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Alright, here's mine. Some of you guys may think it's a dumb play. My wife sure does.
I am just fascinated with the album Time Fades Away. Neil claims it is the worst album he ever made. I have to disagree wholeheartedly, and I really don't think Neil means it. It's from a 1973 tour, which was a challenging time emotionally, psychologically and physically for Neil, and he may just not want to think about it. The music stands up, though. The album is the first of what Young Scholars sometimes call the "Ditch Trilogy", as in Neil ran off in the ditch after Harvest, which he thought put him too much in the middle of the road.
I'm fascinated for several reasons. The tour was a nightmare. 65 cites in 90 days, and big venues instead of the more intimate audience settings Neil preferred. He didn't take Old Black with him, and used a Gibson Flying V, which never gave him the sound he wanted. Danny Whitten had just died, so Neil was bummed about that. The band bitched and wanted more money. He fired the drummer half way through the tour. His voice went to sh*t, and by the end of the tour he had to get David Crosby and Graham Nash to help out with backing vocals and rhythm guitar.
The audience hated the show. Unlike the usual play-the-hits tour, the band was playing unknown material. Every song on the live album was previously unreleased.
The sound of the album is amazing...raw, unpretentious, sometimes ragged...the production people hated it, but Neil wanted it just the way it was, warts and all. It sounds like a monitor mix, or maybe the direct feed from the snake to FOH.
The songs, to my ear and mind, are very different from anything else he had done. I don't know that he did much like this afterward, either. Every time I listen to this I like it a little better.
The hardest part was picking a song from it. There are at least four that I absolutely love. I picked the one that Alice hates the most.
My pick:
10.01 Last Dance (Time Fades Away, 1973)
I love songs with a strong groove, whether jazz, blues, soul, rock or whatever. And by that I mean a steadily repeated rhythmic and musical pattern which gives the soloists a chance to really get in there and work...establishing a theme, building upon it, expanding it to the limit, turning it on its head, whatever. Cortez the Killer is such a song. Most any thing by jazz guitarist Grant Green. Whippin' Post. A lot of Miles Davis...In A Silent Way, Bitches Brew, etc.
Last Dance is such a song. If you are a Clapton fan, think of "The Core" on quaaludes, and you've got the groove from "Last Dance". The grooves aren't extremely long, but they give you plenty of time to lose yourself. I've put a link to the released version. I can't find a live version. You may not like it. Erik may think I'm a philistine. I don't know. But after hearing this record, I understood a little more about the records which followed it.
Toward the end, you can hear Nash in the background. He was way too perky for this tour.
Except for the drummer, it has the exact personnel as "Are You Ready For The Country". For the tour, they called them the Stray Gators.
I am just fascinated with the album Time Fades Away. Neil claims it is the worst album he ever made. I have to disagree wholeheartedly, and I really don't think Neil means it. It's from a 1973 tour, which was a challenging time emotionally, psychologically and physically for Neil, and he may just not want to think about it. The music stands up, though. The album is the first of what Young Scholars sometimes call the "Ditch Trilogy", as in Neil ran off in the ditch after Harvest, which he thought put him too much in the middle of the road.
I'm fascinated for several reasons. The tour was a nightmare. 65 cites in 90 days, and big venues instead of the more intimate audience settings Neil preferred. He didn't take Old Black with him, and used a Gibson Flying V, which never gave him the sound he wanted. Danny Whitten had just died, so Neil was bummed about that. The band bitched and wanted more money. He fired the drummer half way through the tour. His voice went to sh*t, and by the end of the tour he had to get David Crosby and Graham Nash to help out with backing vocals and rhythm guitar.
The audience hated the show. Unlike the usual play-the-hits tour, the band was playing unknown material. Every song on the live album was previously unreleased.
The sound of the album is amazing...raw, unpretentious, sometimes ragged...the production people hated it, but Neil wanted it just the way it was, warts and all. It sounds like a monitor mix, or maybe the direct feed from the snake to FOH.
The songs, to my ear and mind, are very different from anything else he had done. I don't know that he did much like this afterward, either. Every time I listen to this I like it a little better.
The hardest part was picking a song from it. There are at least four that I absolutely love. I picked the one that Alice hates the most.
My pick:
10.01 Last Dance (Time Fades Away, 1973)
I love songs with a strong groove, whether jazz, blues, soul, rock or whatever. And by that I mean a steadily repeated rhythmic and musical pattern which gives the soloists a chance to really get in there and work...establishing a theme, building upon it, expanding it to the limit, turning it on its head, whatever. Cortez the Killer is such a song. Most any thing by jazz guitarist Grant Green. Whippin' Post. A lot of Miles Davis...In A Silent Way, Bitches Brew, etc.
Last Dance is such a song. If you are a Clapton fan, think of "The Core" on quaaludes, and you've got the groove from "Last Dance". The grooves aren't extremely long, but they give you plenty of time to lose yourself. I've put a link to the released version. I can't find a live version. You may not like it. Erik may think I'm a philistine. I don't know. But after hearing this record, I understood a little more about the records which followed it.
Toward the end, you can hear Nash in the background. He was way too perky for this tour.
Except for the drummer, it has the exact personnel as "Are You Ready For The Country". For the tour, they called them the Stray Gators.
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