Juke Joints and Garage Bands

I spent last night at Dave’s Juke Joint in the Uptown section of Minneapolis watching Corey Stevens and his excellent blues band (more about Corey here).  The band was a delight, Corey a compelling blues guitarist and Paul Testa handling the Hammond B3 with capable hands, but mostly, it was a treat to hear good live music. A goal of mine is to find great blues clubs (Kingston Mines in Chicago for example). The only way to see the blues is in the intimate setting a club affords. I’ve been fortunate to have had some wonderful “blue” club moments over the years seeing: Albert Collins, Robert Cray and Gatemouth Brown at Hunts in Burlington Vermont; JB Hutto in a hotel in White River Junction VT (of all places); Ma Rainey at in Memphis; Freddie King in Greennich Village; James Cotton and Mike Bloomfield (unfortunately past his prime) in Seattle; Indigenous at the Paradise in Boston; The Nighthawks at the House of Blues in New Orleans as well as ZZ Top, Stevie Ray Vaughan, Buddy Guy, Jr.Wells and BB King at larger venues. Dave’s Juke Joint may be the best place for blues in Minneapolis. It is actually part of Famous Dave’s Bar-B-Que, a national chain which offers a wonderful experience and even if it is faux authentic, the décor is a lot of fun and the food is awesome. My daughter Emma turned me on to Famous Dave’s. I’ve been on a BBQ mission since my first trip to Memphis in the 70’s. This is the first Dave’s I have found with live music. What is it about New England that is bad for the blues? Proximity to Chicago could be a factor. It is a crying shame Boston can’t support a blues club. A House of Blues is going in across from Fenway Park in a few weeks, we’ll see how well it does. The crowd in Minneapolis was an older crowd, but it was a crowd.

What came to mind last night was how much a part of my musical education came from watching bands live and what an important social experience it was to go out and hear live music when I was younger. We just don’t do this enough anymore.

When I was old enough to walk downtown with my friends on a Friday night (fourteen in 1967) I was living in Rutland Vermont. We’d go to the “Rec” Center (God bless who ever came up with this idea for teens) where we’d hear live bands like “The Rejects.” They usually weren’t very good but pickup bands performing covers were everywhere then. The sets would include stuff like Midnight Hour, Walkin’ The Dog and Susie Q. The main objective was to get girls to dance in the hopes that they’d eventually fall for the line “let’s go outside and cool off” and become victims of our lame kissing attempts. The absolutely worst song to dance to was “Keep Me Hanging On” which at the time, everybody did in the Vanilla Fudge version. This was a huge hit amazing to consider now. The Fudge turned this above average Motown tune into some sort of bombastic tour de force. The height of teen awkwardness was figuring out how to approach this tune dancing? Is it fast? Is it slow? solo organ part forced you to stop and watch the band undoing any progress you made connecting with your dance partner. You had a 60% chance she would walk off the dance floor right then and there. Check out this clip of the Fudge doing KMHO. Note  the band’s “heavy” attire and watch how the go go girls deal with the problem of the tempo.

When we turned 16 we got driver’s licenses, which greatly increased our live music options. Rutland was the halfway point between the under 21, non-alcohol bars like The Wobbly Barn on the Killington access road to the east and the dives over the New York border (where the drinking age was 18) to the west. The classic venue “over the line” was the legendary Hampton Manor. We’d hear about “The Manor” from stories passed down from our older brothers. Either way we got to hear a lot of bar bands, a lot of live music, much of it badly played but at the least  we usually got a fun night full of anticipation. 

 

Neil Young: Sugar Mountain

I got into Neil Young in a big way this weekend. His “new” album, the third release in the Neil Young Performance Archives series, was released Tuesday. Sugar Mountain, Live at Canterbury House 1968 is a live recording of Neil doing a solo acoustic set in Ann Arbor, Michigan on Nov 10, two days prior to the release of his first solo album Neil Young. Like the second album of the Series, Live at Massey Hall 1971, we get to hear stripped down versions of songs from Neil’s previous and upcoming albums. What makes this set significant, is that the original versions of these songs were (for the most part) grossly overproduced – especially those on Neil Young -a commercial and critical failure. The fact that the year was 1968 has everything to do with the overproduction. This was the year everyone from Simon and Garfunkle (Bookends) to The Young Rascals (Once Upon a Dream) were trying to come up with their own version of Sergeant Pepper’s. Many of these overly ambitious projects were terrible. Notable exceptions were Hendrix’s Electric Ladyland and the Who’s Tommy, which was recorded over the course of the year although released in ’69.

In order to full appreciate the material on Sugar Mountain I spent the week steeped in Buffalo Springfield, after discovering my embarrassing lack of experience with anything not on their greatest hits album. This should really be another post altogether, but the short version is the second album “Again” is what you want to have in your record collection. The third album Last Time Around suffers from nineteensixtyeightitis combined with the fact that the group was largely absent and broken up long before it’s release. The songs were recorded by two or three members at time. There were a few great tunes. Still’s Question, Young’s On The Way Home, and  I am a Child, Richie Furay’s Kind Woman, but I digress. . .

The song Sugar Mountain, one of Neil’s earliest (written in 1964), is a lament to lost youth and was the inspiration for Joni Mitchell’s Circle Game. It was released as the B-side of The Loner, a single from Neil Young and the B-side of Cinnamon Girl, from his following album. Both of these versions and the Live at Canterbury version are the same recording. Neil also performs a beautiful version of Birds which wouldn’t end up on an album until ‘71.

On The Way Home, Mr. Soul, Expecting To Fly, Nowadays Clancy Can’t Even Sing, Broken Arrow and Out Of My Mind are the Springfield tunes covered on Live at Canterbury.  The Last Trip To Tulsa, The Loner, If I Could Have Her Tonight, I’ve Been Waiting For You and The Old Laughing Lady were songs from Neil Young that can now be assessed without the weight of the strings and gospel singers. It is a treat to finally hear these songs stripped down. The disk comes with a DVD version for optimal sound. There is no video other than a great bonus (on the DVD), a must see preview of Neil’s archives box, which will prove to be the mother of all box sets. It is already listed on Amazon, (here) you can preorder for $324. Unless my marriage fails between now and Feb 24^th  I won’t be preordering but I am hopeful most of this stuff will be available as single downloads at some point. The preview is really well done and a lot of fun.

The disk includes all the stage banter between each song- a great insight into Neil back then but each is segmented into it’s own track so you can program the banter out later when you just want to hear the songs. The casual fan might find the solo acoustic style lacking in dynamics and the recording and performance not a match for Live at Massy Hall. All in all, this is a remarkable missing piece into a critical period of Neil Young’s life and one I whole-heartedly recommend for serious fans.