• No Left Turn Unstoned (Cardboard Cowboy/The Monster)
    Lyrics By:
    Music By:

    When the cardboard cowboy dreams and his cornucopia
    Opens up the sky and blows my mind to the corners of
    [Far in bar rent shine] running beneath high trembling dove
    Leaving me transfixed and raving in the wake of the hammer blow

    On my way out of town I stumbled on the shards of a hungry [scream]
    And further up into the backdoor circle, where the [power and crystal sea]
    [Could this go rise by all allow brater] on the strength of an anguished sigh
    And a paranoid re-entry blanket flies sleeping on a sling shot ride

    As my patchwork [world/quilt] unravels, I ramble yes too high
    [From the looping antrobus with his magic meant so high]
    Shining out a masquerade from dawn to alpha plus
    Watching mashed potatoes dribble in the heat of reality's earth

    [For the intro doom from] running to him
    It wasn't ever so
    Turns the wall into the sky above me, there is no place to run

    This is a song played a few times in the very early days of the Grateful Dead but then dropped from their repertoire. It is usually known as "Cardboard Cowboy" but it seems to have been variously titled as "No Left Turn Unstoned" or "The Monster."

    Phil Lesh made the following comments about the song in a CD issued as bonus material with some copies of his book "Searching For The Sound":

    "This song here is one of the first originals that we wrote (or that actually I wrote, 'cause I wrote the words and the music) ... This is known as 'Cardboard Cowboy' but it actually was called 'The Monster,' and I'm not sure why we called it that except maybe it was just so big and ugly and hard to play."

    The title "No Left Turn Unstoned" comes from a sign in front of Ken Kesey's old house in La Honda. Bob Weir introduced it under this title in the show on 29 July 1966.

    And in an interview with Blair Jackson in Dupree's Diamond News No 28, Spring 1994, there is the following exchange:

    JACKSON: Have you written lyrics before?

    LESH: Only once, but this [Childhood's End] came out a lot better than that one.

    JACKSON: Which was ...

    LESH: "No Left Turn Unstoned." [Laughs] It was a truly awful song I wrote for the Grateful Dead during the Matrix era - I think it was '67, maybe '68. It's on a couple of tapes I think. It's so God-awful I can't even listen to it to find out what it was like. [Laughs]

    The lyrics are very hard to decipher, and what's below is sometimes just phonetic sounds. Thanks especially to Richard Zadworny for his work on making sense of this. All other help gratefully received.

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This is a song played a few times in the very early days of the Grateful Dead but then dropped from their repertoire. It is usually known as "Cardboard Cowboy" but it seems to have been variously titled as "No Left Turn Unstoned" or "The Monster."

Phil Lesh made the following comments about the song in a CD issued as bonus material with some copies of his book "Searching For The Sound":

"This song here is one of the first originals that we wrote (or that actually I wrote, 'cause I wrote the words and the music) ... This is known as 'Cardboard Cowboy' but it actually was called 'The Monster,' and I'm not sure why we called it that except maybe it was just so big and ugly and hard to play."

The title "No Left Turn Unstoned" comes from a sign in front of Ken Kesey's old house in La Honda. Bob Weir introduced it under this title in the show on 29 July 1966.

And in an interview with Blair Jackson in Dupree's Diamond News No 28, Spring 1994, there is the following exchange:

JACKSON: Have you written lyrics before?

LESH: Only once, but this [Childhood's End] came out a lot better than that one.

JACKSON: Which was ...

LESH: "No Left Turn Unstoned." [Laughs] It was a truly awful song I wrote for the Grateful Dead during the Matrix era - I think it was '67, maybe '68. It's on a couple of tapes I think. It's so God-awful I can't even listen to it to find out what it was like. [Laughs]

The lyrics are very hard to decipher, and what's below is sometimes just phonetic sounds. Thanks especially to Richard Zadworny for his work on making sense of this. All other help gratefully received.

Lyrics By
Phil Lesh
Music By
Phil Lesh
Lyrics

When the cardboard cowboy dreams and his cornucopia
Opens up the sky and blows my mind to the corners of
[Far in bar rent shine] running beneath high trembling dove
Leaving me transfixed and raving in the wake of the hammer blow

On my way out of town I stumbled on the shards of a hungry [scream]
And further up into the backdoor circle, where the [power and crystal sea]
[Could this go rise by all allow brater] on the strength of an anguished sigh
And a paranoid re-entry blanket flies sleeping on a sling shot ride

As my patchwork [world/quilt] unravels, I ramble yes too high
[From the looping antrobus with his magic meant so high]
Shining out a masquerade from dawn to alpha plus
Watching mashed potatoes dribble in the heat of reality's earth

[For the intro doom from] running to him
It wasn't ever so
Turns the wall into the sky above me, there is no place to run