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...?

 

 

 

for mr bungalow bill

20/10/2010

 

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 time for them.