Dead Songs in Depth

    
No Left Turn Unstoned (Cardboard Cowboy)
w&m: Lesh
AGDL: http://arts.ucsc.edu/gdead/agdl/ccow.html
LASF: http://www.whitegum.com/songfile/NOLEFTTU.HTM
  

    
No Left Turn Unstoned (Cardboard Cowboy) 
Lyrics: Phil Lesh
Music: Phil Lesh

Copyright Ice Nine Publishing; used by permission.

When the cardboard cowboy dreams and his cornucopia
Opens up the sky and blows my mind to the [colours 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
  

    
An underrated early Dead song.  This sounds to me like a
distillation of the Acid Tests--all of them.
  

    
I love all these early songs.
  

    
A post on the Grateful Dead Sources blog (<http://bit.ly/2m76tw1>)
from the San Raphael Independent-Journal on 19 September 1966
includes the first three lines:

When the cardboard cowboy dreams in his cornucopia
Opens up the sky and sends my mind to the corners of
The rainbow bridge unrolling beneath my trembling toes

This does clear up the third line - though I hear the Dead singing
"blows my mind" rather than "sends" in the second line.

Maybe one day someone will turn up the full lyrics.
  

    
Thanks, Alex! Hey, stranger things have happened.