Tag Archives: ’60s rock

On the road again

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Photo: Kevin Mazur
Photo: Kevin Mazur

Eric Clapton and Steve Winwood began their 2009 tour together in New Jersey at the Izod Center Thursday night. A reprise of their three-night performance in February, 2008, which produced the CD and DVD Live From Madison Square Garden released last month, the two legends stuck to a similar set as in the MSG shows.

The duo again opened with the Blind Faith tune Had To Cry Today, featuring double guitar solos on the tag. Clapton replaced Double Trouble for his blues feature early in the set with Big Maceo’s Tough Luck Blues and J.J. Cale’s After Midnight was moved up to an early spot in the show right after another Cale number Lowdown, the second song of the set.

The acoustic portion of the concert has been altered a bit with Winwood, after playing Georgia On My Mind solo on Hammond organ, joining Clapton for Driftin’ with the rest of the band. Then the two each played acoustic guitar on Nobody Loves You When You’re Down And Out, Layla and the Blind Faith classic Can’t Find My Way Home.

The Hendrix tribute of Little Wing and Voodoo Chile along with another Cale standard, Cocaine, closed the show with Dear Mr. Fantasy as the encore.

Willie Weeks is back on bass, Chris Stainton, of Joe Cocker and the Grease Band fame, on keyboards, but the drummer is new with Abe Laboriel Jr. replacing Ian Thomas. Also, Michelle John and Sharon White have been added as background singers.

The tour runs through June, ending in Los Angeles on June 30.

Here is the set list courtesy of Where’s Eric!

Had To Cry Today
Low Down
After Midnight
Sleeping In The Ground
Presence Of The Lord
Glad
Well Alright
Tough Luck Blues
Tell The Truth
Pearly Queen
No Face, No Name, No Number
Forever Man
Georgia On My Mind
Driftin’
Nobody Knows You When You’re Down and Out
Layla
Can’t Find My Way Home
Split Decision
Little Wing
Voodoo Chile
Cocaine

Encore:
Dear Mr. Fantasy

Neil Young’s Archive: Buffalo Springfield

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In addition to the three Topanga discs and Early Years (1963-65), I’ve been listening to the Buffalo Springfield disc quite a bit from Neil’s Young’s recently released Archives Box Set.

ny-archive-springfield-coverDisc 1 in the 10-disc set, which I have in DVD format, is titled Early Years (1966-68) and is dedicated to the mid-to-late ’60s group that many of its fans lament over for its short tenure on the rock scene, about two years.

The Springfield were truly one of the great rock groups of the ’60s, but let’s face it, it had too many creative forces within, if that’s possible: namely Stephen Stills, Richie Furay and Young. It made for a powerful combination — but only for a while.

The Springfield made two memorable albums, their self-titled debut and Buffalo Springfield Again, during which the group started to fracture. As Young says in a radio interview included on the disc, the third record Last Time Around was not a Buffalo Springfield album at all. It does contain two notable songs from Young, I Am A Child and On The Way Home, which he doesn’t sing lead on, but it’s disjointed.

It’s kind of amusing hearing Young rip Jim Messina, the Springfield’s second bass player, for ruining the mix on the album, since he would shortly use Messina and George Grantham, both of Poco, to record his first solo album. And Young adds that he and Stills really had nothing to do with the album at all. So Disc 1 is culled mainly from the first two Springfield albums with I Am A Child the only track from the third. Continue reading Neil Young’s Archive: Buffalo Springfield →

Over at Wolfgang’s

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Wolfgang’s Vault just posted two must-listen-to concerts: Delaney & Bonnie and Friends from a February, 1970 date at the Fillmore West and Derek and the Dominoes  later that same year at the Fillmore East.

delaney-bonnie-portrait-1The Delaney & Bonnie show features an all-star band with Eric Clapton, who sings I Don’t Know Why from his first solo album, along with Leon Russell, piano, Jim Price, trumpet, Jim Horn and Bobby Keys, sax, now with the Stones, Rita Coolidge on background vocals and future Dominoes Carl Radle, bass, Bobby Whitlock, keyboards, and Jim Gordon, drums.

The set list is a good one with Things Get Better, Will The Circle Be Unbroken, the Robert Johnson tribute Poor Elijah and closer Coming Home, among 10 songs.

The Dominoes gig has many of the band’s staples — Got To Get Better In A Little While, Key To The Highway, Tell The Truth — and material from Clapton’s solo album such as Blues Power, Let It Rain as well as a little Hendrix and Blind Faith.

Both worth checking out.

Much to explore in Young’s Archive

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My initial misgivings about volume 1 of Neil Young’s Archive Box Set, based on a faulty Blu-Ray preview disc, are quickly being dispelled by the actual set, which arrived this past week.

The 10-disc set I have is in DVD format and it contains a plethora of re-mastered work, unreleased tracks, alternate mixes, videos and much more from 1963-72, my favorite period of Young’s career. It’s also available in Blu-Ray or as an eight-disc set in CD, minus the feature film Journey Through The Past and videos.

ny-archive-box-2I have a dedicated SACD/DVD player connected to my stereo and that’s where I have listened to it the most, although I’ve played it through one of my computers to access the visuals available while songs are playing, hidden tracks and other goodies that you can only see with a monitor.

I don’t care for listening to music through my TV setup but this set has tempted me to add a small monitor to my player to access the extras.

Speaking of extras, to my surprise, the set came with a few unexpected items. The first thing you see when you open the large rectangular tower the set is housed in is a vinyl 45 by The Squires, one of Young’s first rock groups in Canada, of the instrumentals Mustang and Aurora, which are on Disc 0 of the set, covering 1963-65. The DVDs are in a special cardboard box that folds in half revealing five discs in each half and a poster of the file cabinet screen, which is used on the discs to access individual tracks. Continue reading Much to explore in Young’s Archive →

Winwood, Clapton after all these years

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From the opening double guitar lines of the Blind Faith classic Had To Cry Today, Steve Winwood’s and Eric Clapton’s performance on their recently released CD/DVD Live From Madison Square Garden is electrifying.

clapton-winwood-dvd2Not electrifying in a showy, glitzy, glamorous sense, but in a musical sense. The two giants whose careers started in the 1960s and have paralleled each other, intersecting once for an extended period in 1969, show they are still fully capable of producing inspring and creative performances on their own material and covers of some of their contemporaries.

It seems fitting that the duo begins their MSG show, which was recorded in February, 2008 over three nights, with the opening track from their only album together, Blind Faith.

It also shows off Winwood as an extraordinary and somewhat overlooked guitarist, who is Clapton’s perfect foil, particularly when they solo simultaneously at the end of the tune.

The track, always overshadowed by two others on that 1969 album, Cant’ Find My Way Home and Presence Of The Lord, also gets its due, as a riff-driven vehicle but with some very unconventional chord changes for a guitar-slinging number. Continue reading Winwood, Clapton after all these years →

Something new and something old

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I’ve always been a big fan of Bob Dylan, but not a fanatic. His work and the changes he went through during the 1960s and most of the ’70s were extraordinary. But since, some projects have left me cold.

dylan-together-through-lifeHis latest, the strong-selling Together Through Life, a further exploration of roots-rock calling on all his musical influences while in collaboration with Grateful Dead lyricist Robert Hunter, succeeds in most aspects despite a few tracks that fall short of the high level of most of this album.

Almost simultaneously and much more quietly, a remarkable Dylan work with The Band, The Basement Tapes, has been remastered and re-issued on CD for the first time in many years. The attraction of these tapes is inescapable and perhaps more compelling today than on their initial release in 1975. But first Together Through Life.

Dylan has assembled a fine group of musicians for this outing with Mike Campbell of the Heartbreakers and David Hidalgo of Los Lobos on guitars, added to members of his touring band, Donny Herron, steel guitar, mandolin, banjo and trumpet, drummer George Recile and bassist Tony Garnier. Continue reading Something new and something old →

Concerts, Vol. 5: Farewell Cream

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A little more than two months after seeing Cream at Yale’s Woolsey Hall in New Haven, the second time I had seen them live in about six months, the group was booked to play two shows — afternoon and evening — at the Oakdale Theatre in Wallingford, Connecticut on June 15. It was the next-to-last show of an exhausting five-month tour of the States that started in February and turned the group into mega-stars.

Eric Clapton plays a Gibson ES-335 during Cream's Farewell Tour, 1968.
Eric Clapton plays a Gibson ES-335 during Cream's Farewell Tour, 1968.

The Oakdale was a summer theatre in-the-round with a circular stage and a canvas roof. Where the theatre stood is now the lobby of the new Oakdale (now named the Chevrolet Theater, sacrilege!). It booked mostly summer stock, traveling Broadway musical companies and shows of that ilk along with traditional singers from Tony Bennett and Engelbert Humperdink to Ray Charles and many more. I even saw the figure skater Perry Fleming perform there once, when they flooded the stage area with ice. She was actually quite good.

But by 1966, it was also booking rock acts. Because of its size — it was quite small by today’s standards with a seating capacity of no more than about 2,000 if that — and intimacy, it was an outrageous place to see bands such as Cream, Led Zeppelin, The Doors and The Who, all of whom played there, among many others.

Because my friend and band mate in Pulse, Beau Segal, had an in there, we scored excellent seats in the front row for the evening show. I turned up for the afternoon concert as well, which didn’t appear to be sold out, and stood in the area between the theatre and dressing rooms, which was an open-air walkway. Continue reading Concerts, Vol. 5: Farewell Cream →

Seeing Beck play is believing

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So many times, directors just get it wrong when making a concert film. Too many quick cuts, MTV-style editing, no focus on the performers, annoying special effects. It’s not only in recent years either. The effects problem started way back when Tony Palmer documented Cream playing its Farewell concert at Royal Albert Hall in 1968.

jeff-beck-ronnies-1It’s a pleasure to note that the film makers of Jeff Beck Performing This Week … Live At Ronnie Scott’s got it right. So right it’s one of the best concert films in recent memory. The last with this type of professionalism and dedication to the music and musicians was another Cream gig, the reunion concert from 2005, also at RAH. But the Beck show is better.

The intimate atmosphere of one of the world’s great jazz clubs, Ronnie Scott’s in London, the tightknit performance by Beck’s group on a small stage, the immediacy of the audience, complete with rock celebs such as Robert Plant and Jimmy Page, all contribute to this excellent video document of the same performance released on Beck’s CD version of the show late last year.

The DVD has all of the CD performances, plus five numbers with guests Joss Stone, Imogen Heap and Eric Clapton. Most important, the DVD reveals much of what Jeff Beck is all about. The camera work is stellar in capturing his unique guitar playing style and technique, often zooming in on his hands, which are an endless source of fascination. Continue reading Seeing Beck play is believing →

From The Vaults: Hidden Treasure, No. 3

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Of the three Kings – blues guitarists B.B., Albert and Freddie, all of whom I have great respect and admiration for – my favorite is Freddie. Freddie wrote and played on some of the great blues instrumentals of the late 1950s and early ’60s such as Hide Away and The Stumble, among others, and delivered signature versions of Have You Ever Loved A Woman, Five Long Years, I’m Tore Down, and his own Someday, After Awhile (You’ll Be Sorry).

fking-burglar-coverHis influence may very well reach the furthest of the three Kings with Eric Clapton and Peter Green among his disciples. And I played with him in a one-off concert in New York in the early ’70s. But more on that later.

After revitalizing his career in 1971 with Shelter Records for whom he recorded three outstanding albums in as many years with Leon Russell and friends – Getting Ready …, Texas Cannonball and Woman Across The River – Freddie cut a record in 1974 on RSO called Burglar, Hidden Treasure, No. 3 in our series. Nine of the 10 cuts were recorded in England with an all-star lineup of British musicians and produced by blues legend Mike Vernon, who also produced Treasure No. 1, Martha Velez’s Fiends & Angels. The remaining track was produced by Tom Dowd at Criteria Studios in Miami with Eric Clapton and his 461 Ocean Boulevard band guesting.

The Clapton track is a Mel London classic Sugar Sweet, a short uptempo funky romp that appears to feature Clapton on the intro solo and King taking his chorus toward the end of the tune. They sound very similar on this track. Continue reading From The Vaults: Hidden Treasure, No. 3 →

Concerts Vol. 3: Fresh Cream

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I mentioned in Concerts Vol. 1 that one of my earliest major influences from a live show was seeing the Paul Butterfield Blues Band at the Cafe Au Go Go in the winter of 1966-67. That remains true but there was a series of concerts that had an even bigger impact for me. I saw Cream play live four times in 13 months between September, 1967 and October, 1968. After the first show, nothing would ever be the same for me musically.

I had just arrived in Boston for freshmen orientation at Boston University in the first week of September, 1967. Back then, freshmen came up to the school for a full week before classes, unlike today when orientation is usually finished up in less than two days by many colleges.

classiccreamI was having mid-afternoon waffles at a small breakfast/dinner restaurant near Kenmore Square when my buddies, one of whom was a fellow bass player from Connecticut, and I found out that Cream, yes that Cream, would be playing practically across the street at a new club called the Psychedelic Supermarket. I was astonished by my good fortune that Cream, one of my favorite bands would be in town, just a few blocks from my dorm on Commonwealth Avenue, and that they were scheduled to play for two weeks! I intended going more than once.

My first encounter with Cream was in one of the old listening booths at one of the best record shops in Connecticut in the ’60s, Cutler’s, which was on Broadway in New Haven. In the spring of 1967, my friend and fellow band-mate in the Bram Rigg Set, Beau Segal, told me I had to check out this group from England that featured the Cream of the crop among British blues musicians and were aptly named.

I went down to Cutler’s with a friend, Holly Lovig, who if you remember accompanied me on the trip to see that first Butterfield concert in New York. Those listening booths at Cutler’s were great. One of the clerks would spin a record on a turntable in back of the store’s elevated counter and pipe in the music to one of I believe at least two booths, which was wood and glass and had a large glass pane in the door so you could look out at the store while you listened. Precursor to the headphones you find at record stores today. Continue reading Concerts Vol. 3: Fresh Cream →