Nurse the Hate: Hate Dead and Company plus NFL Week 1

 

I went to see Dead and Company on Tuesday afternoon.  It comes as a shock to some people I know that I am a Deadhead, but it probably shouldn't.  The Grateful Dead simultaneously took elements of classic American music like bluegrass, country, and blues and mixed it up with jazz improvisation, psychedelic experimentation, and an overall ethos of embracing chaos.  These are all things I like, and to have them all at once in a swirling stew can be exciting, maddening, and sometimes tedious.  However, the best Grateful Dead music involves great risk taking, and failure is baked into the equation.  The band's music requires paying attention, and if you do, it can be very rewarding.

The problem with the Grateful Dead for most people is the baggage that comes along with it.  Let's face it, there's a lot of baggage there.  Twirling hippies and their half baked mysticism, parking lot vendors selling magic crystals, free range vegan grilled cheese sandwiches, patchouli, zonked out party frat boys, blind cult like devotion to the band, and the shaggy caravan of lost souls drifting around the country on the tour in their ramshackle vans and campers.  I had pretty much stopped seeing the seemingly endless Dead variations that bring their money machine tours to the outdoor shed circuit for one simple reason.  The band without Jerry Garcia isn't really that good.  It turned out I was much more of a Jerry Garcia fan than the rest of the other band members combined.  Jerry was the focal point of the band for one good reason.  He was the guy with the good ideas and sensibility that made it happen.

I decided to go last week because a couple years back I saw Dead and Company with John Mayer, and it was surprisingly good.  Mayer is a monster guitar player, though his insistence on wearing metrosexual LA action wear gives off the same vibe as when I saw Johnny Marr in leather pants playing with Modest Mouse.  "Man, that guy is really good but how the fuck did he even meet those other guys?"  It's like seeing Eddie Cochran on stage with Judas Priest or Prince jamming with the Black Crowes.  I think it's important to look at Dead and Company as a stand alone and not try to compare it with The Grateful Dead in their prime.  I mean, the Dead members are in their 70s, and Bobby Weir looks like an 1870s gold prospector, so a certain amount of latitude is necessary.   It ain't 1972. 

The incredible thing is all of the baggage of the Grateful Dead scene is exactly as it was when I left it.  There are half naked hippie girls in their 20s walking around with an acid twinkle in their eyes.  Filthy guys with dogs on rope leashes are hustling for money, drugs and tickets.  Well heeled suburbanites busted out their favorite tour shirts and escaped the office to relive their party years in all of their narcotic fueled glory.  The cottage industry of the hippie straw market is alive and well selling bootleg t-shirts, glass pipes, crystals, and food with dubious cleanliness standards.  It's all exactly the same.  It's just me and the original Dead members that got older.               

The show was OK.  The band played at slower tempo.  Mayer played his ass off, but didn't have the authority or vision of Garcia, which seemed to frustrate Weir.  Jams noodled along.  The crowd didn't care.  They loved it.  It was an oldies show, no different than a Bon Jovi tour.  Original band members on stage provided enough of a stamp of authenticity for the crowd to worship at the alter of The Grateful Dead, whatever that meant to each person individually.  It seems like the pandemic has made many people search inward, looking for meaning or sense of order.   There has been a dramatic uptick amongst people I know experimenting with yoga driven hocus pocus, daily edibles, groovy zen retreats, and organic non-GMO vegan meditation.  I know a bunch of people that technically turned into hippies but didn't even notice.  If you are going to yoga retreats, eating crackpot diets, burning sage, and believe in the restorative power of essential oils, you're a fucking hippie even if you don't listen to Phish.  It's still an odd time.  I think that many people are searching for something to believe in, to cling to after the world has turned upside down.

It doesn't have to be that difficult.  If you want something to believe in, a rock to hold onto, may I suggest Mike Zimmer.  Yes, the Vikings coach has the best against the spread winning percentage of any NFL coach, and that includes The Hoodie over Boston way.  When given the chance to take a Zimmer led team against the Bengals, a team that had rehabbing Joe Burrow throw one (1) pass in preseason, I'm taking the Vikings.  The Bengals, when faced with the undeniable need to bring in offensive line help to make sure their franchise QB doesn't get killed said "Let's draft a receiver!".  The Bengals do what the Bengals do.  I think the Vikings, who were decimated by injuries last season, are being underestimated, and Cousins plays well at 1pm.  Minnesota -3.         

I am all in on the Washington Football team, a sentence I did not expect to type this decade.  Washington managed to win the NFC East last year with Dwayne Haskins/Alex Smith/Kyle Allen and Taylor Heinicke at QB with coach Ron Rivera battling cancer.  That's not exactly a winning combination, but they somehow won enough to win the crappy NFC East.  Rivera is healthy, and they brought in Fitzmagic to play QB.  Now whatever you think of Fitz, and there is cause for concern, he is a marked improvement over any of those other 2020 QBs.  Week one they are at home against the LA Chargers, a team that has four (4) new offensive linemen.  It's very cruel that they have to play their first game against arguably the best defensive front in the NFL in Washington.  Oh, and toss in that second year QB Justin Herbert has never played an NFL road game with crowd noise and had to learn a new offense this year with the Chargers new offensive coordinator.  One more thing, the Chargers played all their games on the West Coast in preseason and this is a 1p start or 10a on their body clocks.  Washington -1.