Tag Archives: ’60s rock

Hillman, Pedersen perfect sidekicks

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Chris Hillman became a country star as leader of The Desert Rose Band in the 1980s. Before that he had a reputation as being the ultimate sidekick.

chris-hillman-herb-pedersen-in-concert-1-smallFirst to Roger McGuinn and David Crosby in The Byrds, then to Gram Parsons in the seminal country-rock band The Flying Burrito Brothers and to Stephen Stills in Manassas. Now he has his own sidekick. Or rather Hillman and Herb Pedersen are sidekicks for each other.

They’ve been playing together since Desert Rose and are on tour as a duo with Hillman mostly on mandolin and Pedersen acoustic guitar. At their stop Thursday at the Iron Horse Music Hall in Northampton, Mass., they displayed consumate muscianship as they ran through a set of each other’s songs, Byrds tunes and classic country numbers.

What really sets this pair apart, though, is their beautiful vocal blend. Their voices mesh so well it’s like hearing one voice in perfect harmony. Pedersen has long been known as an excellent harmony singer, going back to Emmylou Harris’ breakthrough country hit in 1974 If I Could Ever Win Your Love, which Hillman and Pedersen performed second in their set.

Hillman and Pedersen have a wonderful rapport on stage and play it fast and loose, as Hillman said early in the set, they have a list of songs but don’t follow a setlist and play what they want to play. Continue reading Hillman, Pedersen perfect sidekicks →

Illness postpones Taylor’s tour

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Here in the Northeast this summer, we were going to be lucky enough to see the outstanding blues-rock guitarist Mick Taylor on a small club tour.

mick-taylor-live-11He rarely plays in the States but Taylor was scheduled to be at four venues in or near Connecticut: Toad’s Place in New Haven, Black-Eyed Sally’s in Hartford, the Iron Horse Music Hall in Northampton, Mass., or if you wanted to drive a little further, Misquamicut Beach in Westerly, R.I.

Unfortunately according to a release from his manager that is posted at Black-Eyed Sally’s, Taylor has been hospitalized with a blood clot in his chest and pleurisy. It appears what was suspected as dehydration is a bit more serious. He has canceled all of his U.S. gigs, but his manager is eager to reschedule in the fall after Taylor’s recovery, which is expected.

Taylor, of course, is best known for having replaced Brian Jones on second guitar in The Rolling Stones. He played with the superstar group in the late ’60s and early ’70s and was part of one of the Stones’ most creative and productive eras, which included the albums Let It Bleed, Get Yer Ya Ya’s Out (live), Sticky Fingers and Exile On Main Street. For me, probably their last truly creative and productive period. Continue reading Illness postpones Taylor’s tour →

The Beehive Queen

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I’ve known Chris Ohlman for more than 40 years, but unfortunately have only seen her perform a handful of times. And some of those were when we were on the same bill in different groups at charity events.

cohlman-w-colbath-smallI caught The Beehive Queen and her remarkable band Rebel Montez Saturday night at Cafe Nine, a tiny club that might hold 200, in New Haven, Connecticut. Chris showed why she is one of the state’s legendary R&B/soul singers as I watched her play the first of two 90-minute sets that included original tunes from each of her five albums and a number of meticulously chosen covers that not only put her vast talents on full display but also carried a sense of blues and soul history.

One of the first groups Chris sang with in the late ’60s was called Fancy, which included her brother Vic Steffens and was based out of Wallingford, CT at Syncron Studios, later Trod Nossel, managed by Doc Cavalier.  In the ’70s, she fronted the ultra popular and ultra hot regional act The Scratch Band, which also featured G.E. Smith, later a leader of the Saturday Night Live Band, and bassist Paul Ossola, also with SNL. Chris as well has been a singer with the SNL Band since the early ’90s. Continue reading The Beehive Queen →

Neil and Macca

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Speaking of The Beatles. If you haven’t seen it yet, check out the video below, which is a combination of the sublime and the surreal.

Paul McCartney joined Neil Young onstage at his concert in Hyde Park, London, a few days ago for Young’s closing number, The Beatles’ A Day In The Life. McCartney joins in mid-song to pick up the singing on the bit he wrote of The Beatles classic from Sgt. Pepper’s, a song with which Young evidently has been closing recent shows.

The sometimes ragged collaboration finishes with Young literally ripping the strings off his Les Paul and then joining Macca at the vibraphone for a little one-note finale or something like that.


The Beatles remastered

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As reported earlier this spring, The Beatles catalogue on CD has been remastered for the first time since the 1980s and will be released on 9/9/09. Hmm. No. 9, No. 9, No. 9. In another coincidence of marketing strategy, a new Rock Band video game version featuring The Beatles will be released on the same day.

beatles-please-please-meFor details about the project, including specific mastering techniques, as well as a wealth of other information on The Beatles, check out Beatles-History.net.

As I often react to these type of announcements, I was rather resistant to yet another wave of remastering by a major act, particularly since the results of these re-releases has been mixed at best in the past 10 years. Many audiophiles and purists are now claiming the original CD releases — you know the ones we sold, traded in or in some cases some collectors threw out! — actually sound better than the remastered ones because they came from better sources.

Add to this that I, for one, believe the original Beatles CDs from the 1980s, sound rather good. When first released I was a bit miffed that all the early albums were mastered in mono, since I grew up with the stereo versions no matter how retched they were. Continue reading The Beatles remastered →

John Sebastian’s good time music

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John Sebastian has always been a storyteller, particularly in his live solo shows, which he’s been performing now for about 40 years.

john-sebastian-on-stage-small2Sebastian’s charming and engaging style of entertaining creates an immediate connection with his audience as he mixes interesting anecdotes from his career with a type of humor that is so easy to relate to, especially for his contemporaries as he puts it.

Sebastian was at his best on Friday night at the Infinity Music Hall in Norfolk, Connecticut, threading a narrative throughout his performance that started with his upbringing in Greenwich Village through his formative days with the Lovin’ Spoonful, who enjoyed tremendous success on the singles charts and produced a string of memorable albums in the mid-to-late 1960s.

Before moving on to Sebastian’s set, I have to note the venue, which is quite remarkable in this day and age of mega-stars and large arena rock. Infinity, at one time a supermarket, is on the main street in Norfolk, Route 44. After renovation, it now houses a beautiful bistro at street level with a box office, waiting area and small bar off to the side of the restaurant.

Up a long flight of stairs you find the music hall, which is in a large room with a ceiling perhaps 50 feet high, if not higher, above a small proscenium stage framed in an ornate arch. Continue reading John Sebastian’s good time music →

Butterfield rocks Rockpalast

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I was more than a little surprised but quite pleased to learn a Paul Butterfield performance from the late 1970s was being released this year as part of the Rockpalast DVD Collection.

paul-butterfield-rockpalast1For the uninitiated, Rockpalast is a long-running German TV show that started in the early 1970s and broadcasts live concerts. Many performances from those shows by scores of artists have been officially released or generally available over the years.

This DVD, Paul Butterfield Band Blues Rock Legends Vol. 2,  is part of a new series. Other recently released DVDs from the Rockpalast (which translates as Rock Palace) include John Cipollina, who played with Quicksilver Messenger Service, Jorma Kaukonen of Jefferson Airplane, Commander Cody, Randy California and Spirit, and Dickey Betts.

This concert was filmed long after the heyday of The Paul Butterfield Blues Band, a revered and highly influential but often overlooked group from the mid-to-late ’60s and early ’70s. Butter was a solo artist at this point, having released the album Put It In Your Ear (1975) and two years after this show North South (1980) on the Bearsville label, neither of which made much of a dent on the sales charts or the public’s perception.

The DVD’s notes state this is Butter’s first European performance. It was taped on September 15, 1978 in Essen at the Grugahalle in a show that also included Alvin Lee and Peter Gabriel. Continue reading Butterfield rocks Rockpalast →

Neil Young Archives: The Concerts

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Three live performances are included in the Neil Young Archives Vol. 1 box set, two of which were actually released in 2008. Of course, that doesn’t include live video footage you can find in hidden tracks and the video log, usually tucked underneath track listing screens, throughout the set.

neil-young-riverboatIf you pre-ordered the set, you also received another previously released concert on DVD/CD, Sugar Mountain Live At the Canterbury House 1968, which I wrote about back in December in this post. Also in that piece, I mentioned a bit about one of the other discs, Live At Massey Hall 1971, which I picked up last year. Live At The Fillmore East 1970 with Crazy Horse and Live At The Riverboat 1969 are the other two performances in the set.

Suffice to say Massey Hall is Young’s best overall performance of these discs. He appears to have fully realized himself as a solo performer by this time despite touring with a rather serious back injury and playing in a brace. But he had found the perfect balance between polished performer and humorous and engaging stage personality.

As is revealed in an Archives meeting elsewhere in the set, he intended to release a live acoustic album from this tour at the time but it was ditched when sessions for the Harvest album began in February 1971. Continue reading Neil Young Archives: The Concerts →

Woodstock revisited

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If you haven’t noticed the Woodstock blitz is on. The 40th anniversary of the most famous rock festival in history is being celebrated with a number of new releases on CD, DVD and Blu-Ray.

woodstock-40thThe only question left is whether Michael Lang, who produced the original festival, will stage anniversary events in August. There were reports earlier this year about free concerts in upstate New York and Berlin, Germany, but nothing is confirmed.

The video of the festival has been re-released by Warner Brothers in at least three versions, a two-disc Special Edition, and a three-disc Ultimate Collector’s Edition on DVD and Blu-Ray. It comes in a funky fringed box and features a 225-minute Director’s Cut and an additional three hours of bonus material and previously unreleased performances by artists such as Creedence Clearwater Revival, Santana, The Who, The Dead and The Paul Butterfield Blues Band, among many others.

Despite all this, there are still performances that won’t be included, most notably The Band. But others such as Creedence and Mountain will be making their first appearance. Blu-Ray will set you back about $60, while DVD can be had for $42. You can find a list of the 18 bonus performances here. Continue reading Woodstock revisited →

Stripped down Crosby, Stills & Nash

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Usually when demos make up an album or are included as bonus tracks, you can often expect rough sonics, less than perfect performances and songwriting that is evolving. On Crosby, Stills & Nash’s recently released Demos, produced by Graham Nash and Joel Bernstein, that’s not the case.

csn-demosThe sound is pristine, the performances near flawless and the songs are fully formed in almost every instance. It’s an easy and pleasant listen. What it lacks is a hint at how most of these tunes changed from the early demo stage to the finished product.

All but one are simply acoustic versions of the songs with basically few changes from the end result. One track by Crosby, Music Is Love from his solo album If I Could Only Remember My Name, is actually the mono log tape of the master take lacking only overdubs.

That’s not to say Demos is of no interest, just not on the level of understanding how the songs came about and evolved.

Each musician has four tracks, with Neil Young contributing to Music Is Love, but the standouts are all by Stephen Stills, who at the time — late ’60s to early ’70s — had to be considered one of the great creative forces in rock. He certainly was the acknowledged leader of CSN and taking into account his output in Buffalo Springfield, CSN&Y and his first two solo albums it begs the question: Whatever happened to Stills? But more on that later. Continue reading Stripped down Crosby, Stills & Nash →