Say a prayer for the boys out on tour. All the Okies and Limeys and curtain climbers.
Musings on the Most Ridiculous Band I Can't Stop Listening To
Tag: leon russell
Leave your choice in the Comment Section. Okay, goofy goobers: go!
I post this song every time there’s a massacre. I post it a lot.
Everyone’s tenth-favorite Canadian (after the members of Rush, the Kids in the Hall, and Sarah Polley) David Lemieux posted this on Twitter today, possibly to depress all of us into suicide about the current state of music. LOOK AT THIS BULLSHIT. Legend after legend, and also the Jefferson Airplane, playing at what was essentially a high school auditorium.
Obviously, the highlight is the Dead’s four-show run that so often gets overlooked in favor of the more famous (and more documented) Veneta Creamery gig, but barring the band you’ve known for all these years, who’s the King Stud? We begin with subtraction.
John Mayall/Albert King It turns out “John Mayall” is not John Mayer spelled wrong; also, John Mayer does not have access to Time Sheath technology so he almost certainly is not playing any gigs in 1972. Someone’s gonna stick up for Albert King, but they shouldn’t because the Blues are boring. Learn a fourth chord, the Blues.
Joe Cocker I couldn’t have seen Joe Cocker live because I would’ve charged the stage and shoved a wallet in his mouth. Stop twitching, Joey the Spaz.
Cat Stevens Dogshit. Don’t you have a hajj to go to, Yusef? Music is haram, infidel.
Jefferson Airplane The single most interesting thing the Jefferson Airplane ever did was the time a swozzled Grace Slick taunted a Hamburg crowd by chanting “WHO WON THE WAR?” at them until Marty Balin tackled her. That’s living theater, man.
Leon Russell This is a tough gig to throw on the scrap pile, but Leon’s dead so he won’t be insulted. (And even when Leon was alive, he wasn’t really aware of what was going on.) He might have made the cut, but he played piano on Monster Mash* and anyone who played piano on Monster Mash gets eliminated. I don’t make the rules.
The Kinks/Dr. Hook and the Medicine Show Maybe if Stevie or Pink Floyd weren’t on the list. Maybe. Did the Davies brothers get into a fistfight onstage at this show? That would change my mind, but the innertubes has no information about said alleged fisticuffs, so that’s a “No” for me, dog.
The Faces/Tower of Power The Faces are the most precisely rated band in Rock history. Not overrated, not underrated; precisely as forgotten as they should be.
So: we’ve narrowed our field down to four competitors but not really because even though I (and Valued Commentator JES) love Humble Pie, they’re just not in the same league as the other three, are they? But Steve Marriott and the boys did cover a familiar tune:
Better than Jerry Band’s version? I don’t know, but it is three hours shorter and I don’t have to picture Smokin’ John Kahn while it’s playing.
OUR FINALISTS:
The Pink Floyd Sound, maaaaaaaaaaaan Is the Floyd cool this year or not? They swing back and forth, according to Important Rock Critics, at least. The Floyd are to music criticism what eggs are to nutritional science. I don’t give a fuck; there’s always room for Animals on my turntable.
(And, yes, I see that they were playing at Winterland instead of the BCT. Stop correcting people.)
What were they playing in 1972, anyway?
It was the Dark Side of the Moon tour. Gonna be tough to beat. You’d have to be some sort of super-funky musical genius.
Stevie Wonder Who is a super-funky musical genius, and 1972 was a strapping year from Little Stevie. Music of My Mind had come out the previous year; Talking Book and its big hit Superstition came out in ’72, and Innervisions was due to be released in ’73. On 12/26/72, he filmed an hourlong special called SOUL! in New York with the same band he had for the BCT show. They were all right.
And then a few weeks later, he appeared on the game show What’s My Line? (I know that doesn’t have anything to do with how rockin’ a gig he would have put on, but it’s fun and I wanted to share it with you even though none of you are helping me with my doobie problem.)
GENE SHALIT! SOUPY!
And, hey, check this out:
Don’t tell me the 70’s weren’t awesome.
But, like Highlanders, there can be only one and since it will annoy Mr. Completely I will choose to use the Time Sheath to go back and catch the only person on this list whose hand I got to shake before they died: George Carlin doing material from the legendary Class Clown album.
So, in closing, I leave you with George’s immortal words: shit, piss, fuck, cunt, cocksucker, motherfucker, and tits. And tits shouldn’t even be on the list, man.
Bobby sings Hard Rain real good, but no one did it as well as Leon.
So, there’s Doug Sahm singing on the left; all the way in back with the Strat is Leon Russell, and there’s our man Reddy Kilowatt standing behind the drummer because otherwise he would be able to hear the bass drum. I wanna say Buddy Cage is on drums, but I’m guessing, and also Buddy Cage might be black, but I also could be thinking about Buddy Miles. (I know Buddy Holly was white and Buddy Guy is black, but besides those two I cannot tell one Buddy from another.) You know the shaggy fellow on the pedal steel.
The violinists are Abigail and Zachariah Mumphree, twin virtuosos from Galveston who need to be separated lest they start fencing with their bows again.
“Beard, huh? Doesn’t itch?”
“When it comes in. Not after that.”
“And long hair? Gets in your eyes, don’t it?”
“Ya brush it out of your eyes. Wear a hat. Braid it up or something.”
“Huh.”
…
“That don’t smell like a Marlboro.”
“It ain’t.”
“I feel like I’m learning a lot here, Leon.”
Six weeks left in the year.
You think 2016 has a finale planned?
Something big and loud to send us off with?
Fireworks and laser lights,
And a basket of rose petals
Chucked into the crowd
By a Hells Angel
In a helmet made from a bear’s skull?
We ain’t seen nothing yet.
The ony thing less interesting than someone else’s dreams is someone else’s weather, so lemme tell you about both. It’s spattering and spitting outside the doors of Fillmore South, and likely to keep doing it all day. Florida is the only place in the world (and for the purposes of these bloggings, the whole world encompasses the contiguous states of America) where it actually gets more humid when it rains. The anole lizards, usually skinny and frantic, swell up like Nerf footballs soaked in Viagra and loll about to be trod upon by careless adults and compassion-less children.
The gators love it: more rain means bigger lakes means more water’s edge. The water’s edge is the gator’s buffet line.
Maybe that’s why there are so many lunatics down here. Between the dinosaurs lurking in the ponds and the reptiles on your doorstep and the palmetto bugs–giant malformed cockroaches with the power of flight–doing kamikaze runs into your windshield, mammals instinctively know they’re not supposed to be here. When the white man first showed up here, the Seminole and Miccosukee never fought face-to-face, just led them deeper into the swamps and let Florida take their heads. Just like the Russians with Napoleon and Hitler, but with fewer clothes or 1000-page novels.
And the dream has come back. I’ve invited a few friends over and things have gotten out of hand. People begin to show up and won’t leave: I toss ’em out, give ’em the old heave-ho, walk ’em Spanish out the door–no luck. Danny DeVito showed up in last night’s episode; so did Bobbi Starr, whom you should not google at work.
So when commenter DJ5000 (who, sadly, has been discontinued to make way for the DJ6000 model) sent me this, it made my early morning:
[youtube http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5di9t4KONSo&w=420&h=315]
If you had a rough night–and that’s redundant: they’re all rough, ain’t they, Enthusiasts–and the carpet’s moving under you and all you’ve got to live for is what you left behind, then grab a powder keg, strike a match, blow that silver mine, and start anew. You get another chance every morning.
© 2021 Thoughts On The Dead
Theme by Anders Noren — Up ↑
Recent Comments