Here is the latest news from David Gans, producer and host of the Grateful Dead Hour.
Sonny Rollins on life and music
Musicians all over town thought he was nuts. Why did he need all this practice? He was the best; wasn’t that good enough? But those people didn’t hear what Sonny heard. He was nothing but a glorified beginner, Sonny believed, a work in progress. There were places he needed to go. When he got there, that’s when he’d come back.
“They can take me out and shoot me before I’ll allow myself to be some oldies act.”
“[Thelonious] Monk always told me that without music, life wouldn’t be shit. Outside of his family, music was all he cared about. That’s how he was, totally pure. I always hated the way they demeaned him, made him out to be some high-priest weirdo, like he just happened to play these beautiful things by voodoo or putting his fingers on the keys by accident.” The fact was, Sonny said, Monk was actually “a completely normal, down-to-earth guy” once you got to know him.
By the late 1970s, however, things began to look up. “Sonny seemed to relax,” [Gary] Giddins said. “It was as if he realized that he was primarily a concert artist and didn’t have to spend all that time in the recording studio. His live solos became these great meditative, playful, stream-of-consciousness things. It was like the whole history of the music was just pouring out of him on any given night. The audience understands the process, waits for him to find his groove, then the whole place explodes, because when he’s on, there’s nothing else like it in this world. The fact that he has continued to play as well as he has for so long is a real blessing. I never thought I’d say this, but Sonny’s really great period might be 1978 to now.”
“The kind of music I play, the horn and the drum have to be really tight. These younger musicians, they’re great. They can play anything. But I have played with some good drummers in my time. Max Roach, Art Blakey, Elvin Jones, Philly Joe Jones, Roy Haynes. These are some good drummers, man. I’m not looking for someone who can play what Max played in 1956, because it isn’t 1956 anymore. I am looking for someone who can play what Max would play in 2013….”
“I may not physically be able to play what I did in 1957, but there are things I couldn’t think of playing in 1957 that I play now. I’m not making more of myself than I am, but an artist has periods. Picasso had periods. Things evolve. You can’t play what you played when you were 25 just because that’s what you’re expected to play. Those same notes? I can’t do it.”
Grateful Dead Hour no. 1301
Week of August 26, 2013
Part 1 6:46
Grateful Dead, May 1977 (5/13/77)
JACKAROE
Part 2 48:44
Furthur 7/14/13 Cooperstown NY
TERRAPIN->
STANDING ON THE MOON->
BERTHA->
GLORIA
Furthur live shows are available on CD and download from gnomesandhobbits.com. The May 1977 boxed set is available in deluxe boxed set form and also for download from dead.net.
“Very Jerry III” benefit: the audio
Bob Cogswell recorded our tribute and benefit at the Ashkenaz on August 15. “Very Jerry III: It All Rolls into One.” Stream it and/or download it here, and if you would like to support the Ashkenaz Music and Dance Community Center, you can make a donation any time at ashkenaz.com.
Performers include Henry Kaiser, David Nelson, James Nash, Jeff Pehrson, Shawn Persinger, Sycamore Slough String Band, Jenny Kerr, Jason Crosby, Joe Burke, Joshua Raoul Brody, Steve Kirk, Dave Jess, Eddie Berman, Phil Milner, Matt Twain, Mike Sugar, David Gans, Roger Sideman, and David Thom.
01-Terrapin Station->Attics of My Life->Row Jimmy
02-Changing the stage for the next acts
03-Intro
04-Shakedown Street->
05-Promised Land
06-Ship of Fools
07-New Speedway Boogie
08-Lazy River Road
09-Dire Wolf
10-Iko Iko
11-Intro
12-Oh Babe It Ain’t No Lie
13-Friend of the Devil
14-The Wheel
15-Intro
16-West LA Fadeaway
17-Nobody’s Fault But Mine
18-Intro
19-Viola Lee Blues->
20-Clementine->
21-The Eleven->
22-Viola Lee Blues
23-He’s Gone
24-intro
25-Friend of the Devil
26-Deep Elum Blues
27-When Push Comes To Shove
28-Intro
29-So What
30-Willie and the Hand Jive
31-Scarlet Begonias
32-Intro
33-Deal
34-Edward (The Mad Shirt Grinder)
35-Intro
36-I Know You Rider
37-Casey Jones
38-Intro
39-US Blues
40-Ripple
Grateful Dead Hour no. 1300
Week of August 19, 2013
Part 1 39:28
Furthur 7/14/2013 Cooperstown NY
CUMBERLAND BLUES->
CASEY AT THE BAT->
CUMBERLAND BLUES
DARK STAR
Part 2 16:23
Grateful Dead, Sunshine Daydream (8/27/72)
CHINA CAT SUNFLOWER->
I KNOW YOU RIDER
Sunshine Daydream, the film of the justly-legendary 8/27/72 Grateful Dead show in Veneta, Oregon, is being released on Blu-Ray and DVD. Great stuff!
Furthur live shows are available from gnomesandhobbits.com, CD or download.
More from Joe Walsh
I can’t resist posting one more bit from my June 1981 interview with Joe Walsh:
Could we talk about your reputation? It’s been surprising in a pleasing way to find out how calm things are here [a hotel in Michigan], considering what I’ve heard. I don’t even know if it’s true.
Oh, yeah, it’s true. I used to do that. I still do, sometimes. I’m at peace myself – not that I wasn’t back then – but you’ve got to remember, you go and you play for (I’m not trying to impress you) five or ten or 15 thousand people, however many, and the next thing you know you’re in some motel and there’s nothing on television because all the stations have gone off, and there’s no room service. You’re buzzed, mentally high, and nothing to do with drugs or anything –you’re just buzzed because the energy of getting that many people on their feet yellin’ and screamin’, you get feedback from it and it wakes you up. So I’ll be sitting in a hotel room wide awake just buzzin’ from the energy of the concert, thinking, “Hey, where’d everybody go?” So I would break things and smash things, have a great time. Kinda blowing off steam so you can go to sleep, relax. And I get mad, or sometimes I just enjoy it. If I’m in a Holiday Inn or a Howard Johnson’s, why not break everything? They’re all cheap, anyway. And it’s fun – you oughta try it some time.
Keith Moon really taught me how to do that – he was a master at it. The James Gang did a tour with the Who, and Keith gave me lessons about breaking things. I haven’t done it in a while, but I’m –
Working up to it?
Yeah.
Think you’ll do that before the end of the tour?
Oh, I’m sure I will. Just kind of spontaneous.
[Tour manager Smokey Wendell comes into the room, glares at Joe, says “Working up to it, sure.”]
By the time I get home and get the story all written, say what a calm and quiet gent Joe Walsh is, the story will break –
And right next to your article will be a bulletin that I did some place in.
The best one was in Chicago. It was the end of the tour and I was mad at the record company. A vice president had come out, so I trashed his whole suite…. It had wallpaper like this, right? [gestures to the foil-faced, ugly wall of his suite] And I couldn’t stand it, so I took all the pictures down, tore all the wallpaper off in his whole room, and then hung the paintings back up.
I’ve always pictured the tour accountant as a kind of sympathetic, harried and apologetic little guy with a checkbook, going “I’ll take care of it, I’ll take care of it!”
It was this guy’s room; it wasn’t my room. I said, “hey, it isn’t my room, I didn’t do nothing.” He had to check out with a lawyer. He was crying and shit. It was wonderful.
Are you still on that label?
Mmm-hmm. He’s not.