POLITICAL RAP


Scene: We see the band & crew watching TV in the dark. We see only the back of the TV & their faces.


TV: This footage just in from the Mekong Delta were American Troops are engaged in skirmishes with the Viet Cong ... etc. etc. (get some actual tv dialogue of the time.) We see flames shooting out of the TV into the room, though we never see what's on. Sickened look on some faces, fascination on others. After a burst of machine gun fire & explosions that rock the room, the televison explodes and burns to rubble. Lights switch on. The viewers faces are blackened, as though they, too, have just experienced the taste of war action. Dissolve to:


JG, Phil, Weir, Mickey are conversing with a black revolutionary man and a female anti-war activist in the front room of 710 Ashbury.


JG: I'm not putting down what you're doing, but why should we lay aside what we're doing to follow your program?
Brother X: All energies must be directed to the cause of the people! You're wasting time with this hippie dippy shit, and time is the one thing we don't have time to waste! We got a war to fight and the time to fight is now!
Sister Child: Now wait a minute, my man! We're fighting to stop a war and you're talking about starting a civil war at the same time!
BX: Viet Nam will take care of itself, soon's they realize they got to get those troops back here to fight the war on the home front.
Pigpen: Seems to me the problem is everybody fighting!
Weir: You say you're fighting to be free ... we're just trying to practice freedom the best we know how. We're not soldiers, we're musicians.
Brother X: We're not saying you should stop making music, we're just saying it's important for all energies to be directed in service of the revolution. Look at what you're saying for God's sake: "Good morning little schoolgirl ... can I come home with you!"
Pigpen: Wit'choo!
BX: Where you get off singing black songs in the first place ...
Pigpen: Same place you get off talking English ... what goes around comes around, brother.
BX: Don't give me that brother shit, white boy.
Pigpen: Don't give me that white boy shit, cousin!
BX: Don't fuck with my head, man. This may be the one chance you get to square your shit away & get right with the movement.
Sister Child: I'm with him that far. One way or another, if you're not part of the solution, you're part of the problem
JG: We are part of the solution, just not your particular solution.
BX: Don't forget freedom comes from the barrel of a gun!
JG: Assuming the fighting ever does end, and you don't just turn to fighting among yourselves like any other armed revolution, what'll be left when the smoke clears?
Phil: That's what concerns us. Is there gonna be any of this famous peace and freedom or just a lot of broken windows on Telegraph Avenue?
Mickey: Seems to me you're running some old program from the turn of the century that looked good on paper but ended up being run by the same bunch of bullshit bureaucrats wherever they tried to put it into action.
Sister Child: Right on! We need our own revolution, not some pre-packaged Marxist bullshit. That wasn't Dr. King's dream!
BX: Yes it was!
Sister Child: No it wasn't!
BX: Martin and Malcolm, George Jackson, Stokely and Mao ... baby, it's all the same dream! And it's yours if you want it!
Weir: If your dream's expansive enough to put Martin & Mao on the same mountain, I guess there's room for ours too.
BX: Negative! Them cats were not sittin on no mountain top high on LSD singing Sergeant Pepper's Lonely Heart's Club Band & meditating on their dicks!
Bill Kreutzman (entering room): Somebody say party time?!
Phil: (dour) Yeah, it's party time all right.
BX: (preparing to split) One hundred and sixty ...six percent pre-digested white bread stick your pointy little head up your ass and fight for air party time. See you after the revolution!
BK: Right on, brother! Comin' to the show tonight?
BX: Yeah ...could you put me on the guest list?
BK: Sure, no problem. What's up guys?
JG: (to Ramrod who's just entered) Hey Ramrod, you seen Hunter anywhere?
Ramrod: Down on Haight Street shaking down tourists for spare change.
JG: I think I'll join him ... it's time we wrote a protest song. And I could use some spare change for guitar strings anyway.
Weir: I just changed my strings ... you can have my old ones ... they only got three gigs on 'em.
JG: Naw ... you got some kinda weird PH in your fingers turns strings green when anybody else touches 'em.
Weir: Suit yourself.
Ramrod: I don't think you're gonna get any protest out of Hunter today. He had that wall to wall smile and was hovering six inches above the pavement.
JG: (leaving) I'll bring him down!
Ramrod: Hey, me and Rex are gonna drive over and raid the Jefferson Airplane's dumpster soon as they get on stage tonight. Anybody wanta come?
JG: (off-camera) Not if they're still on that vegetarian kick.


Cut to Mickey walking upstairs to his room.


Mickey teaches The Eleven


Scene: Mickey Hart is beating on a drumpad. ( Closeups on Mickey's hands. Multi-tone light from a stained glass window onto the hands and pad.


Hart:
Papa Mama Papa Mama
flim flam paradiddle
ratamacue rat-ratamacue
dou-ble paradiddle
dou-ble paradiddle
Mama Papa Mama Papa (shot rises to his face)
Rhythm is everything.
Rhythm is all.
Rhythm is God,
bow down to rhythm
Rhythm is powerful
Rhythm conquers all
1-2-3-4-5-6 /1-2-3-4-5-6 (counts a few bars of 6 then permutates to 9; counts a few bars of 9 aloud them adds a two stroke flam to bring the count to 11. Sparks fly off the drumstick heads and an archery-type target face appears on the drumpad, oscillating centrifugally like looney tunes)


Phil walks by Mickey's open door and peeks in as Mickey counts


Hart: Hey Phil, follow this ...
Phil plucks a bass out of the air
Phil: What's the count man?
Hart: Eleven!
Phil: Far out
Hart: onetwothree / fourfivesix/ sev'neightnine/ tenlev'n
onetwothree / fourfivesix/ sev'neightnine/ tenlev'n
Phil: (follows suit on bass) Kinda got to cram those
last two beats in there don't you?)
Hart: Do it till it feels natural.
Phil: How long do you figure that takes?
Hart: Twice as many times as you can stand to play it ... teach it to your nerves ... play it till it gets in your sleep & you wake up counting it.


(They groove and the tune The Eleven develops out of it ... the duet continues a bit then Garcia's descending solo comes in and lap dissolve to:
Jerry goes walking in the Haight. (This scene still to be developed) Watches tour buses from Mars, Venus & other dimensions, a steady stream of them, move through the Haight. Each has a tourist guide driver explaining fine points of Hippie culture. He eventually finds Hunter who is, indeed, floating above the pavement.


JG: Hey Hunter how's it going?
Hunter: You're not going to believe this man!
JG: I'll believe it.
Hunter: My body's here right now, but my mind's in 1994 and I'm writing a movie about all the shit that's going down right now!
JG: Oh Yeah? How does it all turn out?
Hunter: Not allowed to tell, I don't think.
JG: I wouldn't want to know anyway ... except for one thing.
Hunter: What's that?
JG: Who's gonna direct it?
Hunter: You are!
JG: Far out. When can I see the script?
Hunter: In about thirty years.


Concluding Sequences Music: Attics of My Life
Voice over:
What became of the girl
in the tattered shawl,
the many bodies, all
beautiful, she wore
walking arm in arm
with the boy in the
stovepipe hat grinning
like a broad blue sun
in checkerboard skies?


I see my brothers
& fairy tale sisters
by light no snap of
a shutter can capture,
no interview after
the fact reclaim ...


only conjuration
performed in
twilight mist
upon scaffolding
of moonbeam
can reconstruct
the architecture
of a dream.


Though my foot is lost,
I will walk. My tongue
being tied, yet will I talk
as a breeze speaks to
the heat of day in the
voice of common need.


I have sung
strange songs
beneath strange skies
in a tongue no voice
can hope to master
but I have never
sung to strangers.