Songs and Thoughts #2

Some (live) song recommendations.

Hey.

Here’s a few songs I’ve been listening to recently. I’ve added them to my “Songs and Thoughts” Spotify playlist here.

If you listen to these, let me know what you think!

Tyler

Parachute Woman by The Rolling Stones (live 1968)

In 1968, The Rolling Stones hosted The Rock and Roll Circus, a small concert that featured several noteworthy acts of the late 1960s. It was filmed and set to be aired on the BBC, but according to Wikipedia, was withheld because the Stones felt their performance was “substandard.”

This was the last formal appearance guitarist Brian Jones (purple coat) would make with the group. Six months after the concert, he would be kicked from the band owing to his drug convictions and reckless behavior. One month after his departure, on July 3rd, 1969, Jones – at 27 years old – would be discovered dead at the bottom of his swimming pool by his girlfriend.

Both Jimi Hendrix and Jim Morrison would make dedications to Jones: Hendrix would dedicate his performance of “Stone Free” to Brian Jones on American television, and Jim Morrison would write a gruesome and strange poem titled, “Ode to LA While Thinking of Brian Jones, Deceased.” Both of them would also die within two years (Jim Morrison, disturbingly enough, would die on the same date as Jones.) All three now forever belong to the “27 Club.”

I turn 27 this year. Bands like the Stones remind me that, sometimes, magic is made at the intersection of personal drive and social circumstance. Inside each of them was something restless that, coincidentally, matched the sensibilities of the day. We are all better off for it.

Louise by Leo Kottke (live 1995)

There is a very special place in my soul for American folk music. Leo Kottke is easily one of the greatest fingerpicking acoustic guitar players. He weaves elements of classical music, blues, and folk into some of the most beautiful and impressive acoustic music I’ve ever heard. He famously hates his voice, but I think it sounds great.

He often fingerpicks (meaning, plays with his fingers instead of a plectrum) a 12-string guitar (a guitar with twice the number of strings.) On top of that, he is often in an alternate tuning and playing with a slide. Because of this, his playing has an incredibly unique voice. Here is an example from 1973.

According to his Wikipedia, Kottke suffered from “painful tendinitis” and “related nerve damage” because of his technique in the early 80s. It brings to mind Paul Simon’s recent hearing loss which has, unfortunately, halted his live performances. There really is no greater tragedy than an artist losing their essentials, but no greater sacrifice than an artist to their art.

I’ve Been Loving You Too Long (To Stop Now) by Otis Redding (live 1967)

I recently watched D.A. Pennebaker’s footage of Otis Redding at the Monterey Pop Festival in 1967. It is an essential watch for anyone interested in music from the late 60s. His backing band is Booker T. and the MG’s, whose song Green Onions I covered with a blues band last December.

Other groups on the bill at Monterey included Simon and Garfunkel, The Paul Butterfield Blues Band, Moby Grape, The Who, the Grateful Dead and Jimi Hendrix. In my Letterboxd “review” of the film, I write: “What Otis Redding did at Monterey should both frighten and inspire other artists; it should scare you to see such potential and motivate you to reach it for yourself.”

In December 1967, only six months after the performance, Redding died when his plane came down in a lake in Wisconsin due to poor weather. He was 26 years old.

With the recent death of David Lynch, we should all be remembering: there are some people that really ought to be famous; there are some people too charismatic, too artistically gifted, too insightful, too valuable for the world not to know about them. Rather, they know far too much about the world for the world not to know them back. Otis Redding is one of those people.

(In an interview with Pitchfork, Lynch says of this exact live version of “I’ve Been Loving You”: “It was so, so, so beautiful. So much feeling comes through that thing; it’s one of my all-time favorites. I just go nuts. I start crying like a baby when I hear that thing.”)

It Makes No Difference by The Band (live 1976)

On January 21st of this year, Garth Hudson passed away. He was the final living member of The Band, one of the greatest Americana outfits ever. Here’s a really cool picture of him.

I started listening to The Band sometime in 2018. I didn’t really understand them at first. They are incredibly important to the story of Bob Dylan, whose orbit includes many important artists of the 60s and 70s. They backed him on his ‘66 world tour, recorded over 100 songs in a basement in Woodstock with him, and backed him on his underrated album Planet Waves in 1974 (the precursor to Blood on the Tracks.)

This performance of “It Makes No Difference” takes place at The Last Waltz, a concert filmed on Thanksgiving in 1976. It was the final performance The Band would ever give, and as a farewell to fans, it was a mega-show at Winterland Ballroom in San Francisco. Guest-performers included Dylan, Van Morrison, Stephen Stills, Joni Mitchell, Dr. John, Eric Clapton and others. The performance was painstakingly filmed by Martin Scorsese and is maybe the greatest concert film of all time.

My favorite thing about Rick Danko’s singing style is his enunciation of every word. He is one of three phenomenal and unique lead voices in the group. This song, to me, is a fantastic example of guitarist Robbie Robertson’s songwriting ability and the degree to which he considered each member’s contribution (for this performance, he dipped his Fender Stratocaster in bronze.) Garth Hudson concludes the song with an emotional saxophone solo, one that would make anyone ask: “...and who is that?”