Anyone at Woodstock? Live music

Thinking about the first concert I went to and it was probably to see the Searchers. I didn't hear much because of all the screaming.

The last rock concert I went to was in July this year when Sting was booked for the Marciac Jazz festival. It was a sell out with 11,000 people in a large tent. It was 36 degrees centigrade outside the tent and over 50 degrees inside. I stayed outside and heard enough. Lynn (my wife) said he looked very fit. He didn't play any jazz.

Last year Santana played Marciac and there was a mere 10,000 people in the tent. It was a cool evening I got down near the front and had a great time.

I have the lack of self regard to admit that my first concert was ELO.

I trump you with Foghat.

Mine was Arlo Guthrie with Mountain opening.

>3 krolik: Ah, if only the had merged...

>4 Crypto-Willobie: I grew up with Leslie West. Still in touch with him and his brother, Larry.

Regarding Woodstock I had tickets but when me and my old lady, at the time, woke up and heard about the traffic jams, we smoked a joint and hung out. Never regretted the decision...the mud and sleepless nights sounded horrid...got to see most of the acts back in NYC at Fillmore East. Crazy times, a miracle I can still recall them. About 20 years ago I sold the framed unused Woodstock tickets for $250.

How much would you get for a used Ticket ? with mud on it.

>7 baswood:: good question haha

>6 berthirsch:

Mountain are still the loudest act I ever saw...

Leslie will love the comment

King Crimson whose first Album makes my top 100 used to have a Friday night slot at the Marquee club in London, this was before they hit the big time. I used to go most Fridays and their set list included some of the songs from the first LP. However there was always a long period where they were improvising or just messing about; it sometimes was not great and a useful time to get some drinks in the bar. However they always got back on track with their final song which was their adaption of Mars from Holsts' orchestral suite The Planets. At that time Crimson were one of the first groups to feature the Synthesiser and so they would ramp up the tune to an ear splitting climax. It always worked. When the first LP came out I was disappointed that Mars was not featured, we had to wait for their second Lp for that and it was another disappointment, a good example of a live performance that could not be duplicated in the Studio.

There were a number groups who were great live, but their material did not stand up when they got to the recording studio.

Anyway back to King Crimson who did a "Return to the Marquee" concert after they hit the big time. I got there early because there was a queue round the block. An hour after the concerts was due to start we were still queuing - possibly a problem with setting up. When we were finally allowed inside we were greeted by Robert Fripp at the door who shook everybody's hand and apologised for the delay.

Blind Faith, only played one live date in England. A free concert in Hyde Park in 1969. The Rolling Stones would do a similar concert a month later which attracted three times as many people. These concerts would start early afternoon with a number of supporting acts. The weather was kind for both dates, but for the Blind Faith concert a lot of people had drifted away by the time they got on the stage. For those who remember those days the change overs between groups were usually fraught with difficulty and on many occasions sound systems were creaky at best. Long delays and most people were expecting something like Cream mark II and when this didn't happen (no long Clapton guitar solos) people got bored. Stevie Winwood sounded good as far as I can remember.

Ah! if only I were a few years older and lived in England...

I am such a square. I saw Springsteen live twice in the 70s and those remain the best concerts I've been to, saw Pink Floyd twice in the 70s and Supertramp twice. After that, nothing but small shows, the best of them Greg Brown many times.

I think I saw Greg Brown at a house concert in Maryland about 10 years ago... but I might be confused...

‘Metropolis’ - Mike Westbrook Concert Band.(RCA Neon, 1971)

This makes my 100 top albums list and led me to think of the concert that premiered the work at the Mermaid theatre in May 1969. I was there and the theatre was fairly full. It was the first time I had seen Mike Westbrooks band live. it was an exciting event because the 17 piece band contained most of the young British jazz stars along with a rock rhythm section and Chris Spedding on electric guitar. The band roared away with great solos from Alan Skidmore, Mike Osborne, Kenny Wheeler and Ahmed Khan then Chris Spedding nearly cleared the stage with feedback from his guitar doodles, it all quietened down for a finalé ushered in with some lovely trumpet playing from Harry Becket. The concert really felt like something important was happening on the music scene, but keeping together a band like that was optimistic at best.

I couldn't find any reviews of the event on the net which is not surprising but I found a few snippets of information. The album Metropolis was made a couple of years later, but it didn't sound much like the concert I heard at the theatre beside the river Thames two years earlier. None of my friends were into that sort of music at the time and so it is a memory that somehow feels quite insular.



As with ‘Marching Song’ before it, ‘Metropolis’ was long in gestation. Premiered at London’s Mermaid Theatre in May 1969, filmed at Ronnie Scott’s for BBC2’s long-erased ‘Jazz Scene’ that November, recorded for Radio 3 in January 1970 (still extant at source), recorded by the ‘Love Songs’ line-up for Deram in April (as yet unissued), and then re-scored for a Danish Radio Orchestra broadcast with Mike conducting in June, it finally appeared for purchase in a gatefold-sleeved RCA Neon recording (using the Danish re-write, for a 26-piece CB with Gary Boyle replacing Chris Spedding) in late 1971 – at which point, Radio 3 licensed and aired the Danish recording. It was a labyrinthine end of an era in terms of the Westbrook epics:

Mike: ‘It was, because… well, I don’t know where you go after that. Also, there was a general diaspora going on – people were drifting off into their other activities and a lot of it was musicians having to ‘take care of business’. You just wouldn’t have got a line-up with Kenny Wheeler, Henry Lowther, Harry Beckett and Dave Holdsworth on the trumpets. It was just a time when all those people were still around, still available. But it was very soon fragmented. Surman, actually, had already gone by the time we did ‘Metropolis’. Coming up on the inside, as it were, was this theatre connection. I had the opportunity to get out and around working with different artists, different situations, and the formation of the brass band. So you had this enormous shift from a huge big band playing this high-level jazz-rock, or whatever it was, down to literally Phil Minton, Lol Coxhill and me playing on the street corner! To me I still think it’s amazing, but quite a radical shift, and rebuilt from then onwards.’

Fillmore East memories that made their way through the haze.
Jackson Brown-Laura Niro double Bill, acoustic, grand piano and guitar.
Crosby Stills Nash
Janis Joplin Big Brother
Jefferson Airplane
Jimi Hendrix
The Doors
Joshua Light Show

These were the highlights I remember off the top of my head. So many years ago!

Roy Harper
Listening to Stormcock by Roy Harper reminded me of the times I had seen him live. It was always an experience because you never really knew what you were going to get. It could be the Roy Harper intent on singing and playing or it could be the stoned individual who told stories throughout his set and hardly bent down to pick up his guitar. I first saw him at Les Cousins which was a basement folk and blues club in the basement of a restaurant in Soho London. I remember it being freezing cold with bench seats with an overwhelming smell of damp. It did host many of the top artists on the folk and folk/blues scene who played acoustically. Paul Simon once played there, but it was mainly British artists: Al Stewart, Davy Graham, Bert Jansch, John Martyn were regulars you only needed a guitar and a heavy overcoat to keep out the damp to play there. It was probably 1969 when I saw Roy and he was well into his story telling, long introductions to his songs, which to be fair was a feature of most of the artists at the club. There must have been some sort of competition as to who could tell the best shaggy dog story; with Roy there was plenty of shagginess but not much dog, he never seemed to get to the point of his story.

I saw Roy again at the Half Moon Pub in Putney London sometime in the mid seventies and it probably wasn't a good time to see him. His story telling went on forever and he occasionally played a song in between. The pub was full when I got there, but there were spaces when I left, he had a hard core of followers who seemed to enjoy his repartee. The last time I saw him was in Derby (England); in 2001 I guess at the civic hall. He performed with his son Nick Harper and music was the key ingredient, he only made a few remarks between songs. He played well and his use of a vocal playback device to enhance his vocals worked well. During his solo set he broke a guitar string and his son came on stage to restring his guitar while Roy was playing, he was sitting down at the time and didn't look amused, his son quipped that it was the nearest he got to touching his fathers guitars.

I see he toured again this year at the age of 78, I would love to pay tribute again, because it can feel like that at one of his concerts.

so lucky to have seen John Coltrane at Village Vanguard, a tiny little club still going. 1966 with his wife Alice on piano and Pharaoh Sanders on tenor sax. I was first year college and a regular hanging out in the Village. so blessed to have seen him in such a setting.

>19 berthirsch: I am in awe

>20 baswood: if you live long enough some special moments happen.

Terry Reid - Live In London - 2013
Terry Reid must have been "Born Under a bad Sign" as far as his musical career is concerned. Always seeming to make those wrong decisions or just being in the wrong place at the wrong time. I get the feeling that life happened (is happening as Terry is still performing) to Terry, rather than him making things happen. He has one of the best voices in rock music that allows him to holler with the best, but also to quieten things down and be in tune, he has both gravel and softness and a wonderful ear, because he can do what many jazz singers do, in that he can sing round a melody and it sounds just right. When I used to see him in London, back in the day despite all the improvisations the richness of his vocals hardly ever let him down. He plays excellent guitar; attuned to rhythm and space and he has written some very good songs. He was certainly one of the hottest talent around the London scene in the late 60's, so what held him back?

If Terry Reid is famous for anything it is for not answering the call of Jimmy Page to be the lead singer with Led Zeppelin (the New Yardbirds at the time) Instead he suggested to Page that he should check out Robert Plant. Terry was having some commercial success with his second album "This is Terry Reid" 1969 and was wanting to launch out on a solo career. Then he got into contractual difficulties with his producer Mickie Most who did not agree with Reids new direction following that album. Everything went quiet for Terry apart from live gigs and it was only his filmed spot at the 1972 Glastonbury festival that showcased his new material of rhythmic acoustic based songs. He had now moved from London to America, hooking up with Graham Nash. Finally in 1973 the new album "River" was released engineered by Tom Dowd and mixed by Eddie Offord two of the biggest names in the record production business and it was critically acclaimed. However his London fan base had largely evaporated and his new direction puzzled others. Four years in those days was a long time between record releases.

Three years later another record edged out onto the market "Seed of Memory" produced by Graham Nash, but despite its more commercial appeal; Reid had introduced some country elements into his sound, it got shelved when the Record Company ABC went bankrupt the week after it's release. Another three years and "Rogue Waves" hit the streets with Reid attempting to rediscover his Rock/pop roots. It contained some of his weakest material and that wonderful voice only got to shine on a couple of songs. It was a long time before he got to release another studio album, twelve years in fact when "The Driver" showed up in 1991. On the album Terry had covered the Waterboys song "The Whole of the Moon" which was released as a single and just as it was about to see some chart action the Waterboys re-released their original version which was the one that made the charts.

Since then there have been no official studio releases of new material, but there has always been a niche market for Reid's albums and various live albums have filtered out of varying quality. The worst being Reid's set at the Isle of White Festival in 1970: almost unlistenable. It was with some trepidation then that I approached the 2013 Live in London Album. However wow! the recording live at Ronnie Scotts club is superb and I don't think that I have ever heard Terry's voice so well recorded. It is a double album and features some excellent versions of some of his best songs as well as some of his material that has not been put out on record before. His backing group for the night were top class musicians including B J Cole, Pedal Steel guitar, David Tench piano and keyboard Dzal Martin Guitar. The group really get the chance to stretch out with plenty of room for solos and Terry does his unique thing with his voice and guitar style. I was amazed: this is the Terry Reid record that I have been waiting for since the release of Seed of Memory in 1976. In a way forty four years is too long to wait, but it is great to be able to listen to something that I never thought would happen.

It has to be said that Terry Reid is not the greatest singer/guitarist/composer who has ever lived, but he is one of the best who has kept under the radar. Listening to him play and sing on "Live in London" brought back many memories for me and perhaps a clue to why fame has passed him by. Back in the late 60's and early 70's he used to play regularly at the Marquee Club in London and his jazz tinged vocal style meant that he usually improvised a little, sometimes a lot. One night he could hear a member of the audience singing along and so at the end of a song he got the young man on stage with him to do some duets. The guy did have a great voice and Terry seemed genuinely pleased to be singing with him. I don't think that I have ever seen another artist take that risk at a live concert. Terry's introductions to his songs sometimes did not make a lot of sense, but he was proud of his songs and always pleased to be on stage with his fellow musicians. So perhaps he is a guy that goes his own way whatever, perhaps he is just a very nice person or perhaps he is a little naive. Probably a mixture of all three.

He appeared in a 1970 film called Groupies which was a documentary on the then new phenomena of Groupies. My girlfriend at the time was half in love with Terry and the Groupie that was following Terry around in the film was a very attractive gay man and when he got to Terry's dressing room door, the look of horror on my girlfriends face was worth the price of the movie ticket. (Terry didn't let him in).

does rolling stone magazine know that you write so well ?

I February - Novecento - l'Astarda - Marciac
André Dussollier and a jazz band stared in a performance of Novecento live at Marciac's l'Astrada in front of a full house. Novecento is a monologue written by Allessandro Barico. Tim Tooney a trumpet player on the Virginian: a cross Atlantic passenger ship between the first and second world wars, tells the story of Novecento. He was born on the boat and left behind by a couple of American immigrants. He remained on the boat all his life becoming a pianist in the Virginians dance and jazz band. André Dussollier played TIm Tooney and in the course of his monologue he enacted parts of the story, moving around the stage, dancing, shuffling, interacting with the jazz band and moving around and onto the only prop which was a substantial two sided metal stair way.

The whole performance then depended very much on André Dussolier and in many ways I was surprised at how understated it was. There are plenty of events in the story where there is ammunition for an actor to grandstand and perhaps overplay the part, for instance the one and only time Novecento plucked up the courage to leave the boat, but never got further than the third step on the gangway. or the final scene when he decides to go down with the ship when it is scuttled after the second world war. Dussollier for the most part let Allessandro Barico's words do the talking. The jazz band were good and played excellently when portraying the final performance of Tim Tooney and Novecento, for me perhaps the best bit of the whole performance. I am glad I had read Barico's book beforehand because Dussolier had to speak some sections of the book very quickly to get through it and his French would have been too fast for me if I had not known the story.

Thinking about the whole show at the end of the evening I found it a little flat. Enjoyable with some good music, but I felt there could have been a bit more drama, but perhaps that just isn't the french way of doing things.