In this week’s edition of Saturday Night Shut-In your host, Mr. Moderator, lacks time to chat but constructs a set around some thoughts on Levon Helm and the passing of yet another member of one of his childhood faves, The Band.
[audio:https://www.rocktownhall.com/blogs/wp-content/uploads/2012/04/RTH-Saturday-Night-Shut-In-76.mp3|titles=RTH Saturday Night Shut-In, episode 76]
Billy Idol and the Beastie Boys: standing at a dividing line of "cool."
While seeking a ridiculous image of a Beastie Boys tribute band in hopes of impressing my friends in an especially thrilling and silly thread, I came across this photo, which is even more ridiculous. I believe the uncredited photographer captured a passing of the “cool” torch, of sorts.
As our recent Mystery Date sponsor tonyola predicted, the song “Freedom,” a 1971 single from an obscure English group called Rocky Cabbage, was met with a few off-base guesses that it was from the 1990s. Rocky Cabbage also went under the name Majority One and had a couple of very minor UK hits. Some members of the group backed UK singer Barry Ryan on his over-the-top 1968 hit “Eloise.”
As your reward for playing along, tonyola offers you “Get Back Home,” released in 1970, under the Majority One moniker. Enjoy.
[audio:https://www.rocktownhall.com/blogs/wp-content/uploads/2012/04/Majority-One-Get-Back-Home.mp3|titles=Majority One, “Get Back Home”]
Gov. Christie plays "The Big Man" to (NOT) Bruce Springsteen.
This (and the stories to which this piece links) may be among the Top 5 newspaper stories I’ve ever read. New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie responded—in depth—to reports that he fell asleep during a recent Bruce Springsteen show at Madison Square Garden. Love or leave the man’s politics, I think there’s something refreshingly pathetic and true in Christie’s retort. He’d be a lot of fun to have posting here in the Halls of Rock.
“When I was fist-pumping during ‘Badlands’ I’m glad nobody took pictures of that. When I was singing to ‘Out In The Street,’ no one took pictures of that. When I was contorting myself to ‘Because The Night’ no one took pictures of that,” he said.
So try this: ask a friend or loved one to read this story to you. As the governor did while listening to that “spiritual” new Boss song, lean back your head and close your eyes. Then try to imagine the all the photos Christie is thankful no one shot that night.
Dick Clark died at 82 years of age this morning of a “massive heart attack.” Although Clark probably resonates deeply with our demographic’s collective pre-rock nerd childhood, he probably doesn’t inspire the hipster love that the recently departed Don Cornelius did. Nevertheless, it goes without saying that he was a great man.
That said, can any Townsperson cite a more cherished American Bandstand moment than the following? He and his audience had it coming to them, no?
A friend passed along this sad note on Levon Helm‘s Web site. I knew Helm had been battling cancer, and he didn’t look like the picture of health over the last few years, but it saddens me to think that yet another member of a band that has meant so much to me since childhood, The Band, is about to cross maybe the greatest of divides.
The Band’s second, self-titled album is one of the first albums my uncle gave me when I was a little boy. I played it to death and wore out the textured gatefold album cover with all the time I spent gazing at those beards, almost groping at the pictures of them recording such magical music in regular-looking surroundings. Robbie Robertson was The Genius, but Levon had the best beard—and he sang “The Night They Drove Old Dixie Down” like his life depended on it. No, that’s not right: like the South’s legacy depended on it. I still get chills every time I hear that song. As a little kid the gave me a “living” sense of a significant piece of our nation’s history. A young Yankee felt a kinship with those ancient Southerners. I still do, despite the fact that I’ve hardly spent any time in the South excluding trips to tourist traps in Florida.
When The Last Waltz was released my childhood love of rock ‘n roll was rekindled in a big way. I started learning all sorts of nerdy things about The Band that I wasn’t aware of at the age of 6, including the band members’ Canadian roots, all but Helm’s, that is. He was the real-deal Confederate of my boyhood Civil War fantasies. Watching him sing with his head cocked, his shoulders hunched, and that half-smile was a revelation. I was used to seeing Ringo happily bashing away and singing “Boys” or whatever crowd pleaser he was assigned, but Levon was something else. He brought funk and fire to The Band that never came off hokey, the way the performances of a then-peaking Southern rock hero like Ronnie Van Zandt could to a private school-educated kid from the Northeast.
Listening to The Animals‘ “We’ve Gotta Get Out of This Place” this morning I started thinking about how well the band fit into the early ’60s UK vibe of “kitchen sink” dramas, including movies like This Sporting Life, the excellent proto-Raging Bull-like tale of a working class rugby star, played by Richard Harris. The band’s music and Look seem to naturally flow right out of that period of British film-making, moreso than contemporaries like The Rolling Stones, who always had a bit of a dandy side, and the early Pretty Things, who lacked an inherently shat-upon frontman like Eric Burdon. Maybe someone knew what they were doing in deliberately crafting this band’s image and sound, but I’d like to think they arrived at these characteristics through an artistic trickle-down effect.
Are there other artists who seem to naturally flow out of a specific period in film-making?
