Some good Bobby pics

[Del]

B-Dub, for those keeping score...

[MarcO]

there is no jerry garcia of the grateful dead without bob weir. his guitar playing allowed jerry to be jerry and without bobby the grateful dead would have been the jerry garcia band.

say what you will about his attire but he was a very important part of the grateful dead.

ding ding ding ding!

we have a winner!

I mean, that's the Grateful Dead right there, you could say the same things about Phil or Mickey or Keith.... whoever....

I think Bobby was a *hell* of a guitar player. He basically invented his own weird way of playing, just like Phil did as well. Bobby can get lost in the mix sometimes but if he stopped playing altogether the jams would just fall apart. A genius like Garcia needed the sympathetic support of a player like Keith Godchaux and the challenge of Booby's weird inversions and harmonic sense to rise to the heights he did as a player in the early to mid-1970's.

Not too interested in Bobby these days as I don't agree with his reliance on Garcia-related songs, but who cares?

[balogna pogna]

"Not too interested in Bobby these days as I don't agree with his reliance on Garcia-related songs, but who cares?"

In the first couple years after Jerry died, Bobby was hesitant to play the Jerry songs, and did so very seldom. I think of it as a tribute to Jerry everytime I hear him do one now though. And why not, he played many of those songs for 30 plus years...and the Dead did lotsa cover songs that none of them wrote which are famous because they did them the way they did.

Just my opinion.

[Del]

Not too interested in Bobby these days as I don't agree with his reliance on Garcia-related songs, but who cares?

Interestingly enough, I read an interview with Bobby last night where he said the only reason that Ratdog played as many of the old Dead songs is because it's tough to draw a crowd playing strictly originals... Mind you, Bobby did write/co-write a big chunk of Dead songs, so can they really be called Jerry material? I would say Phil relies on Jerry/Dead tunes a lot more than Ratdog does...

[balogna pogna]

Yeah, I was gonna add to my last post that I always assumed Bobby plays those tunes because people ask him to play them. And hell, he may very well love those songs as much as all of us on the board.

[Del]

I think there's a tribute element to it as well max.

[AdamH]

Dear all,

I take back the "bobby is replaceable" line. He was a part of the dead, something I implied a few hundred times by saying "sum greater than parts" "He was a good singer" etc. Still, it never hurts to emphasize things multiple times for the deaf wookies.

I'll go to my grave believing that, if we rewind back to 1965, we could've subbed just about any other guitar player into Mother Mcree's and had the dead we have now. In the improvisational context, I think Bobby's..dare I say...supporting rhythm could've been done by any number of people. And of course that didn't happen, and of course it's great luck that despite their reported misgivings none of the members actually went through with firing him.

Your professed love of Bobby is based on what is and not what could've been, and rightly so. You appreciate him because he's been there from the start. Your love of him was bolstered by a period where Jerry couldn't truly shine vocally or musically. Most of all he's still alive and you can still see him in concert so that must be nice. He is a legacy personified.

But even after three pages of discussion I haven't been convinced why Bobby needs to have more support afforded to him. Ratdog, Bobby solo, Bobby and Hanson?, hot sauces, whatever else the guy does...he would have no success at any of this without having been part of the Grateful Dead. So how can I be bolstering support for one member without doing so for all those other crucial components of a band we all love?

Whose got my heady Kreutzman thread?

[Thorgnor]

I like the dead.

Bobby says - "Haaaaaaa."

[ollie]

I'll go to my grave believing that, if we rewind back to 1965, we could've subbed just about any other guitar player into Mother Mcree's and had the dead we have now.

Ok, then who would have written Playin' in the Band, Estimated Prophet, The Music Never Stopped, The Other One, Weather Report Suite, Black Throated Wind, Cassidy and Sugar Magnolia?

[Del]

Amen! Preach on ollie, preach on! (Especially Playin'!)

[paisley]

And hell, he may very well love those songs as much as all of us on the board.

I'd assume he loves those tunes more than any of us will ever really understand

[guigsy]

i like mickey hart when he sings fire on the mountain. the man with the golden chords. vocal, that is.

[Booche]

I LOVE TOM CONSTANTEN!!!!!!!!!

[paisley]

[MarcO]

Not too interested in Bobby these days as I don't agree with his reliance on Garcia-related songs, but who cares?

Interestingly enough, I read an interview with Bobby last night where he said the only reason that Ratdog played as many of the old Dead songs is because it's tough to draw a crowd playing strictly originals... Mind you, Bobby did write/co-write a big chunk of Dead songs, so can they really be called Jerry material? I would say Phil relies on Jerry/Dead tunes a lot more than Ratdog does...

Phil didn't spend his off-time playing in other bands and writing and building up his own separate repertoire. If he had had a body of original material built up, but chose to play Garcia-related material instead of his own, I'd have the same criticism.

As for Bobby delivering a tribute to Jerry, fair enough. So maybe slipping in a beloved Jerry-related tune or two every once in a while might be an appropriate, classy gesture. But I've seen Ratdog setlists wherein more than 50% of the material played was Garcia-related. That's quite a tribute. No, thanks.

And, Del, the lines between Weir's material and Jerry's isn't as fluid as you make it. Yes, there is Garcia-related material and there is Weir-related material. It always was that way, and Garcia's death doesn't shift those goalposts to my mind. It's not really that difficult to understand unless you want to deliberately muddy up the distinctions between just to stretch your already thin argument.