Song Review: Grateful Dead - “Althea” (Live, May 27, 1989)
Call it Workmanslike Dead.
It is the Grateful Dead’s May 27, 1989, performance of “Althea” at the In Concert against AIDS benefit in California. And the video just released in the band’s “All the Years Live” series finds the musicians successfully rolling out a strong performance for an audience not made up exclusively of Dead Heads.
This is a band doing its job - five musicians contributing equally to the music while Jerry Garcia sings strongly and turns on the afterburners for the resolving guitar solo.
It might not explode in the way others do. But this “Althea” is a prime example of the Grateful Dead doing their best to infiltrate the straight world of music without stifling their inner outsider status.
Grade card: Grateful Dead - “Althea” (Live - 5/27/89) - A
Read Sound Bites’ previous “All the Years Live” coverage here
4/18/24
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If my mom sees a significant amount of blood she gets lightheaded, and has fainted on some occasions. Once it happened when we were kids, I wasn't there to witness it but I heard the story from my dad. Basically my brothers, around 7 or 8 at the time, were playing outside while my mom was making their lunch, and she accidentally cut her finger. It wasn't anything serious, but it drew a fair bit of blood and she passed out. My dad saw this and rushed over, but he didn't really know what to do so he just sort of started slapping her to wake her up (not recommended, but he had no idea and panicked)
At that exact moment my brothers both came in from playing, and all they saw was our mom unconscious on the floor and our dad slapping her. So, like, without even saying a word to each other they both just INSTANTLY start whaling on him, like, full blown attack mode to defend our mom. Which obviously didn't help the situation, but she did wake up and everything was fine.
Now our dad says that he's actually really glad they attacked him over what they thought was going on, because it means he raised good boys. And I still think that's true, they're very good boys.
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As much as I want to be a wholly joyous about the fact that Henry Kissinger is finally fucking dead, as he deserves... There's a lot of me that can't help being upset with. With the fact that he lived to 100 years old. He got better medical care, better housing, and a better, more stable life for those 100 years than billions on this planet ever going to see and he did it specifically through exploitation, state sanctioned murder, and lies. He lived to 100 years comfortably on a legacy of violence that rarely threatened his personal comfort. I want to be joyous that he's finally dead, because the world IS better with him dead, but the reality is he won a long time ago.
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to any americans who feel "paralyzed" and "dont know what to do" to help with gaza:
reading a fucking book. i beg of you.
in a time of knowledge suppression is it your duty to arm yourself with knowledge.
read about americas occupations in the middle east.
read about 9/11 from outside of america and see how they inflicted senseless harm and violence to countless amounts of people and have been suppressing your rights for the past 2 fucking decades.
read about any of the countless wars from the past 30 years. especially from a civilian's. and the victims and survivors' perspective. listen to the horror stories and do not plug your fucking ears as to what your country is doing.
and read about fucking gaza and palestine and keep up with what is happening no matter how "sad" or "uncountable" you might get.
dont look away from this.
you dont have the right to be comfortable during countless active genocides.
if you're knowledgeable, you're powerful, and our current state doesnt fucking want that.
you have the power to change things if you open your eyes and scream to the world.
wake the fuck up.
Edit: please check the reblogs there are readings and ways to help
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how do you live?
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hey gays how are we feeling knowing she leads her cabin to change the tide of the battle of manhattan after her patroclus dies in her armor? i feel really normal and ok about it lol.
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a dænce of roëmænce
depictions of the ace experience never seem to include the nightmare-borne skeleton creature from hell so kudos to the dimension 20 team for their commitment to accurate rep
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Today my therapist introduced me to a concept surrounding disability that she called "hLep".
Which is when you - in this case, you are a disabled person - ask someone for help ("I can't drink almond milk so can you get me some whole milk?", or "Please call Donna and ask her to pick up the car for me."), and they say yes, and then they do something that is not what you asked for but is what they think you should have asked for ("I know you said you wanted whole, but I got you skim milk because it's better for you!", "I didn't want to ruin Donna's day by asking her that, so I spent your money on an expensive towing service!") And then if you get annoyed at them for ignoring what you actually asked for - and often it has already happened repeatedly - they get angry because they "were just helping you! You should be grateful!!"
And my therapist pointed out that this is not "help", it's "hLep".
Sure, it looks like help; it kind of sounds like help too; and if it was adjusted just a little bit, it could be help. But it's not help. It's hLep.
At its best, it is patronizing and makes a person feel unvalued and un-listened-to. Always, it reinforces the false idea that disabled people can't be trusted with our own care. And at its worst, it results in disabled people losing our freedom and control over our lives, and also being unable to actually access what we need to survive.
So please, when a disabled person asks you for help on something, don't be a hLeper, be a helper! In other words: they know better than you what they need, and the best way you can honor the trust they've put in you is to believe that!
Also, I want to be very clear that the "getting angry at a disabled person's attempts to point out harmful behavior" part of this makes the whole thing WAY worse. Like it'd be one thing if my roommate bought me some passive-aggressive skim milk, but then they heard what I had to say, and they apologized and did better in the future - our relationship could bounce back from that. But it is very much another thing to have a crying shouting match with someone who is furious at you for saying something they did was ableist. Like, Christ, Jessica, remind me to never ask for your support ever again! You make me feel like if I asked you to call 911, you'd order a pizza because you know I'll feel better once I eat something!!
Edit: crediting my therapist by name with her permission - this term was coined by Nahime Aguirre Mtanous!
Edit again: I made an optional follow-up to this post after seeing the responses. Might help somebody. CW for me frankly talking about how dangerous hLep really is.
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this post sucks so bad massachusetts takes its name from the indigenous massachusett people who were genocided and whose land was stolen and that would be obvious if you would think for a single second and look up the etymology before posting. mocking a native language that was eradicated for centuries and is only now beginning to be revived is not fucking funny it is ignorant and racist and cruel
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i'll never understand people with adhd who are like "well it comes with its struggles of course but at least it helps me hyperfocus on my passion, its like a superpower", like good for you for being the chosen one but my adhd makes me play tetris for 5 hours straight without any bathroom breaks while a rotation of the same 3 shows ive seen a bajillion times is running in the background
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HIND RAJAB! SHE WAS 6 YEARS OLD!
HIND RAJAB! SHE WAS 6 YEARS OLD!
HIND RAJAB! SHE WAS 6 YEARS OLD!
HIND RAJAB! SHE WAS 6 YEARS OLD!
HIND RAJAB! SHE WAS 6 YEARS OLD!
HIND RAJAB! SHE WAS 6 YEARS OLD!
HIND RAJAB! SHE WAS 6 YEARS OLD!
HIND RAJAB! SHE WAS 6 YEARS OLD!
HIND RAJAB! SHE WAS 6 YEARS OLD!
HIND RAJAB! SHE WAS 6 YEARS OLD!
HIND RAJAB! SHE WAS 6 YEARS OLD!
HIND RAJAB! SHE WAS 6 YEARS OLD!
HIND RAJAB! SHE WAS 6 YEARS OLD!
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Song Review: Grateful Dead - “Attics of My Life” (Live, Aug. 25, 1993)
Bringing back and keeping “Attics of My Life” in the rotation was one of the best decisions the Grateful Dead made in its final half-decade.
A deep, harmony-rich and existential ballad, the song simply meant more in 1990 than it did in 1970. Just as importantly, the Dead - never known for their singing abilities - found the discipline to deliver the delicate song as the song delicately demanded.
The Aug. 25, 1993, “Attics” in California is a prime example of this. Just released as the latest “All the Years Live” video, it finds the group playing gently and focusing all its energy on the vocals, which Jerry Garcia, Bob Weir and Vince Welnick delivered with the precision of a Swiss watch, if not just exactly perfectly.
When there was no dream of mine/you dreamed of me, they sing.
And many of us still do.
Grade card: Grateful Dead - “Attics of My Life” (Live - 8/125/93) - A
Read Sound Bites’ previous “All the Years Live” coverage here.
3/21/24
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they should go on a fishing trip pt.1
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one day, in a thousand years
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I’m so glad the Guillermo Del Toro Pinocchio movie is being received really well, because it was literally my most anticipated movie of the year! So here’s some fun facts about the crew, concept, and production that got me excited about this movie and that I think would excite much of tumblr as well:
-the screenplay was cowritten by Del Toro and Patrick McHale, creator of Over The Garden Wall and a writer on Adventure Time.
-the movie was codirected by Mark Gustasfon, who was the animation director of Wes Anderson’s Fantastic Mr. Fox (2009)
-the primary art/animation designers of this movie (production designer Curt Enderle, art director Robert DeSue, character designer Georgina Hayns, animation supervisor Brian Leif Hansen, and photography director Frank Passingham) previously worked on projects that include Coraline, the Corpse Bride, Paranorman, Isle of Dogs, Frankenweenie, Kubo, and Chicken Run.
-Besides Netflix, it was produced by the Henson company (always a good sign when you’re doing anything with puppets) and ShadowMachine, who have produced a lot of Adult Swim shows including Robot Chicken, Moral Orel, and Tuca and Bertie, as well as the Netflix original BoJack Horseman.
-Del Toro was inspired to make this adaptation due to the similarities he’d always noticed between the original Pinocchio story and Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein. Both are about a man-made character’s relationship with his father/creator, and his attempts to understand what it means to be human. This inspiration is why the film takes on a gothic feel at times.
-the movie is over 10 years in the making. Del Toro announced the project in 2008 and production began in 2012, but it went into development hell and no further updates were made for several years. Del Toro has described it as his passion project, saying "I've wanted to make this movie for as long as I can remember.”
-the backdrop of Mussolini’s Italy was intended to show how Pinnochio was able to find his own humanity and will in a time where everyone else was acting like a blindly obedient puppet. Del Toro wanted to deviate from the original book’s themes of obeying authority by making his Pinocchio virtuous for questioning the rules and forging his own set of morals. (Also if you know anything about Del Toro, the guy likes to dunk on fascism.)
-Del Toro didn’t feel the need to have Pinocchio become flesh-and-blood at the end of the movie, saying all you need to be a real human is to behave like one.
I was lucky enough to see this movie in 35 mm in a movie theatre on Thanksgiving weekend. If there are any movie theatre showings near you and you’re in a position to be able to attend them, I would totally recommend it especially if you can go with loved ones. It was a gorgeous, heartwarming, and magical movie to experience on a big screen and perfect for the late fall/winter holiday season.
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