And Clapton Didn't Even Know

I was a Dylan freak from 1964 to whenever I lost touch with his stuff (meh), so I was stoked to see him and The Hawks (Band sans Levon) in 1966. A life changing event musically for my soft 15 year old brain, and the loudest thing I'd seen up 'till then as most Big Deal bands simply used the "house" PA…these guys had piles of Altec A7s and were substantially more substantial. A cool thing about the Big Pink and The Band albums was the relative mysteriousness surrounding these guys, along with their utterly original production of what would now be called "Americana." That's what blew my generation of musicians away…songs that seemed to be carved from logs and performed with gusto with 3 lead singers. Hell yeah…After the Band my fave (and the fave of people like Zep and the Stones) became Little Feat for pretty much the same reasons…roots deep in the mud of what came before with supercharged musicianship.

Ditto on the Lowell George hero thing. I luckily saw the classic Feat live a couple
of times, and a couple of post Lowell versions too. Something about George's
gonzo yet precise cerebral soul (from a self described "fat kid from
Hollywood")…I still listen to all the Little Feat stuff and George's solo album
(an amazingly well recorded LP for my tastes anyway) often. There's a new Lowell
George DVD I just read about (Feats First)…interviews and things that looks
really interesting.