The Best of ’60s Blues-Rock
Tag Archives: The Yardbirds
Best of 2011 and early 2012
Finally a list of favorite albums from 2011. I’ve included the best albums of early 2012 as well. Here are the top albums from 2011:
1. El Camino, The Black Keys: No they haven’t lost their way. No, this isn’t a step back or a step to the side. This is infectious, rocking and raw, though not as raw as their early releases, tuneful and driving. They keep moving forward.
2. The Harrow & The Harvest, Gillian Welch and Let England Shake, P.J. Harvey: It’s a tie. Second choices each. Can’t separate them. Welch and her partner David Rowlings have produced an extraordinary duet album underpinned with roots guitar and banjo and enchanting vocals. The songs are spare country-folk pieces beautifully executed. As for Harvey, I’ve already mentioned this one in an early 2011 best-of list. It continues to grow on me if that’s possible. Highly thoughtful, enveloping musical statement featuring Harvey’s and her friends’ expert muscianship and musicality. There, I’ve used a form of music three times in that sentence.
4. I’m With You, The Red Hot Chili Peppers: Talk about an overlooked album. Oh, I’m sure it sold well. The only problem with this album is that it had to follow Stadium Arcadium, which was a career effort in creativity and popularity. Still, it’s more of the Peppers and the Peppers are quite something.
5. Hard Bargain, Emmylou Harris: This was my top choice for the early list. It’s dropped a few places, not because it isn’t worthy, because the later releases were just that good.
6. Tedeschi Trucks Band, Revelator: Another early choice that stood up. Blues, soul, R&B mix with Tedeschi’s heartfelt, soulful vocals on top and Trucks’ dynamic, penetrating slide running through it all. Continue reading Best of 2011 and early 2012
Concerts Vol. 14: Led Zeppelin
In early August, 1969, there was quite a buzz about Woodstock. I don’t believe anyone, even at that late date, anticipated how big it was going to be. At least not among my friends.
Most of us were not planning on a trip to upstate New York though. On Sunday the 17th during the festival weekend, a concert was scheduled at the original Oakdale Music Theatre, with its theatre-in-the-round stage, in Wallingford, Conn., that was not to be missed, Led Zeppelin.
We’d seen Cream there the previous summer and myriad other mid-to-late ’60s acts: The Paul Butterfield Blues Band, Lovin’ Spoonful, Ray Charles. Shows I didn’t get to see included The Who, The Doors and Chicago. One of my bands, The Bram Rigg Set opened for The Dave Clark Five in late summer, 1967. It was an almost-perfect venue to get an up-close look at performers. Seating was perhaps no more than about 2,000, the closest within about 15 to 20 feet of the musicians, sometimes even closer when they came to the edge of stage, which was only a few feet off the ground.
Zeppelin’s first album was released in early 1969 and it made quite an impact. Surprising really. Jimmy Page was well known and I’d seen him with the last version of The Yardbirds in 1967 at the Village Theater in New York. But Robert Plant, John Paul Jones, John Bonham, where did they come from? Continue reading Concerts Vol. 14: Led Zeppelin
Concerts Vol. 6: Jimmy Page and The Yardbirds
A few weeks before leaving for Boston University, and later Berklee School of Music, in August, 1967, and after the Bram Rigg Set had broken up, my good friend Beau Segal and I drove down to New York to see the Yardbirds. Beau was the one who found out about the show and it was his treat, sending me off to school in style.
Jeff Beck had left the Yardbirds and now Jimmy Page was the sole guitar player in the group. We had loved the single issued earlier in the year, Little Games, and most of the subsequent album release by the same name, although the U.S. release is a bit of a hodge-podge and left out some key tracks that appeared on the U.K. album. The double CD release of the early ’90s and then a later reissue rectified all this by including just about everything from that period.
But I couldn’t get enough of the shuffle feel of the single with Page’s mesmerizing rhythm guitar part and biting lead in the middle section. Later the next year, my group Pulse came up with a song with a similar feel that Beau wrote. I still have his original lyric sheet. It has no title on it but we used to refer to it as If You Love Me Today, and we played it in the second incarnation of Pulse, which was a four-piece with Harvey Thurott on second guitar.
The Yardbirds were playing at the Village Theater in New York on August 25, about six months later it would become Fillmore East. We didn’t know then that it was actually a rather momentous occasion because this was the show at which Page would get the inspiration, to put it politely, for one of Led Zeppelin’s signature tunes from their first album, Dazed And Confused. Continue reading Concerts Vol. 6: Jimmy Page and The Yardbirds