The 1981 Listening Post - Bob Weir - Bobby and the Midnites

 Bob Weir - Bobby and the Midnites

#481

October 21 1981

Bob Weir

Bobby and the Midnites

Genre: Rock

4 out of 5

Highlights: 

Oo Many Losers

Book of Rules

My experience with The Grateful is twofold and in neither case do I come out as anything but a tourist.

First, everybody and I mean EVERYBODY (translation: a couple kids on my French class with Ms. Didomenico) had The Grateful Dead’s Greatest Hits so, of course, self imposed peer pressure forced me to get it myself. 

And I liked it! Not enough to ever listen to another Dead album, but, still. I call that a win. 

Secondly, my writing partner when I decided I wanted to start a band (in my mid 30s, with about 2 years of self taught shitty campfire guitar behind me) I did so with a buddy who, to my awe and shock, had produced a record of his own, on his own and it was great. A concept album about marijuana growers and growing and, fuck, it was eXACTly the kind of album that a deadhead would and should produce. And I think Seth Rogan should use it for his soundtrack to his new Weed venture. What was I saying? Oh yeah, Jon was a Deadhead and I wanted to see what it would be like if you took at Dead aesthetic and merged it with a Queen/Dead Kennedys/Springsteen one. What would we come up with?

Throttle Back Sparky. So, my band would not have existed had I not hooked up with someone who loved The Grateful Dead.

(Also, I love Cosmic Wimpout and that game gets played at a lot of Dead concerts before the show (and during, perhaps?)

So, there’s no chance I would have heard this record. (That was a long winded way of telling you guys something you probably already knew)

But, is this anything like The Grateful Dead? I don’t think so. “Too Many Losers” has a lot in common with latter day Roger Daltrey solo stuff, as does “Festival”, and better than most of that, at that. And sure, there’s some reggae and a really long, like way tooooooo long, swingy/jazzy tune (“Josephine” but it’s easy to forget it’s on and just let it flow. 

This album rocks. Is it better than the creator’s main project? I don’t know. But, in the same way that I prefer Mudcrutch to most Tom Petty latter day works, I like this. 

These tunes are god, Bob. You should be in a band. 

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yT2XNKAUDO8