They were so good (the RL Brown album is a classic, I have an early green label) and their endings, for the most part, so sad.
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Yeah Bill, especially that of Richard Manuel, whose suicide brought me to tears. The only death of a musician I've cried about.
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He is definitely a unique human being and was a big part of making The Band's sound unique.
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@bdp24
"The only other Rock band keyboardist I've heard who imo plays on the same level as Garth is Terry Adams of NRBQ."
Maybe this is a dumb question, but what do you mean, exactly, by "the same level"? Technical? Emotional? Conceptual?
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When Music From Big Pink came out, I bought it unheard due to their association with Dylan. At first, I was taken aback by how different it was from what I was used to listening to. Before long, it had grown on me and I absolutely loved it
When their second album came out, I was floored by how good it was. The Band carved out their own category of music that no one has come close to since.
In the last band I was in before hanging it up, we played a knock-off of their The Shape I'm In.
Garth is truly a musical treasure.
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If you're an instagram user and Garth Hudson fan, there's a very short video of Hudson playing Duke Ellington's "Sophisticated Lady". It's a recent video. The instagram handle is @the_band_official. He plays the song with a Monkish touch, imho. You can also see the video at @stereogum.
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@bdp24
Yeah Bill, especially that of Richard Manuel, whose suicide brought me to tears. The only death of a musician I’ve cried about.
I was lucky, so to speak, to see The Band at the Columbus Agora the night, or two, before Manuel committed suicide. Maybe it was a week….cannot remember exactly. I was shocked when I heard the news, but knew then and there, there would never be another chance to see them again. Even without Robbie.
And, for me, that night, Garth was the highlight. Special person and musician.
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@minkwelder: Music From Big Pink left me bewildered when it came out. At that time (Summer 1968) I was into power trios and similar kinds of music, and didn’t know what to make of Big Pink, couldn’t relate to it in the slightest. And that disturbed me; all the smartest people I knew loved the album, so I kept my inability to understand it to myself ;-) .
Then in the spring of ’69 my teen combo got a gig opening for The New Buffalo Springfield (drummer/singer Dewey Martin the only remaining member from the group’s original lineup. Bobby’s brother Randy Fuller was playing bass and singing harmony) at a local San Jose High School. I intently watched and listened as they started their set, and was amazed at how good they sounded (this after seeing & hearing The Beach Boys, The Beatles, Cream, Hendrix, Jeff Beck, The Electric Flag, the doors, The Airplane and Dead, Quicksilver, Them with Van Morrison, dozens of others).
None of the four members seemed to be doing much, but the music sounded SO good. There came a point in their set when I had an actual epiphany---I suddenly understood the concept of ensemble playing: every instrument and voice playing and singing in service to the song, each part played in relation to that of another member. I listened to Big Pink when I got home, and the album now made complete sense to me. Though many view The Band’s second s/t (brown) album as their best, I consider Big Pink at least it’s equal. I have come to deeply love it, and continue to listen to it often.
That single event was a fork in the road for me, one that led to a very different taste in music. I saw Cream and Hendrix a second time after that, and was utterly bored. I heard no music, only empty displays of gratuitous technical virtuosity. Yawn ;-) ..
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@stuartk: Not at all a dumb question; in fact an excellent one. I'll collect my thoughts on the matter, and respond asap (I'll endeavor to be as concise as possible, hopefully not too verbose ;-) . Your question and it's answer gets to the heart of the matter of what we listen for in music, a very important issue.
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@bdp24: "Bewildered" is a good way to put it.
A buddy and I got together in '67 (our sophomore year) and started practicing together, working out Byrds and Stones tunes. When Cream hit, my buddy, Bob, was knocked out by Clapton and started learning tunes from Fresh Cream and Disraeli Gears. Unlike me, Bob took to the guitar like falling off a log and, by the time we had graduated, he was playing Crossroads almost verbatim. I became the lead singer, harp player and occasional rhythm guitar.
We were so poor, I made a makeshift microphone by cutting off one end of a coiled guitar cable and wired it to the speaker in a little transistor radio! It actually (kinda) worked! So, with our limited funds, every album purchase was made with the intention of gleaning a few tunes for the band. When I bought Big Pink, we considered it a mistake and moved on.
At the time, I had one of those GE suitcase stereos with the fold-down table and the swing-out speakers; not horrible but adequate. Then I heard Big Pink on a buddy's system, which featured a McIntosh tube amp and (I think) AR 3A's. He cranked it up and, when Chest Fever hit me in the chest, I knew it was something special.
I had somewhat the same reaction to Hendrix that you did. I had a habit of buying records if I liked the cover, which led to some REAL disappointments (Blue Cheer, etc.) so, when I similarly bought Are You Experienced? due to the cover graphics, I was initially knocked out by it. As time went on, I lost interest in Hendrix.
My buddies thought I was crazy, especially when I bought Charles Lloyd's Journey Within (again, because of the cover), and that sparked my interest in more substantial music. Big Pink then made itself into regular rotation and, at one point, I had six LP copies of it. I sold all but two of them, including a disappointing MoFi copy and my best copy is on EMI (UK).
Due to laziness, I never got very good on guitar, but listening to such talented musicians as The Band taught me that the spaces between notes were just as important as the notes themselves..
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Minkwlder: Great post! The Band and those like them (The Muscle Shoals Rhythm Section aka The Swampers, Ry Cooder, Richard Thompson, Dave Edmunds, Albert Lee, Buddy Miller, Los Lobos) play in accordance with the old axiom (I’ve seen it attributed to Miles Davis, Count Basie, and Duke Ellington) of "the notes you don’t play are as important as those you do." I had never heard your "the spaces between the notes" line, and it’s equally as true.
Blue Cheer! Every time the subject of the worst band of all-time comes up, they are my first choice. In the late-Fall of ’68 a guy I had met in high school the previous year came up to me raving about an album he had just heard: the debut of Led Zeppelin. I had loved the first three The Yardbirds’ albums, but the fourth (with Jimmy Page replacing Jeff Beck on lead guitar) was an absolute pos. So when I saw Page on the LZ cover, I had my doubts. Sure enough, it was comically bad. Fake Blues, like the bar band (named Blues Hammer. Perfect ;-) in the Steve Buscemi movie Ghost World.
It’s funny that Robert Plant is finally making good music---the two albums with Alison Krauss. Because of the excesses of contemporary 1970’s bands like Led Zeppelin, every good musician I knew started looking backward in time, following the bread crumbs left by the best bands of the 60’s back to their origins. That meant Blues, Jump Blues, Gospel, Hillbilly, Western Swing, Rockabilly, Bluegrass, and Jazz. It took a while, but Plant finally caught up ;-) .
After seeing and hearing The New Buffalo Springfield, my group learned "Chest Fever" (we had an organist who played a Hammond), but we still sounded like boys, not men ;-) . In the Summer of ’69 we replaced the singer with a much different type: he sang with a Bluesy approach, and played mouth harp. He later became pals with Charlie Musselwhite, and turned into a real good singer and player. He has only one album out (on CD), and it’s well worth searching for: Up The Line by The Gary Smith Blues Band. He still occasionally plays the occasional show around the South Bay area.
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@bdp24: At the risk of being nailed for "off-topic" posting or somebody telling us to 'get a room', I gotta say that I listened to some of Gary's stuff and I wish I could get that tone. Reading his biography on last.fm, I can relate to his experience on the advantages of "tongue-blocking" as opposed to the "whistler" style of playing, like mine, although it doesn't hold back guys like Paul Butterfield or Lee Oskar.
Growing up in a small-town in northeast Ohio, we were uniquely blessed with a local promoter's 'Inferno Teen Dance' where we got to hear acts like The Rationals, Terry Knight & The Pack, The Left Banke, and Ohio bands like The Music Explosion and The Dantes, featuring Dave Workman, who now plays in the San Francisco area. I used to run into Joe Walsh there, pre-James Gang.
To elaborate a little on just how bad our equipment was, our PA was an old Bell tube amp that we ran through a couple EV compound diffraction horns, but we did have good guitar amps. One time, we opened for The Ohio Express and weren't told that they were just bringing their guitars and would use our equipment. By that time, we had real microphones, but only had two and I think every guy in the group sang. They were mad about having to use our crappy equipment and we were mad that they were using it while we were working for next to nothing. As I recall, we said something to the effect that our equipment was being defiled with "Yummy Yummy Yummy"!
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@bdp24
I look forward to hearing more from you on this topic.
Perhaps you could contrast him with others such as R. Manuel, Nicky Hopkins, Bill Payne, Keith Godchaux...
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@bdp24
I think I just answered my own question. ;o)
I can't think of anyone with whom G. Hudson can be compared -- one of those players who occupies a category of their own !
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