Clams wrote:

Is it me or is this version devoid of all joy? Nice that he covered it, but the tightness of the delivery seems contrary to the song and the sentiment.

Sorry if I'm coming off like Zip City!

Clams wrote:


Is it me or is this version devoid of all joy? Nice that he covered it, but the tightness of the delivery seems contrary to the song and the sentiment.

Sorry if I'm coming off like Zip City!

Quite a few years ago when I was in one of the darker periods of my musical journey, I was half heartedly skimming through a book called "Zen Guitar" by Phillip Sudo. Early in the book a paragraph ends with the phrase "most of all, play with joy" . . . I remember feeling a strange discomfort when I read this, because I wasn't really sure I knew what that meant. The words were simple; the concept was simple. I certainly knew what it was like to get enjoyment from playing music, but I sensed there was a more profound meaning that I just wasn't getting. And adding to that discomfort, I remember thinking that the only way I was gonna get it would be through a long period of tedious self examination and immersion into some cult-like eastern philosophy that involved fasting and uncomfortable body poses.

It wasn't long after this that one day in early spring my phone rang. It was Levon asking me if I wanted to come to Woodstock to make some music.

Though this wasn't the first Midnight Ramble, it was still in it's embryonic stages, and he was just beginning to tentatively regain use of that voice. The voice that so many of us were lamenting would be gone forever after his bout with throat cancer. When I heard him sing that night, I remember feeling like I'd just been told that the Beatles were getting back together or that JFK was coming back to finish his term. Having listened to Levon for most of my adult life and having shared the stage and recording studio with him a few times over the years, I knew what a great musician he was, and I could go on all day about that, but that night I caught a glimpse of something behind those drums that I hadn't seen before, though it was there all along. There was a glow. A light that over the next eight years became as bright as the sun. I soon came to recognize the various elements in his playing that fueled this light. He played with love, he played with honesty, he played with generosity, but most of all he played with joy: the joy of creativity, the joy of sharing and comraderie, the joy of self expression, the joy of telling the truth. He was incapable of having a false musical moment. There was never any distance between who he was and what he did. His playing and singing came out as naturally as breathing, seemingly without effort, (which was a good thing because the exertion of effort was never one of Levon's Daily Ambitions.)

His light would spread across the stage like a Santa Ana wind, igniting the flames of joy in all of us.

This band always seemed to be making music for the right reason: for the simple pleasure of making music. From the stage the light would spread to the audience and they'd be in it with us. Then we'd all feel the joy and power of communal experience.

Steven Bernstein and I did a radio talk show a few days ago, and someone called in saying he was a singing drummer who tried to play and sound like Levon. I told him I thought the best way to imitate Levon was to find that light within yourself. The light that shows who you are. To have the talent to get out of your own way and give that light a clear path to shine. In order to honor my friend, whenever I pick up an instrument from now on, I'll try to play with that in mind. But most of all I'll play with joy!

Kudzu Guillotine wrote:Guitarist Larry Campbell's tribute to Levon Helm:

. He played with love, he played with honesty, he played with generosity, but most of all he played with joy: the joy of creativity, the joy of sharing and comraderie, the joy of self expression, the joy of telling the truth. He was incapable of having a false musical moment.

Clams wrote:Robert Pattinson to star in a movie about The Band.

http://blogs.indiewire.com/theplaylist/ ... -20120524#

Zip City wrote:

Clams wrote:Robert Pattinson to star in a movie about The Band.

http://blogs.indiewire.com/theplaylist/ ... -20120524#

the sound you hear is Levon spinning, the sound you hear is Levon spinning...

Penny Lane wrote:

Zip City wrote:

Clams wrote:Robert Pattinson to star in a movie about The Band.

http://blogs.indiewire.com/theplaylist/ ... -20120524#

the sound you hear is Levon spinning, the sound you hear is Levon spinning...

I posted a very mature "YUCK" on Robbie's Facebook page last night, seems like the majority of Band fans think it's an awful idea. Robbie posted "hit or miss" ...you should have read all the Twilight jokes...

TERRIBLE IDEA...

Penny Lane wrote:

Zip City wrote:

Clams wrote:Robert Pattinson to star in a movie about The Band.

http://blogs.indiewire.com/theplaylist/ ... -20120524#

the sound you hear is Levon spinning, the sound you hear is Levon spinning...

I posted a very mature "YUCK" on Robbie's Facebook page last night, seems like the majority of Band fans think it's an awful idea. Robbie posted "hit or miss" ...you should have read all the Twilight jokes...

TERRIBLE IDEA...

Penny Lane wrote:I'm not sure he's considered a great actor. Although I think he's a musician, too, which would help...

I just think a great way to ruin a biopic is have a well known actor...plus he'd probably screw up that Arkansas drawl...

if you're gonna go well--known... AT LEAST go here:

Penny Lane wrote:oh well that changes everything...i don't care who plays Robbie---!

Crustyharp wrote:Levon Helm - The Hug:
http://www.jambands.com/columns/brian-robbins-the-maine-line/2012/07/02/levon-helm-the-hug

Crustyharp wrote:Levon Helm - The Hug:
http://www.jambands.com/columns/brian-robbins-the-maine-line/2012/07/02/levon-helm-the-hug

Crustyharp wrote:Levon Helm - The Hug:
http://www.jambands.com/columns/brian-robbins-the-maine-line/2012/07/02/levon-helm-the-hug

For Levon Helm

If you go to the Woodstock the way I go, crossing the Hudson and heading west, before you get into town you’ll pass a sign on the side of the road. This particular sign celebrates the most recent album by Levon Helm, Electric Dirt, its cover writ large on a blown-up canvas. But, really, the sign celebrates Levon himself, the Midnight Rambles he threw that featured musicians from all over the Hudson Valley, if not the world, and the link these things served to connect the Woodstock of today with the past that imbues the town’s name with something resembling importance.
Though they may have rejected the festival that came to bear their name, the people of Woodstock seem today to try and grapple onto whatever is left. And besides the few be-dreadlocked hitchhikers that pass through every summer, you’d have trouble finding anything like that at all. Which is not to disparage the town, as it’s home to a beautiful monastery, the best radio station in the valley, and a hell of a taco place. But as you climb on your way up to Overlook Mountain, you pass larger and larger homes, illustrations of the bizarre economic bipolarity of the Catskills. Needless to say, these homes were not built on “peace, love and music”, though you could probably own one purely by selling Woodstock 40th anniversary t-shirts.
Because as the original festival has blown up to mythical proportions in the popular imagination, the town has tried to attach some of that image to itself. I doubt an up-and-coming band could rent a house and record Music From Big Pink in the Woodstock of today; they would never be able to afford it.
And that is where Helm came in. While I never was able to make it to one of his midnight rambles (tickets ran over 100 dollars), I heard they were amazingly fun, roping in local acts like the Felice Brothers and Elvis Perkins, who cut their teeth performing at Woodstock venues like the Colony Café, to kick and scream for hours on end. Sure, in some sense Helm could have been considered an old-timer, but he was still doing it. And that was so important for the town, as he wasn’t merely some relic to be sold in a store next to a bunch of tie-dye shirts. In a local industry that seems to thrive purely on preservation-based nostalgia, Levon was one of the few living things there.
In mid April, it was announced on Helm’s website that he was in the “final stages of his battle with cancer.” And just two days later, he died. Upon hearing about his death, my mind jumped to the sign. While I never met Helm, I can see the canvas immediately, a living monument to someone who never had to give it up. In a sense, I guess, it’s the closest I’ll ever get to the connection this community felt for an esteemed member like Helm.
I grew up in the Hudson Valley, and even when I’m away I realize that my heart is here. And people like Levon help me find my grounding. I’m clearly not the only one: on April 26th, thousands of people drove to Woodstock and boarded buses bound for Helm’s farm, merely to say their respects to a man they knew best through record players or the glare of stage lights. To them, he was hardly a man, even in death; the truth is, Helm is as much a legend as ever.
And the Hudson Valley is full of legends, even if they seem hidden from us that spend every day here. From Rip Van Winkle to Spook Rock, we live among magic both fantastical and actual, and many of these stories find a way of living far past our infatuation with them, becoming as integral to the place as the peaks and streams, fields and forests. In other words, these legends ground us in the place where we live. Woodstock, arguably, sells itself wholly on the legends that people the world over associate with it. In Levon, they at least had living proof, but truthfully, even with his passing we’ve not lost him. Because here legends get their roots in deep, and grow strong and tall until their leaves are as much a part of the sky as the stars. In other words, they live.
So in losing one of its last living connections, it may seem like Woodstock will drift back into anonymity, but I find that doubtful. Their job is to draw so firmly on the past that it comes back to life again, at least in the minds of tourists. It helps when that past lives in the present with them, but a legend will do in a pinch. And in a place where legends compose so much of our identity and being, that’s not such a bad thing.
He’s far away from us now, but he’ll never truly be gone. RIP Levon.

Kudzu Guillotine wrote:Official press release from Vanguard Records:

Ain’t In It For My Health: A Film About Levon Helm to be Released in Theaters Across North America in 2013