely believe are terrible, but who I listen to all the time.  It's complicated.

In my head, the band known to the world as "The Grateful Dead" are actually two separate bands.  The first, active from 1966-1974, was known as "Skullfuck", and the second, active from 1977-1995, was known as "The Dancing Bears".  These two bands had the same members, played a lot of the same songs, and are commonly grouped together by their fans.  The difference is one of purpose and intent.  Skullfuck, you see, were a drug band masquerading as a rock band.  They toured mainly as a pretext for distributing large amounts of LSD around the United States and beyond.  That's not to say that they didn't genuinely did love music.  All of them loved music, couldn't get enough of playing it, particularly when they were high, which was always.  But since they were constantly high, their abilities to perform were limited.  While most of them were, individually, decent-to-great musicians, they couldn't sing in tune, couldn't play unison riffs.  Despite this they made some extraordinary music, and a lot of it was recorded to tape, because their drug connection was also a huge recording nerd.

It was a precarious and unpleasant existence.  They were always being harassed, always under pressure, and having a lifestyle based entirely around drug abuse didn't necessarily make them the most emotionally healthy human beings.  Eventually, at the end of 1974, it all fell apart.

But it didn't stay that way, because none of them really had anywhere else to go.  So they got back together, after a couple years, as the Dancing Bears, who were the rock and roll band Skullfuck were pretending to be.  They were still high all the time, still completely dysfunctional, and on top of that worn down, worn out, broken.  But this time, the music came first.  They were capable of things as the Dancing Bears that they weren't as Skullfuck.  Primarily, they could function as a business, which they didn't quite manage before.  They had a large and devoted fanbase, and the Dancing Bears wanted to play music for them, not slip acid in their tea.

My personal allegiance is to Skullfuck.  I think the Dancing Bears had some OK stuff.  I can see why a lot of people go for them.  They could play as a band in a way Skullfuck seldom did.  But they also lacked the complete unpredictability, the feeling that they were teetering on the edge of chaos, that things would fall apart at any second.  It was there, mind you, but when it came out it was mostly just sad rather than transcendent.

So here's my emerging theory.  The question is, what made Skullfuck quit playing a song?  Nobody ever really has an answer to that.  They start playing songs, they quit playing songs, there's no reason for any of it most of the time.  My emerging theory is that they have a certain approach to songs - they're puzzles that they try to figure out, and once they figure it out to their satisfaction, they move on to something else.  Well, you know, why else quit playing a song, right?  With most bands, the tour's over, you work up new material, you work up a new set, you rehearse that, but Skullfuck didn't work that way.  They almost never figured out how to actually play a song before performing it in concert.  Their live debuts of songs are notorious for being train wrecks.  They're disaster artists.

So to distract myself from life today I have been working through a list of material they played and quit playing before October of '74, and listening to the last performances, to see how it holds up.  Here's what I've come up with.

Here Comes Sunshine: See, this was an odd one, they didn't start playing it until '73, and then they played it once at the beginning of '74 and that was it.  God only knows.  In this case, the last performance is pretty good, but it's the second to last performance that's the one that's really acclaimed as the best ever.  Who knows why they played it at Winterland on Feb 23, 1974?  It was a weird one-off.  They didn't have time to come off with new material.  Whatever the case: This doesn't quite follow the "last = best" pattern, but it gets pretty close!

Bird Song: Another "dropped in '73" beloved song.  There's only a couple of these and I haven't heard most of them.  This one didn't even make it to the end of '73, dropping out after a performance on Sep 15.  This one, like a lot of the ones that'll follow, only survives on an audience tape, which means most deadheads haven't and won't hear it.  And you know what, yeah, I will say this is one of the great ones.  One can quibble as to whether or not it's better than the Veneta or Vancouver versions, but it's genuinely up there.  Mostly what lets it down is that Jerry's singing is pretty bad.  You know what?  It usually was.

Caution (Do Not Stop On Tracks): There's kind of a good reason they quit playing the Pigpen songs, being as he left the band to go die and all.  Also, they did bring this one back before the hiatus in October '74, but I'm deciding to tactically ignore that for now (haven't heard it, might later).  That said, this absolutely does fit the pattern.  The last performance of Pigpen's "Anthem of the Sun" closer took place on May 11, 1972.  I'm iffy on Pigpen as a whole.  A lot of his time in the band consists of him exhorting men to try and fuck women at great length, and that's not the sort of thing that super interests me.  This is a goddamn ripsnorting performance, though.  I know, really controversial opinion, stop the presses, Kate says that a Dead performance on the Europe '72 tour is good.  Ah, you know, maybe it gets a little overlooked, this performance?  I mean, I overlooked it, coming is it does like right after the longest and actually possibly the greatest Dark Star ever performed.

Turn On Your Lovelight: Probably the song most associated with Pigpen, and another one that had its last performance on the Europe '72 tour.  In this case, though, I'm gonna break with precedent and say this isn't the best version.  Again, we're talking about something I never liked much in the first place, so that might not count for much.  Still - it's even shorter than the "Live/Dead" version, and the "Live/Dead" version, believe it or not, is one of the briefer versions he did.  Even at only 12 minutes it's an ordeal, though. 

Good Lovin': Yep, another Pigpen tune they quit doing after Europe '72.  Last performance: May 25, 1972.  Fantastic version?  Check.  Arguably better than the version from the Fillmore East Apr 1971 gigs.  The thing is by this time the band doesn't just let Pigpen's, uh, "charisma" carry the whole thing along; they've genuinely figured out how to support him while still making things interesting.  This just isn't something that happens much in his earlier performances.  He overpowers the rest of them.  They vamp while he goes to town.  In these performances he goes to town and they go to town and if it's not quite the same town they're sort of in the same general vicinity.

Alligator: Pigpen's other "Anthem of the Sun" tune.  Last played: April 1971 Fillmore gigs.  I don't like this song and never much have.  The jam from the Family Dog on Nov 1, 1969 is decent.  That's all I can say for it.  Here they play the song and there a too-long drum solo and some jamming that some people do like and I just don't much.

Ripple: Another one they quit playing in April '71.  This one is part of that whole "Americana" thing they did mostly between '69 and '71.  Good songs but but they never quite managed to nail songs like these live and electric.  Honestly this side of them just worked better in the studio, as far as I can tell.

Clementine: An obscure one for sure, never released on a studio album.  Also a textbook example of "well, good enough, moving on" - after a year's absence they brought it in January '69 back for one of the early shows recorded for Live/Dead, did the best ever version of it, and never played it again.

Cosmic Charlie: A fan favorite for some inscrutable reason.  It's kind of a dumb goofy song, but there are some decent enough versions that don't sound like some kind of sub-par Flo & Eddie comedy music.  One of these versions, unsurprisingly, is the final performance from early '71.  As these things go I prefer the version from Oct 24 1969, which actually segues pretty well from "The Other One", probably purely by accident.

Dancin' in the Street: Another Pigpen tune!  People fucking love its later disco incarnation for some reason.  Last performance: New Years' Eve 1971->72, as a set opener no less.  It's sort of a mixed bag, but only because there's some dumbass deciding to give a play-by-play on whatever tasteless debauchery is occuring on stage while they're playing.  The actual performance... well, the jam from May 6, 1970 is unquestionably better, but on that version the performance of the actual song portion is so cringeworthy that I actually edited out the bit with the singing.  This one is way more digestible in its entirety.

Death Don't Have No Mercy: Last played Mar 21, 1970.  Audience tape only, but a super, super fine version.  Theory supported.

The Eleven: Another audience tape, Apr 24, 1970.  Epic, all-time version.  Last=best, absolutely.

St. Stephen: This one, on the other hand, dragged its heels around for a while after "The Eleven" was dropped.  It took its final bow on Halloween 1971, and frankly it sounded kind of anemic and lethargic by that time.  This is another one of the "psychedelic" era tunes that comes across to me as a little fussy and overwritten, but a lot of fans seem to like that sort of thing.

Viola Lee Blues: Here's another one that had its last performance on Halloween - this time Halloween 1970.  The band were clearly in a shitty mood that day and half-assed the whole concert, including this last-ever version of Viola Lee Blues.  The previous performance, from a Fillmore East show in July, wasn't too much to sing about either.  On the other hand, the THIRD-to last performance on May 2, 1970 was indeed all-time.  Still, it's a bit of a stretch to say that this fits the pattern.  Viola Lee Blues did _not_ go out on top.

New Potato Caboose: Lesh's number from side one of Anthem of the Sun, however, definitely does fit the "last = best" pattern.  Last performed on Jun 8, 1969, and it kills.