1
It was my generation.
And I'm not quite sure how I feel about that.
It's not like the old days, there's so much activity in the mountains in the summer you'd almost think you were living in the city. Subsidized performing arts centers, name talent, and a ton of semi or non-talent, you open the "Vail Daily" and there's an endless list.
And there's a free concert series in Beaver Creek every week, Andy said he went to see Asia there, without one original member.
Richie Furay is the genuine article. With a pedigree. The only guy with that high a profile who didn't break through to stardom. You had Stephen Stills and Neil Young and Jim Messina in Buffalo Springfield. The Eagles expanded on that sound. Furay ultimately teamed with Chris Hillman and J.D. Souther in the ill-fated Souther-Hillman-Furay Band, but the act broke up because Richie's wife told him it was either her or the band, and Richie chose her. The scuttlebutt was that it was J.D. who broke up the act, but Richie told me he was checked out during the recording of the act's aptly-named second LP, "Trouble In Paradise," which was released with a whimper.
But that first Souther-Hillman-Furay Band album, I played the sh*t out of it. I recorded it for a cross-country drive. I remember this fisherman singing "Border Town" as he skied the bumps at Alta, I was stunned he knew it, I thought it was more of a secret, then again, the album did go gold.
And in the middle, of course, there was Poco. Richie's band that never lived up to its rep commercially until he left.
And there you have it. Rock history, FROM FIFTY YEARS AGO!
That's right, Richie Furay is eighty. Doesn't look it, but the stunning thing is he still has his voice. And he played acoustically with his daughter on backup vocals and a young guitarist and the harmonies...were better than Crosby, Stills & Nash's ever were. Oh, those albums were sweet, but live, at Woodstock, on "4 Way Street," I thought it was nearly impossible to get three part harmony right live until I saw Yes, which wasn't known for harmony, but nailed it nonetheless.
I mean all these years later, Richie still has it.
But it is all these years later.
Now the thing about these free shows, on the ice rink in the village of Beaver Creek, is people get there early, to set up chairs, to be close.
And they were all of my vintage.
And they knew who Richie Furay was.
I saw a woman dancing and singing to the heavens along with "A Good Feelin' to Know" and that's when I realized, they'd lived through the era just like me, when music was everything, when of course you knew the hits, but also the music of the quality acts you heard occasionally on FM, but never on AM.
The initial Poco album is a classic, "Pickin' Up the Pieces," which got great reviews when it came out but was dwarfed by Crosby, Stills & Nash. There was a trade, Epic got Richie and Atlantic got Crosby and Nash and...Furay believes if Poco had been on Atlantic things would have worked out differently. Then again, Leslie West believed if his manager didn't nix his appearance in the Woodstock movie, he would have become legendary. And the truth is Mountain was pretty big in its era, but now the band is almost completely forgotten, I don't hear about young people streaming Mountain songs.
And I don't hear about them streaming Poco songs either.
2
I initially stopped after "From the Inside." It was clear, the band was never going to break through. I was stunned when it ultimately did, when it moved over to ABC from Epic, but by then Rusty Young was a lead vocalist, which was unfathomable to early fans of the band. And I love "Heart of the Night," and "Crazy Love" is a staple, but no one ever talks about the opening track on the first ABC album "Head Over Heels," entitled "Keep On Tryin'," composed and sung by Timothy B. Schmit with a voice so pure so airy so right sans commercial success it's no wonder Timothy B. ultimately decamped for the Eagles.
So back in '65, after a Vermont washout over Christmas, my parents took us to the Concord, where no snow would not nix a good time. I skied three of the four days, the fourth it rained, and one of the perks of the hotel, other than endless food, was nightclub entertainment, and the star was Neil Sedaka, who was by this time a has-been. We had no idea who he was. We were all Beatlemaniacs. This was my first exposure to someone touring after their prime. It was kind of creepy, then again, who would have expected that Sedaka would have a comeback in the seventies!
At the time of that show, Sedaka was twenty five. Over the hill.
And there were all the acts my parents talked about, that they went to see in NYC. They took us to see Ella Fitzgerald... All these acts on late night TV we'd never heard of, which unlike Neil Sedaka, never came back.
And in the eighties, there started to be the comedy circuit in Florida. Aged acts playing to aged fans. Maybe it started earlier, but that's when I heard about it.
Sad.
But I was young.
And now, the acts that aren't dead are still out there, playing to us.
Mostly retired. All about lifestyle. Not in the mainstream and not concerned about it. After all, it's been half a century, more.
But all that music of my parents' generation, it was disposable. Sure, not Sinatra, some of the big bands, but really, it was music of the time, there's always popular music, but that's different from...
The British Invasion.
The San Francisco Sound.
Singer-songwriters.
Prog rock.
Bob Dylan, the Beatles, the Stones...
Our acts were icons. Untouchable. We played their records in our bedrooms, in our dorm rooms, you went to the gig on a regular basis, it was a religious experience, all about the music, no one shot selfies and many of the venues did not sell beer, although that did not mean we were not high.
Musicians were the new baseball stars. But with brains. We idolized them. We listened to what they had to say. They were beacons in a tumultuous era.
But then it became all about the money, music once again slid back into entertainment as opposed to art.
Which leaves us with our memories.
3
"Kind Woman." Do you know that one? If you were more than a casual fan, you do.
And the aforementioned "A Good Feelin' to Know" resonated with me for the first time ever.
I was a Poco fan, but when Epic sent me the two CD "Forgotten Trail (1969-74)" package in 1990 I became a devotee, long after the band's status had been set in stone, listening to the music with no context, context was created, it was a really good band. Actually, I recommend two two CD compilations, this Poco one and "Free - Molten Gold: The Anthology." You'll be stunned how good Paul Kossoff was. Free was much more than "All Right Now," never mind featuring possibly the greatest rock singer of all time, Paul Rodgers.
Richie was not a nobody. Like failed singer-songwriters singing down in Florida, at the Villages, other retirement communities, this guy was right up front and center when we were all paying attention. And he's just as good.
Not that you know all the material. The solo stuff...
And Richie got deep into Jesus, and if that bugs you, you're going to wince when he goes on about God during the set.
But I stood up to take a look. The first two-thirds of the space were all people my age, there were no youngsters up front, only in the back.
Now nobody likes a deal like a retiree. Especially free.
And the set started at 5:30. You could call it an Early Bird Special.
This is what it's come to.
But even after waiting for half an hour for the crowd to thin out to say hi to Richie, people were still lined up to talk to him, to buy merch, to get a photo, to get an autograph. These are the same people who won't go to the grocery store during rush hour, whose line up days are through, even though they lined up for tickets way back when.
And I look as old as they do. I'm no different from them. I couldn't square it, made me want to go back to L.A. and sit in the Forum, go to a theatre show, hang with the insiders, anything but this.
It's just like my parents' generation. We had our acts, they meant so much to us and they won't mean much to anybody after we're gone. Most of rock history, kaput!
And the funny thing is most of rock history is now being written by people who weren't there in the first place, in some cases not even born. Not only do they often get the facts wrong, the nuances they miss completely. They rely on the charts from an era where Top Forty meant nothing and some of the best acts were rarely heard on the radio.
And if you try to tell anybody younger how it used to be different, they laugh and say it's the same as it ever was. Then again, if that's so, why is there such hoopla over the re-release of "Stop Making Sense"?
This ain't no party, this ain't no disco, many are past being able to fool around.
You had to go to the Mudd Club, CBGB's, being home was death, it all happened outside, at the club, whereas today the entertainment at home is nearly always superior to that outside.
It's fading away. It's on its last gasp. Do you embrace it or stand up and protest like the Nazi in "The Producers," telling everybody they don't understand how it was, what it meant.
I don't know.
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