Month: April 2006

Bootleg Country: David Nelson Band – Honeydew, CA (07/21/01)

Originally posted on April 9, 2006.

For years I have been collecting what I’ll call bootleg CDs. Though the term bootleg gives all kinds of wrong impressions as if I’m selling cases of scotch under the table during Prohibition.

The bootlegs I am referring to are not only legal but highly condoned in some circles. I’m talking about live concert recordings unreleased by the studios or the bands.

People have been recording concerts since there have been portable recording equipment. Alan Lomax was traipsing around the country recording folk and blues artists in the 1930s. Today, some bands allow fans to patch directly into the soundboard with pristine, lossless DAT machines.

The Grateful Dead were pioneers of bootleg trading. Instead of spending thousands of dollars trying to hunt down thieves and bootleggers selling live recordings of their performances, they killed the opportunity by giving their live recordings away. They set up a special taper’s section in the audience allowing anyone with a portable mike to set up shop and record every note. On many nights they would allow fans to patch directly into their soundboard. They always recorded their own shows, and often “leaked” copies to fans and allowed everyone to make copies, as long as it wasn’t sold for profit.

It became a profitable marketing adventure. Fans would turn on others to the band by sharing the live music, thus creating other fans who would then buy the band’s albums and pay to see their concerts in person. Through the years other bands have seen the wisdom in this policy and have followed suit.

There is a whole underground movement of fans trading live concert recordings. It is quite an addicting hobby, let me tell you. I’ve been trading for about 8 years now and have well over 800 hours of live music CDs.

My collection is more live music than I could ever listen to, and yet I am continually in search of more. With the advent of cheap, fast broadband connections there is more live music available than ever before.

Live music feeds weary ears. With the decline of actual music on the radio and the rising prices of studio albums, finding mind-moving, completely legal music available for the price of your time to download is an absolutely beautiful thing.

In Bootleg Country, I will attempt to go through my collection of live music and review every note.

David Nelson Band
07/21/01
Honeydew, CA

A few years back I worked with a guy named Bob. Bob was somewhere in his middle fifties, with a nice beer gut hanging over his belt loop and long, curly gray hair. He was a throwback from the 1960s Summer of love. He was a genuine hippy and remained true to those ideals even into the year 2000.

The David Nelson Band reminds me of Bob. They are still waving their freak flags, and playing music as if it could save our souls.

A David Nelson Band show is like a picnic on a sunny day. They mix old-time country music with the folk wisdom of 1960s San Francisco and sprinkle it with psychedelic jams.

You can picture yourself sitting in a city park, spread out on a blanket, belly full of fried chicken while listening to this band. They have the homely feel of any small-town local band playing songs that you’d sing to your kids. Although they have the chops to blow any local players through the roof, they maintain that intimate, down-home feel to their concerts.

It’s a band that can make a medley of “All You Need is Love” and “Put a Little Love In Your Heart” and play it without a twinge of irony.

Songs like “Panama Red” and “Ragged But Right” start off the show and they are just the type of songs I’m talking about. They are blue-collar songs with the kind of lyrics that truck drivers, hippies, and grandmothers could all sing along with and smile. The music is a country swing that would feel at home anywhere the grass is green and the sun is shining.

As the set carried on, some of the songs mixed in tried way too hard to be meaningful. Songs like “Last Lonely Eagle” just have cringe-inducing lyrics like

If you go down where the lights push the nighttime
Back far enough so you can’t feel the fear
Remember the boy who you left on the mountain
Who’s sitting alone with the stars and his tears

The second set really scorches it up with some very stellar improvisational jams. The music jumps into interstellar overdrive with a sweet instrumental jam of the Grateful Dead’s “Fire on the Mountain,” sending the grandmas to the snack shack and the rest of us into twirling heaven.

The third set brings us back down to earth with the aforementioned “Love Medley” and some more silly, hokey hippy music.

I don’t suspect the David Nelson Band will ever make it onto MTV, or Billboard’s Top 40 list. You won’t see them headlining a worldwide stadium tour in this lifetime. But as they continue to travel the country, small venue tour at a time, they’ll continue to play real music from the heart, with the chops to back them up and keep audiences of all sizes smiling and dancing through the night.

If you’d like a copy of this show, leave me a comment, and I’ll try to work something out for you.

Random Shuffle – April 3, 2006

magical mystery tour

“Your Mother Should Know”
By The Beatles
From Magical Mystery Tour

A throwaway song on a throwaway album. Ok, that’s sacrilege; there are tons of great singles on the album. Maybe that’s just it, Magical Mystery Tour sounds like a collection of singles instead of a cohesive album. It’s like a greatest hits package, and “Your Mother Should Know” is the new song added to give real fans a reason to buy it.

Really it’s not a bad tune. It’s actually pretty good, but when it’s a Beatles tune I expect greatness and this one just doesn’t live up. I mean, which would you rather listen to, “Strawberry Fields Forever”, “I am the Walrus”, “Hello Goodbye”, or this? Not a tough choice, is it?

“I’ll Be Your Mirror”
by Velvet Underground
From a live show in Paris on 1/29/72

This is from some live Velvet shows I got on a vine a few days ago. I’ve not really given any of it a real listen yet, so I don’t know if it is any good.

The song is an absolutely beautiful one. Nico sings lead vocals and she’s got the voice of a broken angel. It is a simple, lovely song about seeing the best in someone. I’ve put it on numerous mix tapes for friends and lovers alike. It’s that kind of song. One whose simple message of love speaks to anyone of any size, sex, or creed.

This live version is nice, a little unpolished, but still sweet. Nico’s vocals are still sparkling, but the backups from the Velvets are a little rough. I’m a sucker for the in-studio, soft and fuzzy sound of love songs. They never sound the same live.

hard rain

“Lay Lady Lay”
by Bob Dylan
From Hard Rain

Rough, ragged, and ready to rock is how I would describe Dylan’s live album from his 1970s Rolling Thunder Review.

I’ve never been a fan of the studio version of “Lay Lady Lay.” Bob Dylan on the make is just kind of creepy to my ears. This is a balls to the wall, sweat-drenched rocker. The vocals are out there, the whole band singing back up, nearly screaming every refrain.

If the studio version is a crooning, slick, sleazy Dylan trying to cajole some lady of the night into his bed, then this live version is the command of a rough and tough bastard keeping his lover for seconds after a long night of sexual activity

“I Know Your Married”
By Bela Fleck, Sam Bush, Jerry Douglass, and the Bluegrass Sessions
From the Strawberry Mountain Festival – 09/05/99

From an absolutely scorching show at a bluegrass festival. This is the masters of newgrass pickin’ and sangin’ for the sheer joy of it. You can hear how much these boys are enjoying themselves throughout the show, and trying to show each other up a bit.

This is a slow, old-timey song that was played toward the end of the show. It’s a front porch in the middle of summer kind of song. Something to sing along with your pa on a family reunion. The boys goof it up in the middle and everybody laughs along.

On my version, there is a couple of minutes worth of banter after the song that is priceless. Sam Bush ripping on Bela Fleck and Bela ripping right back. This is true, real music. Not the processed, stylized junk you hear on the radio these days.

tom waits bone machine

“That Feel”
by Tom Waits
From Bone Machine

I’ve never been much of a Waits fan. The guy can write some brilliant music, but that voice just gets me every time. He sounds like he needs a really good hacking cough. I know it’s styled that way, and I know a lot of it is purposeful, but I just can’t get past it.

I’m not really much of a lyrics guy. I mean there are thousands of songs with great lyrics that I love, that move me to my very soul. But as a general rule, I don’t pay much attention to them. My mind concentrates on the music, the instruments, and the melodies. If the lyrics are clear and understandable I might catch on and enjoy them. However, for most songs I just don’t understand what the heck people are singing about.

Start naming songs, and I can probably hum the melody, maybe sing the chorus, but after that, I’m at a loss. Add to it a singer who mumbles, or mutters, or distorts his vocals and you can forget it. I just won’t hear a line of it. This is a good example of that. I looked up the lyrics and they are actually kind of moving. But after multiple listens, I couldn’t gel what I was reading on the page with what I was hearing.

The melody here is pretty simple, it’s kind of a slow dirge, and Waits does his usual garbled garbage disposal vocal take which pretty much ruins the song for me. Find a sweet soul singer, add a couple of flourishes and this could be something amazing.

My Love Affair With Doc Martens

Originally posted on April 2, 2006.

For my 30th birthday, a very dear friend gave me a pair of shoes. They were dirty and ripped, the soles were completely worn out and they smelled of fifteen years worth of feet. In fact, they used to be my shoes before I gave them to this friend. Yet as he passed these old, degenerate shoes to me I couldn’t help but beam with appreciation.

This is the story of my love affair with Doc Martens.

Rewind about 12 years to 1994, I was a senior in high school. Nevermind had been out for a couple of years, Grunge and Alternative were still all the rage. My wardrobe was full of flannel, t-shirts, baggy pants, and sneakers. At the time I was well into a pair of skater-styled Vans. The hair was long, the attitude sullen.

Enter Doc Marten. I had eyed many a pair of those brown-leathered beauties many a time. But at over $100 a pair, neither my wallet nor my mother was willing to shed that kind of dough.

Ah but my brother, the savior of footwear, the beater of siblings, tormentor of all things me, came through like a mackerel in cheese. He gave me my first pair of Doc Martens, and he didn’t even charge me a dime, or a wet willie.

It seems my brother had received the shoes as a gift from a buddy. The buddy had bought them and worn them for a year or so before he decided to buy a new pair. My brother, likewise, wore the shoes for another year or so before decided to buy his own new pair.

I loved those shoes. They fit so well with my whole style in those days. They were comfortable, wore well, felt great on my size 11 feet, and looked pretty stinking cool.

I wore them every single day. No kidding, for 3 years those shoes were on my feet every day, with the rare exception of really special occasions like weddings, proms, and the odd couple of months right before I got rid of them, that I finally decided to start donning sandals.

I have a picture of me wearing these Doc Martens, black socks, a pair of plaid checkered shorts, and a horizontally striped shirt. Besides the slacker, Generation X grunge look, I had the I don’t give a flipping flop how people think I look look. And those shoes didn’t leave my feet.

After three years, I finally decided to get myself a new pair. I did the loyal thing and promptly gave the old pair to my roommate.

He wasn’t quite as dedicated to the now 5-year-old, 4th-generation shoes as I was, but they were donned by his feet at least once a week for the next year.

Yes, he liked them so much that he bought himself a new pair of Doc Martens. Yes, he gave the old pair to a mutual friend.

At this point, I lost touch with the shoes. The new owner split the heat of Alabama to the hills of Tennessee. He tells me he wore them often and with love. He dropped me a note of sorrow when, while playing a game of football with buddies, the shoes scored a large rip through the toes, rendering them unwearable.

When I opened the bag that was my birthday present and found those shoes, I couldn’t help but get a tear in my eye. Once the smell of 6 pairs of feet over many sweaty years wafted away, I got a big grin on my face and knew I was looking at the best present ever.

Coming home to my little den, I placed the old Doc Martens next to the pair I bought in their stead, some ten years prior. A pair I still wear to this day.