I love those cowboys, I love their gold, Love my uncle, God rest his soul
Taught me good, Lord, taught me all I know, Taught me so well, that I grabbed that gold.
And I left his dead ass there by the side of the road.
Papa John Phillips
Several days after the event, we may now be able to authentically reflect on the end of the Dead and Company era – that latest attempt to cobble together the spare parts of what was once a magnificent band called the Grateful Dead.
I have never taken much interest in these affairs (here, I apply a simple rule – No Jerry, No Dead). But I once took my children – no lie – to an early such configuration, which required no fewer than a dozen musicians to hack up what was at one time so well done by a sublime quintet. I felt particularly sorry for the lead guitarist – a presumably nice fellow/competent musician who looked so bewildered that I think he shortly after sotted off to a desert island, never to be heard from again. The other memorable moments came by observing, standing behind the sound board partition space at the Garden, an entire row of quadriplegics double passing joints throughout the entire show.
The latest ensemble was a tighter outfit, held together by what’s left of Bobby, the undeniably authentic shredding of the otherwise smarmy John Mayer, and the solid bottom provided by a former cover band bass player (Phil has long since begged off) named Oteil.
They never, to my knowledge, recorded any original music (why bother?), but they did go out in a blaze of glory, dusting off some old faves, while being upstaged by an astonishing drone display above San Francisco’s Oracle Park:
I am told that the final set list included “Me and My Uncle”. Which itself is a cover. It was written not by the band, but rather by Mamas and Papas founder John Phillips – who was one of the few mortals to rival Jerry in drug abuse.
The song itself, according to legend, was created in a stupor so intense that Phillips did not even remember writing it. The episode would’ve faded to oblivion had not Judy Collins had the foresight to have taped it, recorded her own forgettable version, it and passed it on, into perpetuity, to various incarnations of the Dead.
This topic came up in one of those pro forma, but touching text threads with some high school chums, designed more to cling to past glories than for information sharing. It quickly morphed into a debate about Uncle/Nephew relationships. I pressed my preference for the ties between Pliny the Elder and Pliny the Younger, and was met with crickets.
But the victor, beyond question is Old Man Pliny. Lawyer. Politician. Military Leader. Provincial Governor. Naturalist. Inventor of the 20-centuries-old template for the modern encyclopedia. His nephew (known locally as Pliny the Squirt) seems mostly to have been his nepotistic beneficiary.
Equally tiresome is where the thread thence migrated: the debate about JFK and one of his 600 nephews – one RFK Jr. – of recently announced hat-in-ring-tossing renown and kicking up more of a fuss than could have been expected. His uncle was a War Hero, Pulitzer Prize Winner, Congressman, Senator, President, and, of course, perhaps the biggest hound dog of the midtwentieth century (and, trust me here – there were a lot of great hound dogs in the mid-20th).
Nephew Bobby Jr. is an adjunct professor at Pace University, so there’s that.
It is thus not much of a contest, but perhaps a sign of the times that he can even draw notice is an upcoming presidential battle where his party leader is the incumbent. That what is shaping up to be a rather important election will likely dispatch several successful governors, senators, and other highly credentialed aspirants in favor of two narcissistic, petulant mediocrities who come up laughably short as horn dogs when compared to the above-mentioned JFK.
So it goes in the Uncle/Nephew game. As mentioned in earlier installments, I have an uncle who was long-time Director of the Metropolitan Transportation Authority in Washington, and thus literally responsible for the creation of the Beltway. He’s gone now, and presumably atoning for this sin. And just for the record, I never left his dead ass there by the side of that road.
Another became a film director, winning a share of the 1966 Cannes Film Festival, but doing nothing since – due, presumably, to his finite talents and eternally petulant arrogance. My uncle Irv (who preferred to be called Joe) was a mattress salesman and then ran a novelty shop in Sarasota, FL. He, too, presumably full of atonement, has long since departed.
But I got my start in the investment game by virtue of my relationship with my youngest and still surviving uncle. He was at one time the bow-tied king of the gone-but-lamented Soybean futures pit. I have arguably travelled more miles than him, but I’m pretty sure he’s richer than me.
Meantime, investors are shrugging it all off, taking the Dead and Company wind down in stride, entirely eschewing the raging Pliny debate, and, for the moment at any rate, blocking out the increasingly bleak prospects of the ’24 election.
Apparently, and perhaps appropriately, they have other Phish (the closest viable proximity to Deadhead bliss) to phry. It is, after all, a relatively big week of what passes for pertinent data. The folks in Washington will lay on us both what promises to be a better-than-deserved Q2 GDP report, and the next FOMC rate proclamation.
In terms of the latter, the markets project > 99% probability of yet another rate increase.
Yawn.
Passing above what is more appropriately each day referred to as fly-over country, the other action transpires in the Northwest, where Tech Titans Alphabet and Microsoft kick off the fat part of the earnings cycle.
This ought to be interesting. But another sign that all is not lost is a modest but noticeable widening of the breadth of this improbable rally.
Case and point: the equal weighted S&P 500 – a wonky variant on the Gallant 500, which doles out identical portions to each constituent company, and to which we will thence apply the appellation Egalitarian 500, after being flat-to-down most of the year, has surged to proximate all-time highs:
It thus perhaps makes sense to adhere a bit more closely than usual to a broader inventory of earnings reports than has been the prevailing protocol for eons hence.
On balance, however, I’m hard pressed to identify much in the near term to obliterate the good market vibes we’ve all enjoyed thus far this summer. It’s out there, but what it is and from where (and when) it will come is, for the moment, a challenge above my pay grade.
Maybe it would be a reformation of the Deadsters with Courtney Love on lead guitar. But I believe the recruitment of Derek Trucks – fabulous guitar player and nephew of original Alman Brothers drummer Butch Trucks is more likely.
Because, sometimes, nephews are worthy of their indirect antecedents. Caesar Augustus, successor to an incomparable but entirely batshit uncle, dispatched Marc Antony, obliterated the Triumvirate, consolidated his own power, dramatically expanded the Roman Empire, and, in general, ran a much tighter ship than his Uncle J.
In doing so, he did not leave Julius’s dead ass there by the side of the road. Somebody else did that. The Roman Empire endured but crumbled several centuries later.
There’s a risk management lesson in there somewhere, but I can’t quite put my finger on it. So, if it’s all the same to you, I’ll take my leave here and seek the guidance of one or both of my surviving uncles.
TIMSHEL