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#he's just my favorite villager out of them all. beardo also
hourglass-collector · 4 years
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RFA babes and Animal Crossing
Instead of writing my Richard II Essay paper that’s due this Monday I’ve decided to write up HC’s about the babes playing New Horizon during quarantine (cause yours truly has been doing nothing but it since quarentine’s started). Read more under the cut
Yoosung Kim:
Villagers - His starter villagers were Pietro and Aurora, but he also has acquired Sherb, Ketchup, Goldie, Skye, Marina, Punchy, Beau, and Chops (to his dismay) 
My dude has put in hours to this game, it’s how he keeps himself from getting sick of LOLOL 
He got into it because he saw a lot of it online and an LOLOL friend mentioned playing it on the side to keep from getting tired of LOLOL; Yoosung thought he should do the same, after all it was hard to admit but the truth be told he was kind of getting sick of LOLOL
During this whole thing he’s staying with Zen (for reasons unspecified) and he convinces Zen of playing the game after he (Yoosung) has gotten well into it, he also helps Zen get his island running pretty quickly so that Zen might enjoy it more
His favorite villager/islander is Aurora, he loves penguins and he finds her such a total cutie pie, he loves her so much and would give his life for her! 
On the other hand, he’s not a huge fan of Chops, and feels bad about not liking him; he’s looked up ways to get rid of villagers and feels bad about trying to get rid of Chops... but deep, deep, deep down... he really can’t stand him 
Will visit your island and invite you to his, both of you work together sometimes sharing your resources with each other
He gets kind of carried away with the collecting part of the game so much so that he forgets about the landscaping and beautifying the island part and rushes to get it to tip-top shape when he has to raise his island’s evals
But his island is definitely a work in progress, what he has so far is decent but needs to work overall 
Jaehee Kang:
Villagers - Her starters were Marshal and Agnes, but she’s gotten Ruby, Chai, Merengue, Erik, Sprinkle, Celia, Bob, and Flurry 
She was pulled into the game after Yoosung and Seven kinda geeked out about it in the chatroom which got Jumin interested, which then developed into everyone in the messenger playing the game and visiting each other’s island 
She was skeptical of it at first but quickly learned to like it SHE WISHES SHE WAS HER AVATAR 
What she’d give to go to a deserted island and get away from life and all it’s complications 
Seven’s never told her but he had a hand in Jaehee getting specific villagers... the ones he thought she’d like and one that would be sure to remind her of him, just a nice touching gift from a loving friend 
Let’s everyone onto her island but gets a chill down her spine when she sees Jumin’s avatar walk in
She prefers to visit your island over all other ones but often visits Zen’s with Yoosung to help him get his up and running 
Jaehee’s put a lot of work into beautifying her island and making it look really pretty, she wanted to keep the deserted “tropical getaway” theme so her island looks like a natrual tropical get away 
Her favorite villager is Chai but she really likes Isabel despite her being an NPC
Wasn’t particularly fond of the Easter event but she survived
If she could, she would chase crazy Redd off her island with a broom and refuses to buy his paintings... he reminds her of a certain someone
Zen | Hyun Ryu:
Villagers - His starters were Julia and Audie, he's obtaioned Apollo, Beardo (to his dismay), Bangle, Muffy, Fauna, Phil, Chelsea and Julian
Only got into to it because Yoosung insisted 
Will play it occasionally but doesn’t make a habit it out of it 
There is like a 3 to 4 day period where he binge plays it before he goes back to playing it every so often
The few times he does play he tries to visit your island, since he can’t see you IRL he might as well see you through the game 
He mainly focuses on getting the villagers he wants... and he’d have them all if it weren’t for Beardo
He had one more plot on his land and he was searching mystery islands for Lobo but before he could keep looking Beardo moved in 
He tried to get rid of him to the best of his abilities and even asked Yoosung for help but Beardo’s like a cockroach and it seems like he’s there to stay 
It really annoys Zen, it wouldn’t but he was really looking forward to Lobo and Beardo ruined it when he moved in 
That being said, among all of them Zen’s island is the one with the lowest eval rating
He thinks his island is hot shit, but it’s a real fixer upper 
He doesn’t really have a favorite but he really likes his starter girls Audie and Julia and has fun buying them clothes in the Able sister’s shop 
Most likely to look for custom clothes codes and make his mini him look amazing 
Jumin Han:
Villagers - Bianca and Tangy are his starters, he later goes on to obtain Raymond, Ankha, Kabuki, Cookie, Lionel, Felyne, Hippeaux, Bam
He heard about the game before either 707 or Yoosung brought it up but wasn’t really interested until he heard the boys talking about it in the chatroom 
He aims to fill his island with nothing but cats, it’s a difficult goal but it’s one he’s determined on 
his favorite villager is Raymond, are we even surprised??? It was Tangy before Raymond, just because he considered Tangy such an original and creative concept but he relates to Raymond... 
starts thinking about getting a second cat, a friend for Elizabeth 
The odds really be in the favor of Mr. Trust-fund-kid he got Raymond on his first mystery island tour 
when he tells Yoosung and Seven they nearly lose it! 
Seven and Yoosung: What do you mean you got Raymond on your first mystery island tour!? 
Jumin: What? Like it’s hard?
Doesn’t hate any particular character but is trying to get rid of the non-cat villagers in order to move in more cats 
Zen never visits his island and Jaehee rarely ever does but Yoosung, Seven and You always do 
He’s fine with you and Yoosung but Seven’s on thin-fucking-ice, since he likes messing with him even in the game 
Jumin won’t play on it for long just every so often out of curiosity 
He also like beautifying the island, models it after his cherry farm 
707 | Saeyoung Choi: 
Villagers - Snake and Frita were his starters; since then he’s gotten Bob, Boone, Blanca, Cube, Kid Cat, Cherry, Coco, and Judy
He went out of his way to get some of the most unique characters he could find, and considered himself having hit the jackpot with the two characters he was given at the start 
Loves Snake and Frita, he loved the combination he was given when he got both of them but where his heart is really set is on Bob
LOVES THAT CAT and found him fair in square 
Likes to visit mess with everyone, during the Easter event he went to everyone’s islands and left even more Easter Eggs than the amount that had been initially left, even days after the event’s over they keep finding eggs everywhere it’s as if Zipper were still there 
Makes his island really futuristic/space looking, and funny thing is  his island seems to always be a shooting star island 
His favorite islands to visit are Yoosung and Jumin’s 
He’ll tease Yoosung about Chops being on his island and sometimes tell him “solutions” on how to get rid of him but in the end they’re just pranks 
He kinda already binged played through most of the accomplishments and is kind of done with it but keeps playing to play with his friends and occasionally for the updates 
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alicedemettrie · 3 years
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ever since i started playing acnl, my opinions haven’t changed. which is i would be besties with nate tbh
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The Ballad of Spike & Jerry: Bob Dylan & Jerry Garcia, 1980-1995 / Dylan & The Dead: 2003
A very special treat for you today — the estimable Jesse Jarnow has gone long on the tangled tale of Bob Dylan and the Grateful Dead, and put together two essential comps for your listening pleasure, with great art by John Hilgart. Before we get started, you should know that Jesse has a new book coming out soon: Wasn’t That a Time: The Weavers, the Blacklist, and the Battle for the American Soul, scheduled for publication by Da Capo on Election Day, 2018. He’s also just started a podcast — Alternate Routes, featuring “independent music not found on major streaming services, all tracks approved by artists.” And of course, you can still catch his Frow Show, weekly on WFMU. OK, I think that covers it — take it away, Jesse! 
The Ballad of Spike & Jerry: The Frequently Secret & Always Misbegotten Adventures of Bob Dylan & the Grateful Dead, 1971-2003 by Jesse Jarnow
You might love Dylan. You might even love the Dead. But that says nothing about how you might feel about Dylan & the Dead, the 1989 live album documenting the 1987 tour where Jerry & co. backed Bob. I’m pretty sure I’ve spent more hours listening to Bob Dylan and the Grateful Dead than any other two artists combined, and I’m quite sure I don’t dig Dylan & the Dead. Perhaps presumptuously (but I’d bet accurately!), I assume the vast majority of Dylan and Dead freaks I know feel the same way.
So, as Doom & Gloom From the Tomb rolls through the Never-Ending Tour, which started the year after Dylan’s ’87 tour with the Dead, I was inspired to dig into the moment where it intersected with the equally endless Summer of Dead, which has trucked on now for more than two decades since Jerry Garcia’s 1995 death. Specifically, I wanted to hear the appearances Dylan made with the post-Garcia configuration calling themselves “The Dead” in the summer of 2003, playing 18 different songs during eight performances. And so I did, and enjoyed it quite a bit, the two acts’ idiosyncratic tendencies lining up more sympathetically and far more enjoyably than the 1987 onstage train wreckage.
But, of course, there was the missing void of Jerry Garcia, and it seemed silly to stop there. What I wanted--what I want--is Jerry and Dylan. And there’s actually a fair body of that, over 14 hours worth. Inside that, I went a-questing for at least a single disc’s worth of highlights, of performances that I actually want to listen to and could maybe internalize in the same way that I do with my favorite recordings from either. Listening back to what I put aside, I think what I wanted were tracks where neither side overpowered the other, where Dylan doesn’t shout, and where the Dead quit rolling their thunder. I’m sure the expanded Bootleg Series version of Blood on the Tracks will be plenty bloody, but these might be Dylan’s bloodiest tracks of all.
There’s also the plot point that Dylan has repeatedly credited his collaboration with the Dead for turning around his own career, leading directly to his critical and commercial reemergence a decade later. And I also wanted to piece together the story, which--as it turns out--goes back nearly a full decade before the first Bob Dylan and Jerry Garcia played together onstage.
1. Reckoning with Dylan & the Dead
Dylan & the Dead is one of the bigger missed opportunities in rock history, but the even bigger missed opportunity probably came about 15 years earlier, when the Dead were at their peak as a nimble Americana/jazz quintet, and Dylan was simultaneously retired and in the process of becoming something of a Deadhead.
The first inklings that Dylan might be gettin’ heady came in spring 1971, when Rolling Stone reported him hanging out by the Fillmore East soundboard during the Dead’s five-night run that April. “Fuck, they’re damned good,” the Stone reported him saying after watching the band jam with the Beach Boys. According to Levon Helm’s autobiography, on New Year’s Eve that year, when Dylan showed up to play with The Band at New York’s Academy of Music, he told the drummer that, “I’m thinking of touring with the Dead.” “Dylan Stalks the Dead,” the Village Voice reported on Dylan’s presence at Jersey City’s Roosevelt Stadium for one of the Dead’s summer ’72 shows, but nothing materialized. Jerry Garcia was elusive when asked about their chillage.
Jerry Garcia was a serious grade Dylan freak, which maybe seems obvious, but it wasn’t ever thus. In fact, Garcia was one of those purists who thought Dylan’s new directions in folk music were impure and walked out on one of Dylan’s legendary folk festival sets in disgust. For Garcia, though, it was the Monterey Folk Festival in May of 1963. By the time Dylan plugged in two years later, Garcia was likewise in the process of going electric, and was totally on board. When Dylan returned to the road in ’74, Garcia caught him with the Band in Oakland and, according to Rolling Stone, headed down to LA to see him again at the Forum a few days later, only to discover that some enterprising beardo had shown up at the box office, claimed to be Jerry, and ganked his ticket.
In the intervening years, Bob Dylan and Jerry Garcia continued to circle one another, traces of their developing friendship emerging in the marginalia of rock history. Grateful Dead Records employee Steve Brown told me (when I interviewed him for my book, Heads) about how he and Garcia scored an invitation to a mixdown session for Planet Waves, after Dead crew chief Ramrod befriended some roadies for the Band at their joint gigs. They saw them working on “Going, Going, Gone,” Steve notes, which went almost directly into Garcia’s solo sets. Sometime later that year, it seems, Dylan looked up David Grisman and arrived in Stinson Beach for mandolin lessons, and--at some point--made his way up the hill for a jam session with Garcia at San Souci, cookies by Mountain Girl.
But it wasn’t until 1980 that Bob Dylan and Jerry Garcia showed up on a stage together and, by then, things had changed. Bob Dylan had been born again. Jerry Garcia was sliding into a deep heroin addiction. Like star-crossed lovers, the pair continued to cross paths for the next 15 years, playing together from time to time--most notably during Dylan’s six show run with the Dead in the summer of ’87--but never achieved the sustained burst of magic that one might hope for from the two. Bummer.
I’ve revisited their first pairing a few times over the years, a 1980 show during Dylan’s 14-show stand at San Francisco’s Warfield Theater, beginning only a few weeks after the Dead had finished their own 15-night run that would end up, in part, as the great acoustic album Reckoning. Dylan, though, was on his second pass through the Bay Area with his expanding repertoire of born again Christian songs. The previous year, he’d performed only his gospel music.
By 1980, for the first time in Dylan’s performing career, though, shows weren’t selling out. A few of his old favorites soon returned to the setlists, and promoter Bill Graham started to tap into his phonebook for guests that might spice up the proceedings and sell more tickets, which would come to include Carlos Santana, Roger McGuinn, Maria Muldaur, and Dylan’s final performance with Highway 61 Revisited guitar hero Mike Bloomfield. And Jerry.
The first song they played together, “To Ramona,” is fairly magic. Garcia takes over for the solo, shifting into a mode that’s perfect Jerry, simultaneously fully in charge, but finding voicings and turns that also push the song open, making it sound like a limitless conversation -- for 85 seconds or so, anyway. After that, though, Garcia’s contributions are bit more nebulous. Setlists differ about when he was actually onstage, and the recording is of mixed help, his guitar sometimes sinking into the murk, sometimes punctuating thoughts, but never with the confidence of “To Ramona.”
A few months later, Garcia spoke to David Gans about the performance. “I was surprised that the tunes were as difficult as they were,” he commented. “A lot of the tunes that he writes are deceptively simple-sounding, when in reality they’re not. There was really only maybe two or three of the five or six that I played on that I wasn’t doing anything besides trying to learn the tune.”
Little Feat guitarist Fred Tackett, then serving in Dylan’s band, assessed it similarly to Clinton Heylin, if more harshly (and not fully accurately): “Carlos played a song--thank you and left. Mike Bloomfield came out, played ‘Like A Rolling Stone’--thank you--left. Jerry Garcia came out, played and stayed. The whole two-hour show. [Not quuuite --ed.] He didn’t know any of the songs and he was higher than a kite... We finished the show and Bob said, ‘I’m never going to have anybody sit in with us again.’” (Roger McGuinn and Maria Muldaur would sit in over the next few nights.)
Their semi-public paths converged again in 1986. Garcia checked out a Dylan show at the Greek, hung with Bob backstage, planted the seed for the next summer’s tour, and offered some song-by-song notes. Another story from around that era has Dylan showing up at an Oakland Dead show with his Greenwich Village-era roommate, Wavy Gravy, and going unrecognized until he slipped his sunglasses on.
Finally, when the Dead shared a few stadium bills with Dylan (backed by Tom Petty and the Heartbreakers for his own summer tour), Dylan showed up onstage with the Dead in Akron and Washington, DC.
But ye Gods I don’t recommend listening. Only a week later, Jerry Garcia would fall into a diabetic coma and nearly die. He sounds better here than I would’ve suspected, but there is no clickage happening whatsoever between Dylan and the Dead during either of these performances as Dylan tries and often fails to duet with Garcia and Bob Weir on his own songs.
Even still, Dylan arrived at the Dead’s Club Front studio warehouse in the San Rafael industrial zone in January 1987 and jammed with the Dead, landing (according to Dennis McNally) in a version of the Beatles’ “Nowhere Man” that thrilled both parties. Dylan proposed a tour together, and showed up in June for three weeks of rehearsals.
Dylan’s entrance into the Dead’s world was typically absurd and would get no less so. The band’s infamously cliquish road thugs immediately signaled that Dylan was on their turf, deciding that--since the Dead already had one “Bob,” and two if you count Hunter--that they would need to find a new name for Dylan. They settled on “Spike,” and would only address Dylan as such.
Dead roadie Steve Parish remembered Dylan as private, “content to write songs, play guitar, and smoke a little pot,” and enjoyed the surreality of being assigned to hang as Dylan crashed on the Front Street couch, inherited from Parish’s parents, where little Big Steve had once sat and argued that Dylan was the voice of his generation.
While a banner year for the Grateful Dead, scoring their only top 10 hit, 1987 was a terrible year for Bob Dylan. Later, he would tell Newsweek that he was going through a complete musical freak-out, suffering onstage panic attacks, “I-- I can’t remember what it means, does it mean -- is it just a bunch of words? Maybe it’s like what all these people say, just a bunch of surrealistic nonsense...” As Paul Williams points out in his wonderful chapter on the 1987 collaboration, this amnesia is audible throughout Dylan’s performances with the Dead during this period, both onstage and off. Perhaps the most sympathetic Dylan listener the world has ever known, Williams’s Dylan/Dead assessment comes in the third (and sadly final) volume of his Performing Artist series, 1986-1990 & beyond, Mind Out of Time, and I don’t totally agree with it.
In Chronicles, a book to which perhaps shouldn’t always be taken literally, Dylan’s freak-out continued palpably as he arrived at Front Street and discovered the band wanted to dive far back into Dylan’s songbook. “I could hear the brakes screech,” Dylan wrote in his 2004 account. “If I had known this to begin with, I might not have taken the dates. I had no feeling for any of those songs and didn’t know how I could sing them with any intent... I felt like a goon and didn’t want to stick around.”
And here Dylan slips into what sounds more like a parable than an actual story, describing how he escaped to a seedy bar somewhere nearby, not intending to go back, ordered a gin and tonic, turned around to watch the jazz combo onstage, and was struck dumb with musical revelation. “All of a sudden, I understood something faster than I ever did before,” Dylan wrote, and spends time in Chronicles explaining how this sudden download would cause him to rethink his career and approach to performing. He returned to Front Street a new man and had a blast. “Maybe [the Dead] dropped something in my drink, I can’t say, but anything they wanted to do was fine with me. I had that old jazz singer to thank.”
In 1997, Dylan would tell a more believable and practical version of what he gained from the rehearsal sessions. “[Garcia would] say, ‘Come on, man, you know, this is the way it goes, let’s play it, it goes like this,’” Dylan described. “And I’d say, ‘Man, he’s right, you know? How’s he getting there and I can’t get there?’ I had to go through a lot of red tape in my mind to get back there.”
The five hours of music circulating from these sessions at the Dead’s Club Front rehearsal space represent the Basement Tapes of the Dylan/Dead continuum, filled with delights, strange covers, experiments, shop talk, almost four dozen different songs, and a few performances that are, to my ears, just wonderful. I don’t think Dylan’s revelation is necessarily audible here, and I tend to imagine the real story being a bit more prosaic, closer to the second version, as the tape record bears out, but I find almost all of the rehearsal recordings to be enjoyable on some level.
My personal keeper takes come almost entirely on songs that neither act is known for, played in a far quieter manner than either had demonstrated onstage in those years. (Dylan had spent time a earlier that spring working with former Sex Pistols guitarist Steve Jones.) I’m especially taken with the songs where Garcia plays pedal steel and banjo. With Jerry on the banjo, they turn out some primo folk revival sunshine by way of “John Hardy” (as performed by the Carter Family on the Anthology of American Folk Music) and the jug band standard “Stealin’” (part of the Dead’s early electric repertoire and revisited by Garcia with his pal David Grisman a few years later). With Garcia sitting down at pedal steel for the first known time since 1972, they would play beautiful versions of 1967’s “I’ll Be Your Baby Tonight” and the half-lost 1962 gem “Tomorrow Is A Long Time,” both delivered with far more intimacy than the onstage versions performed over the summer, even if Dylan seems to remember almost none of the words. Paul Williams hates this version of “Tomorrow Is A Long Time,” and it’s true that Dylan doesn’t remember, really, any of the words and invents a few new phrases on the spot. Williams attributes it to the amnesia, but there’s a softness and spirit in Dylan’s voice I don’t hear many other places. It reminds me more of how--during the Basement sessions--he would sing songs he hadn’t yet finished, grappling for words, and sometimes not make full sense, but still capture some kind of feeling.
There’s raucousness, too. “Nowhere Man” doesn’t show up, but I was also grabbed especially by solid take on the communal favorite Buddy Holly’s “Oh Boy,” a sweet and casual “Watching the River Flow,” and a deliciously Basement-y romp through Paul Simon’s “Boy in the Bubble.” The lead song from Simon’s recent mega-comeback Graceland, it’s a gas to hear Jerry, Bob, and Spike try to remember the words, a song they’ve all clearly spent time with. Plus-one to Garcia for remembering the third verse and alternate chorus about “lasers in the jungle” and powering through even when the Bob section doesn’t recall it.
I wish there was more ethereal music like “Under Your Spell,” the Dead exhibiting surprising comfort with Knocked Out Loaded’s closing song, released the previous year and never played live, which Dylan seems to deliver with an entirely different set of lyrics. They almost hit that spot again doing Ian & Sylvia’s “The French Girl,” which Dylan and the Hawks had played in the Basement era, too, here with Garcia on pedal steel. The music stays nicely moody -- at least until the drummers figure out how to drum it up. Somewhere between the ethereal and the raucous is a take on the Rolling Stones’ 1965 song, “I’m Free,” with the Bobs joining on the chorus.
“You really have to pay attention to him to avoid making mistakes,” Garcia said after the rehearsals, “insofar as he’s doing what he’s doing and everybody else is trying to play the song. If you don’t do what he’s doing, you’re doing something wrong. In that sense, he de facto becomes the leader of the band... I don’t know whether two weeks with us is going to be able to change twenty years of that kind of conditioning.”
“By the end, I had a notebook filled with chord sequences, form diagrams, and lyric cues,” Phil Lesh remembered the sessions in his memoir. It “also confirmed that, hey, this guy’s at least as weird as any of us.” To that end, Spike also fell in love a pink Modulus guitar, later seen on stage in the company of Bob Weir. “This one’s really the right color, isn’t it?” Spike remarked.
It was during these sessions, too, that video director Len Dell’Amico got to screen the first cut of the “Touch of Grey” video during the sessions, and remembers that Dylan and Garcia’s relationship seemed to run deeper than it might’ve seemed. “I got the sense from Jerry that the two of them had a closer relationship than has been revealed by either one,” Dell’Amico recalls. “Because once I got him talking, it was clear they had talked on the phone a lot and they had spent time together in New York when [the Dead] played in New York. Bob had even given him a tour of New York City in his van. I think that was somewhere between ’78 and the Christian tour in 1980.”
Whatever Dylan and Garcia’s connection, and whatever transformation he may’ve undergone at a seedy San Rafael bar, when they got onstage, it was more or less chaos. For starters, Dylan was right back to shouting again and, yeesh Spike, chill out, in addition to setlist chaos. “That seemed like poetic justice for a band that took pride in its flexibility and in not using a setlist,” Lesh would say.
The resultant tour album is so harsh that it scared me off the rest of the tour and, as I dip back into it, it’s not unrepresentative, and that reaction wasn’t unwarranted. But there are also a few takes from the tour that I do actually like. On the “Ballad of a Thin Man,” during the first chorus, Dylan approaches something like the lovely voice he’d find again in the ‘90s, and lays into it, finding a harmony for the verse melody, and suddenly he’s stopped shouting and is singing.
On Sonicnoizelove’s mix of tour highlights, I found two versions that are right for me, both songs that I virtually never need to hear anybody sing ever. I recognize myself as being in the minority, but I’ve always loved Dylan’s versions of “All Along the Watchtower” above all others, but what pulls me in here is Garcia’s utterly over-the-top power shredding, totally ‘80s, but also pure Garcia, like the photo-inverse of the delicate colors he’d added on “To Ramona” the first time he’d joined Dylan. Sung by pretty much anybody, “Knockin’ On Heaven’s Door” has almost always sounded like “Kumbuyah” to me. But the Dead (whose versions of “Knockin’ On Heaven’s Door” is likewise one I don’t often need to hear) fuckin’ nail it here, perfectly ragged, perfectly graceful. I think it’s ‘cuz Garcia’s leading the oooohs, and Dylan almost accidentally slides back into his purdy style of singing.
But of the six shows, those are the only three performances I really wanna hang out with more. For Dylan-heads, the sets included some big bust-outs, including the first ever live versions of “Queen Jane Approximately” and the first versions of the unreleased “John Brown” since the early ‘60s. Garcia apparently had his own favorites, which he assembled for the proposed live album -- and which were rejected by Dylan, recompiled by Sonicnoizelove on the Albums That Never Were blog. “What am I going to do, pop him one?” Garcia apparently shrugged. Unusually, given how I often I tend to agree with Garcia’s tastes, none of his picks resonated with me, either.
The real importance of the Grateful Dead on Bob Dylan would only become clear after the tour. Through the ‘80s, including his tour with the Dead, Dylan’s live setlists had barely varied. As Paul Williams pointed out, in Dylan’s first two shows of the fall, back with Tom Petty and the Heartbreakers, that changed, only repeating four songs on the second night of the tour, adding 13 more to the setlist.
Around the time of the ’87 shows, too, he set music to a pair of unrecorded Robert Hunter lyrics, “Silvio” and “The Ugliest Girl in the World,” both included for 1988’s Down in the Groove. “Silvio” featured Garcia, Weir, and Brent Mydland on backing vocals and became the album’s only single. Played nearly every night during large vital stretches of the Never-Ending Tour(s), I think “Silvio” is one of the songs that helped Dylan find his voice again, and even the down-on-his-heels character that would occupy 1997’s Time Out of Mind and 2001’s “Love & Theft.” Paul Williams thinks the song might be about Dylan himself.
By 1989, Dylan’s Deadheaddom had turned to something of an obsession. That February, he arrived at the LA Forum, inviting himself to sit-in and demanding to play “Dire Wolf.” (Perhaps he was inspired by the two nights Neil Young invited himself to play with Bob the previous year.) Dylan joined the band for the first half of the second set, but--for the most part--only played guitar. When they got to “Stuck Inside of Mobile,” the other Bob took the mic, Spike only stepping in when Weir forgot the words.
The next day, Dylan personally called the Dead’s office and asked if he could join the band, like, as a member. They had to have a vote, and it had to be unanimous. Perhaps obviously, it wasn’t. (Phil Lesh has been cited as the likely dissenter.)
Dylan himself became even more of a Deadhead after his tour with them.  The Dead influence on his live shows is undeniable. In the early ‘90s, he began to integrate Garcia/Hunter covers into his live sets, including “Friend of the Devil,” “West L.A. Fadeaway,” “Alabama Getaway,” and “Black Muddy River.” A friend of mine has posited a theory about the first half of a particular Dylan show in the fall of ’92 being a shout-out to Garcia, with the first 7 songs being a combination of Dead tunes (“West L.A. Fadeaway”), Dylan tunes Jerry and/or the Dead covered (“Positively 4th Street”), and material they shared (“Peggy-O”). And even if it wasn’t intentional, the math says a lot.
Garcia sat in with Dylan a few more times, too, one in ’92 at the Warfield (a misfired but still enjoyable “Idiot Wind”) and ’95 at R.F.K. Stadium, on Garcia’s final tour (“Train to Cry” is especially the right pace, “Rainy Day Women” has a crashing little jam-off). It’s sadly fitting that Garcia and Dylan’s friendship was only seeming to deepen during these years, ending with yet another heartbreaking missed opportunity: a proposed fall ’95 acoustic duo tour, which both had orally agreed to, according to Dennis McNally’s bio. It was Dylan, too, that provoked what proved to be Garcia’s last studio session in July of 1995, Garcia gathering himself for a cover of Jimmie Rodgers’ “Blue Yodel #9” with David Grisman and pals for a tribute album Dylan put out on his own infrequently invoked Egyptian imprint.
“There’s no way to measure his greatness or magnitude as a person or as a player,” Dylan said in a statement a month later, following Garcia’s death at the age of 53. “I don’t think eulogizing will do him justice.” It remains one of the most articulate and beautiful pieces of writing about Jerry Garcia. “To me he wasn’t only a musician and friend,” it reads in part, “he was more like a big brother who taught and showed me more than he’ll ever know. There are a lot of spaces and advances between the Carter family, Buddy Holly and, say, Ornette Coleman, a lot of universes, but he filled them all without being a member of any school. His playing was moody, awesome, sophisticated, hypnotic and subtle. There’s no way to convey the loss.”
Dylan stayed with Hunter while visiting for the funeral, the two great lyricists supposedly starting to write songs together, a thread the two would officially pick up on Dylan’s 2009 album Together Through Life, where the two are credited as songwriters on all but two of the album’s songs. Whatever connection Garcia and Dylan shared, it was one that Dylan has continued to carry with him at a deep level. The year after Garcia’s death, he drafted former Jerry Garcia Band drummer David Kemper into his own band, who played with Spike for a half-decade in my personal favorite iteration of the Never-Ending Band. As Dylan entered his pastiche period, Dylan scholar Scott Warmuth has posited that “Love & Theft”’s opening “Tweedle Dee and Tweedle Dum” is an answer song to “Uncle John’s Band” by way of a 1961 single called “Uncle John’s Bongos.” Really!
I haven’t seen much evidence of the Dead’s influence since Dylan shifted into his later career mode of covering pop standards. His setlists have ossified again, too. But it’s hard not to be influenced by Jerry, and, in the equally never-ending hunt for Dylan’s sources, I’m sure Garcia’s bemused beardo grin will show up somewhere.
2. Reckoning with Dylan & “the Dead”
As post-Garcia incarnations of former Grateful Dead members go, the 2003 squad called “the Dead” was one of my favorites. I only caught one show, but there were long jams, weird drumz and spaces, new songs, and no blues yodelers in sight. Looking back, it was the only year where Jimmy Herring acted as sole lead guitarist. I thought it was great.
But, even more, the early 2000s remain one of my favorite periods in the Never-Ending timeline, before Bob Dylan shifted over to keyboards full-time. His mode of improvising new melodies on the fly can be harsh and shouty, and there’s no better example of that than Dylan & the Dead. But, for nearly a decade of the Never-Ending Tour of tapes, I find his inventions to often be gorgeous, especially when he employs a soft and sweet lilt that I simply can’t hear as any derivative of “harsh.” (Check out the “Desolation Row,” especially on the recent Doom & Gloom NET Choice Cuts, vol. 1 mix.)
Spike didn’t join the band for any big jams (though Willie Nelson joined for a 10-minute version of Miles Davis’s “Milestones” that summer), wouldn’t allow his sit-ins to be included in the soundboard CDs sold after after show (again, big ups to Willie), and didn’t exactly sing in that soft, sweet Never-Ending voice (give or take the vitriolic “Ballad of a Thin Man,” ironically). But, listening to it as a compiled disc, they do jump into a great and convincing range of material. They do Garcia favorites (“Señor,” “Tangled Up in Blue”), shared standards they’d tried at the ’87 rehearsals (“You Win Again,” “Oh Boy”), Garcia/Hunter tunes Dylan loved (“Alabama Getaway,” “Friend of the Devil,” “West L.A. Fadeaway”), and more. It’s all a blast to my ears.
In many places, Bob Dylan does something totally remarkable by his standards: he sings songs such that, if a listener knows the words and wanted to, they could sing along. He doesn’t do it every time, certainly, but riding through “Alabama Getaway” on July 29th, Dylan does so with authority, a growling frontman. (Of course, the other two takes are wildly different.) “Subterranean Homesick Blues” didn’t make its live debut well into the scrambled ‘80s, but here sounds shockingly close to the 1965 Bringing It All Back Home version, give or take the Berklee-trained shredder Jimmy Herring in place of Bruce Langhorne, which is hilarious in its own way.
On “Goin’ Down the Road Feelin’ Bad,” he takes Garcia’s lead vocal with Joan Osborne matching him gamely, and on “Oh Boy,” the Bob section links up successfully. Sometimes it’s a little clunky, like when the Bobs trades verses on “Around & Around” -- never a Dead cover I particularly cared for, though I like Spike’s contributions a good deal. Occasionally, we get hints of what Dylan might be like as a jamming contributor to the Dead, had they taken him up on his 1989 request to join the band, in which he proves himself to be perhaps a more beguiling lead/rhythm hybrid than even Bob Weir, adding clonking piano interjections to “Thin Man” and “Gotta Serve Somebody.”
While perhaps not one of the great collaborations in the history of rock, Dylan and the 2003 Dead managed to achieve what they’d never done before, and--for once--didn’t miss their opportunity. Opening seven shows, Dylan sat in with the band at all of them. The musicians sound competent, the songs are usually recognizable from their first notes, and the music remains enjoyable in recorded form. If achieving competency doesn’t seem like a remarkable achievement, I suspect you might not be a fan of later period Grateful Dead or Bob Dylan, in which case I’m pleased you, dear reader, made it past the first sentence, let alone to the last.
Wall of Sound-sized #deadfreaksunite thanx to Tyler, John Hilgart, Sean Howe, James Adams, Joe Jupille, & Scott Warmuth for pointers / assistance / encouragement.
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theatuss · 6 years
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Eyoo! I just reset my animal crossing town again, so I’ve come up with a new design for the mayor!  I accidentally lost 15 million bells because I reset the town the wrong way, so I decided to turn over a NEW LEAF and rename the town and make the mayor a boy (previously I kept the town name and a female mayor). And that inspired me to draw all of my mayors.
If you don’t want to read about all my mayors, see you some other time!
On the far left we have my first mayor, a young, cheerful and hardworking girl. She (and I) would wake up at 6 am just so she could water all the flowers in town. She built works projects on the areas of past villagers’ houses as a memento to all of them. Her favorite villager was Elmer, but after a longstanding friendship, he moved away. That left a hole in her heart that was hard to fill, but she kept working hard to develop the town the best she could. Her next best friends became Beardo and Scoot, who were always cheering her up. After a few years, I found out about dream towns and wanted to visit some, but I hadn’t connected my DS to the internet. I didn’t know what to do since I wasn’t sure the game would let me create the dream suit. Anyways, I decided to start over with a new town and make sure that it was connected to the internet.
Next to her is my second mayor. I had her for quite a while, probably a few years. I made her a sloppy, careless tomboy. Her house looked like it was crumbling apart, she had an eyepatch, ripped jeans and leather jacket. She looked a bit intimidating, but she was kind deep down even if she could come off as a bit rude sometimes. Her favorite villager was Kyle, and he was a big inspiration for her look. I took great effort into making her house as chaotic and messy as I could while still making it look inhabitable (I was and still am very proud of her house). I created two characters from scratch that also lived in my town. I gave them quite the complex backstory which I ultimately forgot over time. I played regularly for a few years but slowly stopped visiting. I only ever checked up on the town maybe once every two months to make sure that Kyle hadn’t moved away. One day I decided that I wanted to make a new town that I cared about and wanted to develop, so I reset it once again. This time however, I got to collect all the bells that I had put into my town, so my new character had a bunch of money right from the get go!
The red haired one was created only 7 months ago. I immediately came up with a backstory for this rich and aloof girl. I thought that she came from a rich family that put weight on inheriting the family business, but their daughter had never showed any interest in it so her brother too it upon himself to keep in running. She had always found fishing a very calming and amusing activity, so when she was old enough to leave the nest, she moved to the ocean in hopes of becoming a fisher. She already had millions of bells, so she didn’t need to worry about supporting herself on the fish. However, when she arrived in this new town, the villagers confused her for the mayor. She never took her role as mayor seriously and had a lack of interest in the villagers, so She ended up spending most of her time fishing alone and donating to the museum. As time went on and I had finished the projects I wanted to do, I found myself getting uninterested in the town once again. I tried combating this by farming for rare hybrid flowers. But in the end, I just didn’t feel any joy when going around town; no likable villagers, no project to be worked on, I just had nothing to do. So yesterday, I decided to reset the town again. I accidentally did the wrong process when resetting the town and lost all the 15 million bells I had in the bank and all the money I had donated to public work projects.
I sat for a while, just letting my mistake sink in before starting over. When I started to talk to Rover on the train, I decided to make this town different from the others since I was starting from square one again. I still used my name, but I made the character a boy for the first time, and then I renamed the town from Sakura (past 3 towns) to Appely (yes, I misspelled apple, but nobody needs to know). When looking at the maps, I thought to continue with my plans on farming hybrid flowers, so I picked a town with a lot of free land away from the buildings. After I had done the initial tasks I went over to Happy Home Designer to make a design for him. Right now, I have none of the clothes or hair in the picture, but that’s what I’ll aim to buy in the future. I think this boy is pretty young, like 16, and is against having the responsibilities of a mayor; he just wants to plant trees and flowers. He will however try to improve the town and his main goal is to implant the police station (mostly because I haven’t had a station in my town for like 4 years).
Anyways, I think that in the future I’ll develop all the characters I’ve created for animal crossing and make more proper art with them (backgrounds, actions and life instead of just standing around). Also, I apologize for the clashing colors, but I hadn’t planned on posting this. Uh, thanks if you’ve read so far and have a nice day!
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aion-rsa · 3 years
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20 Best Animal Crossing Villagers Ever
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The legendary Animal Crossing franchise is deserving of its iconic status for many reasons, but it’s hard to deny that part of the series’ longevity can be traced back to the memorable personalities of its villagers.
In a franchise seemingly devoid of many traditional gameplay hooks, the thrill of inviting that one villager you’ve been looking for to your Animal Crossing home regularly ranks high among the best moments in gaming. Anyone who has spent any time with these games will waste no time telling you about their favorite villagers and the way they’ll always remember the time they spent with them.
There’s no way you’ll be able to convince those fans that anyone but their favorite villagers are the best villagers in Animal Crossing, we humbly suggest these 20 icons rank high among the greatest neighbors in franchise history.
20. Ribbot
While often described as one of the few “non-animal” creatures in this series, this longtime Animal Crossing villager challenges society’s expectations by blurring the arbitrary line between frog and robot. 
You may be worried by Ribbot’s decision to never carry an umbrella when it rains much like his frog companions, but the character’s rally cry of “Never rest, never rust” tells you what you need to know about his resiliency. When robots take over our world, we can only hope they have the heart and grace of Ribbot.
19. Mira
With her “big sister” personality, futuristic vibes, and recent insistence on calling everyone “cottontail,” the mysterious Mira has been stealing our hearts since she arrived in Animal Crossing: New Leaf.
Much like Cotton Eye Joe, nobody really knows where Mira comes from or where she’ll go. However, her thought bubble cry of “I want a futuristic space full of futuristic furniture!” will echo through eternity.
18. Lobo
Somewhere between Ernest Hemmingway and the grouchy old guy you lived next to growing up is Lobo: the outdoor-loving wolf with a heart of…well, certainly not gold
I don’t know what it is about this cranky purple wolf that speaks so loudly to my soul, but since Animal Crossing’s earliest days, he’s one of the wolves that I want in my village and by my side.
17. Knox
Maybe it’s because I suffer from a rare case of chicken blindness, but when I look at Knox, I don’t see a chicken; I see a noble knight. 
This “Man of La Mancha’s” adventuring days may be behind him, but Knox’s ability to get medieval on the Animal Crossing series has been appreciated ever since he made his debut in Animal Crossing: City Folk
16. Lionel
Lionel’s passing resemblance to Colonel Sanders of KFC fame earns him some bonus points (as does his gentlemanly demeanor), but when I think of Lionel, I think of class.
After all, Lionel upgraded his tasteful Victorian home in Animal Crossing: New Leaf to a skyscraper penthouse in New Horizons. He’s a lion that isn’t afraid to keep up with the times, and for that, he is our cultural superior in every conceivable way.
15. Chief
With his famous saying “Don’t wish it were easier; wish you were better” and his rally cry of “harrumph,” it’s easy to assume that Chief is just the jerk that his cranky personality seems to suggest he is. 
Yet, Chief’s thrift store decor in New Horizons suggests that Chief is actually an ‘80s dance movie protagonist with the fire of the streets in his soul just waiting to burn down the stuffy world he was born into. 
14. Marina
Some Octopuses use their eight tentacles to take eight times more than they’ll ever need and squeeze the world. Others use them to warm society with a slightly tight and surprisingly squishy embrace. 
Marina is an example of the latter. This ode to joy has been brightening up Animal Crossing village since their debut in New Leaf, and we wouldn’t have it any other way.
13. Beau
Beau is an enigma. He’s a lazy villager whose famous sayings include the line “You snooze, you lose.” Is this a defeated deer on the verge of a breakdown over the paths not walked?
No, as it turns out, Beau is just a naturalist whose charming personality and looks have made it easy for him to embrace a simpler lifestyle. He also owns some truly fantastic sweaters.
12. Lucha
Coming off the top rope like the Macho Man on a vengeance quest against the dastardly Hulk Hogan is Lucha: the mysterious masked wrestler who has graced many a lucky Animal Crossing players’ villages.
We don’t know much about the bird behind the mask, but Lucha’s warm personality suggests that wrestling is just his work and he does it for pay. When it’s over, he’d just as soon go on his way.
11. Raymond
It’s tempting to hate Raymond after his explosion in popularity in New Horizons, but since I suspect that Raymond is fuelled by the cries of “haters,” I’ll counter his strategy by welcoming him into the ranks of Animal Crossing’s best villagers.
Somewhere between a business cat and a fashion cat, Raymond would devour Wall Street’s Gordon Gekko in the same way that so many cats before him have devoured so many geckos before them.
10. Zucker
As a fan of the Japanese snack “Takoyaki” from which Zucker’s original Japanese name (Takoya) and elements of the character’s look are derived, I suppose you could say that I’m a bit biased in my admiration for one of Animal Crossing’s few octopus villagers.
However, it’s really the way that Zucker’s entire demeanor flies in the face of the fact that takoyaki consists of fried dough balls stuffed with minced octopus meat that leaves me no choice to respect this king of villagers.
9. Whitney
Whitney may come across as a snooty villager with a better than you attitude, but maybe you should consider the possibility that your real problem with Whitney is that she’s a class act with style to burn.
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As a wolf firmly against the idea of crying wolf, it’s clear that Whitney doesn’t play and very likely dropped out of school because of recess. 
8. Fauna
Look, I’m not saying Fauna ranks this high on this list because she’s a deer who calls everyone “dearie,” but I’m also not going to insult your intelligence by sitting here and pretending that didn’t factor into this decision.
Mostly, though, it’s Fauna’s warm vibes, retro decor, and undeniably cute design that helps her stand out from some truly considerable competition.
7. Beardo
While we’re all more than a little tired of people who base their personalities on their facial hair, we’d probably all be a little more willing to put up with it if their facial hair was nearly as excellent as Beardo’s.
This ladies’ man bear doesn’t actually have a proper beard, but his mutton chops, mustache, and tweed jacket strike a figure that makes it easier than ever to overlook his smug personality and lack of namesake facial hair and just appreciate everything he is.
6. Chevre
In case you couldn’t tell from her bright big eyes that have caused lifelong enemies to end their conflicts, Chevre is a dreamer in the body of a goat.
Chevre is the kind of villager you’d do anything for. While she’d probably never ask you to do anything more than live your best life, I’d have no problem answering a 3 a.m. call from Chevre to meet her in Manhattan and help her steal some diamonds as easily as she stole our hearts. 
5. Merengue
Lots of villagers make it to this prestigious list (some would say the most prestigious list) for lots of reasons, but in the case of Merengue, the reasons are almost all based on her iconic looks.
As the best “food” villager in Animal Crossing history, Merengue embraces her looks by baking up a storm whenever you visit her cafe-themed home. She’s the friend we all want in our lives if for no other reason than she’s always got a sweet roll to spare. 
4. Stitches
Do I have questions about how Stitches (an apparently stuffed animal who regularly takes residency in Animal Crossing’s villages) actually came to life and gained sentience? No, I don’t, because I don’t question the good things in my life.
Stitches is one of the most visually iconic characters in Animal Crossing history as well as one of the characters that still has an element of mystery to them despite the fact that they’ve been in every AC game.
3. Marshal
This squirrel without a cause has long been one of the most desirable villagers in Animal Crossing history. Somewhere behind those “I don’t care eyes” is the insistence of millions of players everywhere who scream into the night their assurances that he does care because they care.
Marshal is one of the coolest characters in AC history as well as one of the characters that made players realize there are certain villagers they want more than any other.
2. Bob
A popular theory suggests that Bob was actually the first Animal Crossing villager the series’ developers ever created. If that is the case, then I have to commend them for having the courage to continue to create despite achieving near perfection.
Bob has long been one of the internet’s favorite Animal Crossing villagers, and the fact that so many elements of his personality seem to cater to the internet’s love for memes hardly makes his iconic status a surprise. He’s a legend that’s legacy has surpassed even his in-game attributes.
1. Lucky
If the best Animal Crossing villagers are defined by the ways they let their personality shine through relatively simple mechanics, then Lucky has to be considered one of the very best Animal Crossing villagers ever at the very least.
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This decidedly unlikely dog who is presumably covered in bandages due to various injuries embraced his new look by adopting a horror theme that makes him a favorite among genre fans everywhere. Any island would be lucky to count this legendary dog among its residents. 
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