Wednesday 20 October 2010

EVENSONG. And now the heart is filled with gold, as if it was a purse, but Oh, what kind of love is this, which goes from bad to worse...?

TEARS OF RAGE.

The Band nailed lots of things down, before, like so much Americana, being itself warped through the coke-lit prism of the poison dwarf, Scorsese.  The Last Waltz, as well as containing some amazing performances from the Band and their mates, exposed the drug fuelled homo-eroticism of  Scorsese and stunning guitarist and songwriter,  Jaime Robbie Robertson, half-Injun, half-Russian, half-Jew and hundred per cent Dylan sidesman, confidante and  acolyte.

Robertson, post-Band, never did anything worth shit, while drummer Levon Helm and keyboardist and music professor, Garth Hudson, work and tour yet.  Rick Danko died of the usual excesses and Richard Manuel hanged himself. The Band's is one of those rock and roll stories that perhaps we'd be better off not knowing

This isn't from the Last Waltz's 35 mm homage to Robbie and nor is it his song. Maestro Dylan's Tears of Rage,  here hauntingly interpreted  by Manuel, takes Melancholy's biscuit.  I have never shed any, tears of sorrow a-plenty but not of rage;   if they do exist, maybe now is the tine for them.


9 comments:

mrs narcolept said...

I liked Somewhere Down the Crazy River.

I'll get me coat.

call me ishmael said...
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call me ishmael said...
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call me ishmael said...

No leave your coat where it is. I was going to put in an "apart from the smokey Somewhere Down the ........" Mrs n. Consider it so edited.

It is often the case that tense partnerships more fiercely fuel creativity than does splendid isolation, Robertson was never so antsy, so fluid, so hungry for it than when in ensemble with the Band, see the contrast between his playing and Eric Clapton's on Further On Up The Road during the Last Waltz, a dazzling original versus a leaden copyist.

Across the Great Divide by, I think, Barney Hoskins is a fascinating telling of the Band's story, of America, of Rock and Roll. It will be in your local library, for now. Mr elby too, sometimes waxes Bandish in these commentaries.

mongoose said...

Bought The Last Waltz on vinyl all those years ago. Worn out and warped, toke-burns and dope-smears befoul it now. A bit like us all really.

Dick the Prick said...

My interwebby thingy has gone on restriction so canny listen to tunage - hmm.... never heard of them but will hopefully so later.

PT Barnum said...

If I could weep with rage at what is before us all, after today's lies and hate and fear-mongering, I think I would feel better. It would be a precursor maybe to action. But tears of despair are a precusor only to self-destruction. Pass the dope, Mr Mongoose.

call me ishmael said...

A global assault on the conditions of working people as the rich, who already "own" nearly everything, insist that their privateersmanship continue unchecked and untaxed. The rest of us must fund a workforce, its education, infrastructure, regulation and health care, in order that the rich - like les familles Cameron et Osborne - grow richer without making any contribution whatsoever. Its what they call a principld and fair rebalancing of the economy, mr ptb, no need for tears, a bit of le spirit francaise, that's the thing.

call me ishmael said...

The Band, mr dtp, schooled as a kickass bar boogie band by Ronnie Hawkins and then honed sharper yet in their role as Bob Dylan's controversially electric backing band in his 1966 world tour were, once cut loose to their muse, the most significant and influential US rock ensemble of the 'seventies. The Weight, The Night They Drove Old Dixie Down, I Shall Be Released, Chest Fever and Stage Fright are among the hits but it was essentially as an albums and concert band that they flourished and are fondly remembered. I will post some more Band tunes, any day now.