Elizabeth Edwards is really pissed at the other woman. She calls her pathetic. I think that her anger is more properly directed at her husband, who cheated on her repeatedly and then had the audacity to continue to run for President, even with a probable love child in the mix. He was not a victim here, more like a co-conspirator.
Joe the Plumber's fifteen minutes of fame have definitely expired.
Saw the Scorcese movie "Shine a Light" on the Rolling Stones 2006 show at the Beacon Theater the other night. Once again I use the word pathetic. Or maybe that's a little too strong. But a shadow of their former selves. I was lucky enough to be at Mick's birthday show at the Garden with Stevie Wonder in 1972 and again in 1979 and 1981. The 1972 show was one of the greatest I ever witnessed. They got progressively worse each time after that. Actually gave up on them around the time of Goat's Head Soup. There is something untoward about geriatric Mick preening around like a peacock with his canned dance steps - the whole thing just seems so insincere. Total control freak, really very cynical.
I love Keith and my attention kept centering on him. Has there ever been a human being who has gone through such a physical slide in their life? A human train wreck, every past sin is written in his face. I always liked Mick Taylor' Stones better than Ron Wood Stones myself. In the movie, they ask Keith who is a better player, he or Ronnie and he says that they are both frankly pretty lousy but together are better than any 10 other players...Keith is totally drained at the end of the performance. The band misses Wyman a lot. Charlie looks steady and mildly amused. Christina Aguilera in the blonde sexpot/Mick's granddaughter role was actually pretty good.
Speaking of music, I caught some of the live show of the Dead in Philadelphia on Sirius Radio this week. The Garcia less band is a shadow of it's former self. Warren Haynes doesn't have near the subtlety necessary to drive the bus and yet lay back like Jerry did. This ain't whipping post. Bob Weir has become an embarrassment. Although the Mason's Children was pretty good. My friend Randall who caught five of these shows said that Bill Kreutzmann's band was the best thing going. Hope the kids on tour don't think that they are seeing the Grateful Dead...
We have had an excellent Australian watercolorist, Joseph Zbukvik (by way of Croatia) giving demos at the Fallbrook Art Studios this week. Tremendous artist, likes to grab a pint afterwards. Has been riding his bicycle around town. People have flown in from all over the country for his workshop.
On the cusp of my thirtieth year in Fallbrook, I must confess I really love the place. Warm friendly people, perfect weather, still relatively unspoiled with it's agricultural vibe. Yesterday I sat and listened to a woman on a bench outside my shop window rag on the town for a half hour. I had to close up so that I could escape her bile. Crappy hotels, nothing to eat, blah, blah, blah. Let me buy you a ticket out of here, sister...She was ragging on the downtown and admittedly some shops have closed but that's Main Street America - you don't come and spend a little gelt, whoosh, we dissappear. Don't let the door hit your ample backside on the way out, lady.
It's a perfect southern california day today - my spouse helps a girlfriend drive to Texas Sunday, so I am going through a protracted period of bachelorhood until her return on our anniversary on the 15th. Need a good recommendation on a restaurant in San Diego that I can take her to next friday upon her return. Thought about going back to Laurel but the menu didn't thrill me this week.
Still no coffee, alcohol, fun. Have to ask the warden when I can live again.
Have a nice weekend!
Hi Robert,
ReplyDeleteJust ran across your blog. I love it!
I haven't read it all yet because I'm starving and also haven't gotten any work done today and it's 5:30. I'm going to eat, do some work and then finish reading your blog- maybe not in that order. I've got a blog, too- banardesigns.blogspot.com. Come visit me. I'll probably see you soon on Main St. ( I know it's not a "street" but I've been calling it that all the 20-some years I've been here.(I think it might be 30)
RE: your comments on the Rolling Stones, "That's funny. They speak highly of you."
ReplyDeleteOr as Robert Burns once said, and I quote;
"O would some power the giftie gi' us,
to see ourselves as others see us.'
Would like to see how you or I would look like after living on the road for 40 years. I only did it for 20 and it damn near killed me. I think the Stones sound great. Anyone who is trying to compare them to some other long lost something or other, is bound to be disappointed. Fact is, they are the best rock and roll band around....Muddy Waters played his whole life and always sounded better, but his critics would say, "Man, he doesn't have the fire anymore." Hah....the guy had been living out of a suitcase his whole life, sleeping in the back seat of a car most nights, drinking cheap booze and father ing countless kids....there' more than 20 year old testosterone in those notes....nahhhh....I think the Stones are motherfuckers. And Keith? All Englishmen end up looking like that, but few of them can play the guitar or have enough hair to run a comb through let alone wear corn rows....rock on. You can only make life on the road just so comfortable. No matter what you do, it is still a grueling pain in the ass and few people can withstand it, on any level. Well, that's what I think. If I stopped feeling this way about the Stones or any number of older artists, it would be like giving up on myself. Age is a good thing.
This comment has been removed by the author.
ReplyDeleteIt's not an age thing - it's a schtick thing. The act is contrived. Peck's bad boys. Just play, already. I saw the Zombies play with Love a couple years ago and Blumstone looked really old. I didn't give a shit. But they were playing music. My sister used to work for London Records early on, we had every album and I think the music I liked the best was the early blues stuff - up til maybe 64. Brian. I love Townshend and Davies and they are as old as Mick but not as much friggin theatre, if you know what I mean. It is patronizing in some ways, I feel the same way after seeing Bowie live, superb characters but they are only really acting...
ReplyDeletedon't want to make you feel bad, but playing live IS acting....it is all acting me boyo....stop being so hard on your self. It is just music...good or bad...just enjoy what you can and leave the rest and go easy on the guys that make it....they are just doing what they do. Guess you were never on the other side of the fence when some 'critic' rips you apart cause they didn't like your performance the night before or worse, the record that took you a year and a half to make. I go easy on anyone with the balls to toss it into the lion's den.
ReplyDeleteI guess the greatest actors then are the ones that make you feel like they mean it.
ReplyDeleteStan,
ReplyDeleteYour Burns quote leaves me searching for one - let's see if I remember the old rhyme from the bard:
"An ode to bowlegged men"
Forsooth, what manner of men are these
whose bullocks hang 'tween parentheses.
or something like that. Your criticism of my criticism is noted and welcomed. I love Keith. And actually like Mick blowing the harp. He, Lennon, and Bobby Z had such singular technique.
I never had the patience to get into the dead. Never truly got them. Most of the times I heard them, they seemed out of tune and the two drummers were all over the place, the second guitarist had a god awful voice, but then again, there was Jerry Garcia. He was a stand alone. Without him, it would be like going to:
ReplyDeleteThe Byrds without David Crosby
CSNY without Neil Young
The Band without Robbie Robertson
Hootie without the Blowfish (or maybe v-v)
O-wait a minute. I see a pattern evolving.
Now, if you want to put down some old and out of the way musicians, I reckon you might be able to critique your pals from Deadville. A good 15 years ago, I went to see the Garcia Band at MSG-I was there to visit an old Fillmore friend. I walked out into the house and at the lighting desk was an other Fillmore alumn She had been the lighting person with the Dead for years. I said, 'how's it going?' and her answer was, 'We are all standing around, waiting for HIM (pointing center stage) to die.'
And as sweet as the music was that evening, if you closed your eyes and forgot about all the significance of who it was and where it was, in truth, it sounded like an 'ok' Dylan covers band.
The only time I ever stood through an entire Dead show was the second or third time they played in NY and Owsley gave me so much acid, I became affixed to the floor and I think they had to remove me at the end of the show, with crowbars.
S
Even though I literally saw the Dead hundreds of times, I think I can still muster up a little objectivity. ...Now where was it, it was around here somewhere?
ReplyDeleteThe Grateful Dead was not so much a band as an incubation tank for lysergic experimentation. It could have been Skitch Henderson and his band with the right potions.
Far be it for me to lecture you with your resume at the Fillmore and as a road manager but I have seen a zillion shows and the Dead's best were without compare. There was no band in the world that could touch them on a hot night, Stones, Booker T, what have you. I saw Jerry chew up so many guest guitar players, from Santana to Steve Miller to Cippolina, went he went stratospheric, you just had to hang on.
That being said, when they were off it was like dental surgery. A flat tire for everyone in the room. In the psychedelic mix, every attendee was part of the groove and some nights it didn't add up. The thing got very maudlin and trite at the end and I had a long hiatus. We were on stage with Jerry the night after our wedding and he was totally fucked up and sick.
Their mythos had a lot to do with turning up favorable hole cards and beating it down the line. Milo grabbed the gold. But like the stones, when you are dealing in myth all the time, and are constantly shielding your emotions with intoxicants, you lose touch and your grounding and the thing comes off manufactured and phony. I would ask myself, what do you guys really feel? Because it gets easy to pedal something you've spent thirty years memorizing.
I assume that the lighting person you were talking to was Candace Brightman, a really talented artist. Much of the staff had a similar mindset. I heard it back in 1981.
As for Owsley, what a strange duck. The sallow carnivore, Bear kept telling me that I was trying to play pinochle at a poker game. He got a bad reputation on tour for gleaning the room service trays in hotel hallways.
Many of my friends and family who caught the Dead in Fillmore times said they didn't quite have it together until later on. 1969 was a great year for cranial interstellar dead but for me it really cranked in 1977. San Bernardino at the Swing, the thing coalesced with so much power, that my life was completely altered. It would have been a lot easier not being a deadhead. Shows always seemed to come around the same day as family reunions and school finals. First class fuckups, many of us had to pay.
Wish you could have been there on a night that Jerry flew.
Hi Robert,
ReplyDeleteJust read the Blast and enjoyed your comments on the Stones film which I also watched recently. I saw them in 1965 with the Byrds (small aside: Chris Hillman comes around to my studio a few times - still love all their music and listen to it) as an opening act, and several other times but Altamont was the best show. Such an intensity in the air and they played their asses off. Survival?
Survival .... guess we live on the lucky side of town - no problems at home or at work but it was horrific week of high winds 90-100 degree temps and all the hills from North to South blazing at night and looking like volcanoes!
Also recently watched Dylan two disc "No Direction Home" - worth a look if you haven't seen it.
Robert
That's probably as nice as Keith can get when it comes to commenting on Mick Taylor. But to say that Taylor's lousy is just a plain old lie from Keith.
ReplyDeleteKeith still fumes with rage at the way that Taylor departed from The Stones, weeks before going into the studio. Keith may be late, but he always shows up. He doesn't tolerate truancy or quitters. And he doesn;t forgive Mick Taylor's rude departure.
That 7/29/72 MSG show was great. I hope that you made certain notice of the following guitar solos: "Gimme Shelter," "Tumbling Dice," "YCAGWYW," and "Street Fighting Man." Virtuosity, and that's never, ever to be found in the playing of Ronnie Wood, not ever. The best vs. the worst? No! Ron Wood is not the worst. But Mick Taylor is one of the best.
"Goat's Head Soup" is a great album to some of us Stones fans (I wish more, but not so). Is there anything more delicate than "Coming Down Again?" "Winter" is their studio tribute to the live version of "YCAGWYW." Anyone who doesn't thear the obvios tip of the hat in this song doesn't know live Stones or music.
Thanks Wazoo for chiming in from Connecticut. Hope that you will come around from time to time. Keith wasn't commenting on Mick Taylor, I was. I love Faces and Ron Wood was great with that band, but he never had the power and drive of Taylor.
ReplyDeleteThe 1972 show was amazing. Lot's of rose petals flying around. One of the things I remember the most was Stevie Wonder playing drums on Satisfaction and Uptight. Great drummer really. Where has he been lately?
Goats Head Soup, I think of Angie, a song I loathe and high heeled androgynous Mick Jagger. Creepy New York Dolls thing I never appreciated. But I will give it another listen.
Aftermath, Flowers, Beggars Banquet, Let it Bleed, Between the Buttons, Majesties - those are my favorite Stones Albums.
When is Woodstock?
ReplyDeleteHi Robert,
ReplyDeleteI saw that 1972 tour in Boston garden. Stevie Wonder opened and the Stones played late because the Providence police held them up. Mick Taylor was great. My friend and I were in the 10 row. Seen them many times since. the last time here in SD. Yeh it ain't the same but it beats rap. Glad you are recovering well. Impressed with the Anonymous Robert Burns quote. I agree but who gives a shit. None of it matters. It is the past.
RFC D.C.
Shouldn't you be taking Leslie out for dinner in FALLBROOK? -- not SD?!
ReplyDeleteGood call, KB, but Robertitos doesn't do black tie and she is going to be hungry getting off the plane.
ReplyDeleteBob Dylan is old and tired. If you must insist on hearing the creative genius you saw when you were young, 40 years ago, I suggest you enjoy Jakob Dylan who is writing and performing better songs than daddy does nowadays.
ReplyDelete