The Great Speckled Bird Jan. 25, 1971 Vol. 4 #4 pg. 10-11
Well it was a good week for music, at least. Maybe they’ve ail been good weeks for music, somewhere, ! don’t know. I’ve been staying home mostly with my pipe and Captain Beefheart, John Lennon, Derek and the Dominoes, the Jefferson Starship and like good company. Leave the street to the heat., oh yes.
But I got on the street and beat the heat to hear Little Feat down at the Twelfth Gate. And got a bonus. On the bill with Little Feat were the Stump Brothers, one of the Hampton Grease’s spin-off groups and always a smile to hear. The Stump Bros. are good musicians and generally play music which runs from solid rock to primitive jazz with a lot of echoes from the Fifties especially in the horn riffs. But this night (Tuesday) John Ivey had joined them on bass. I don’t know whether the addition is permanent or not but I hope it is, because Ivey’s playing took the whole group into another dimension of music. More than technical mastery of his instrument he possesses a musical conception of the bass that is way out front, in both roots and vision, of almost everybody around since Albert Stinson.
Little Feat were good, too. Solid “blues/rock/jazz/ folk stuff (categories!) in tight arrangements with Zappa overtones and showcasing a precise and biting lead guitar (lots of slide work), a very smooth and liquid bass (great night for bassmen), and especially near to my heart—some tasty old funky piano that looked to the traditions of Champion Jack Dupree and Little Brother Montgomery, et al, for inspiration. People are really taking to the piano these days, like Grace Slick and Bob Dylan for example. Anyway Little Feat were very together and made people feel good and, according to a well-rounded observer, generated even more electricity the next evening.
On the strength of such luck I went to check out the Bistro a couple of nights later where Jeff Espina and Ray Whitley were sharing the bill. Not having heard Espina since a magical night at the Barrel some time ago when Buddy Moss wandered in and joined him, and Whitley not at all, I was curious as to what they might be doing, maybe even together. Okay well Ray Whitley and Jeff
Espina are both very good musicians and if you have never heard them you should go and do it. But I ended up disappointed in their performances for different ^ reasons. Although Espina is one of the powerful folk/bluest singers around lie did a set that 1 had already heard a number of times and I could not get turned on by it again. I even remembered the jokes. As for Whitley, he is a very warm and appealing performer, with strength underneath, but I must have caught a down set: I wanted to hear him do his own songs, a couple of which I had heard by other people and had really liked, but here he sang mainly John Lennon and Beatle songs and was not really into it either. Part of the blame for this might be laid to the audience which, although the Bistro itself is a nice enough place, has got to be one of the lamer audiences around. Whitley and Espina did not work together while I was there—1 left early— but they would probably be dynamite and I’d sure like to hear them do it sometime.
Saturday night was the giant hoopla concert at the Auditorium with Hampton Grease and the Allman Brothers, $3, $4, $5 a ticket, and completely sold out. The sound system was amazingly together at last thanks to great work by the Carlo Sound people from Nashville, and this apparently made a difference to the Grease Band. They turned in a fine set, introducing some new material in the tradition of their tight and complicated best, moving from rock into free jazz breaks a la Roland Kirk with flutes, sticks, and weird little noisemakers and putting down some electronic music on top, too. Strange how the shadow of Zappa peers out from the music of both Hampton and Little Feat in such different ways, but it does. The Greasers went on into a great parody of Detroit rock, did their old standby “Jim Evans,” and wound up with “Rock Around the Clock” and “Boney Maroney” just so we wouldn’t forget where they come from—rock , classicsville. Their record will soon be out on Columbia, and as an indication of just how good they are— which we who hear them so often tend to forget when the shock of surprise wears off-listen to WREK and the mix they have of “Jim Evans” from the forthcoming album. It relates to t schlock around it about like pearls to swine. If this record should happen to take off Hampton and company could find themselves turned into rock stars overnight. Oh yeah? Far out. What then? Well, speaking of stars….
The Allman Brothers back in town! Great! Beautiful! Over the past couple of years their music has made some fantastic magic here in the park on Sundays, the different festivals, the concert with the Dead, etc., and we were all ready for more of the same in spite of the 3, 4, and 5 dollars—the band after all deserves some bread for their work and some thanks for those freebies.
Well the boys have made the big time now, that’s for sure. In two weeks they play Carnegie Hall. A more accurate sign of their new commercial success, however, here in America’s heartland would be all those rows of shining teeny-bopper faces gleaming out in adulation from the darkened hall, eyes fixed, riveted upon the sparkling stage and the spangled shirts, mouths slightly ajar. And by god they we re there. And then the Big Sound rolled out ….
The musicians worked their asses off. Leading off with the ancient “Statesboro Blues” in a somewhat defunked version, they moved quickly into album cuts, “Midnight Rider” and a very fine rendition of “In Memory of Elizabeth Reed.” They did a new tune, “Hot- lanta,” dedicated to the people of Atlanta, and they stretched out and tried hard. But somehow it just didn’t quite happen like the old days. No telling why. Maybe the star syndrome. If you’re a star you often tend not to take too many chances because you might blow one and fuck up your good thing; and without risks and reaching the tension drains out of your act. Duane Allman is certainly a super-guitarist, but this time his runs seemed all to have a certain sameness about them. Dicky Betts, the other lead guitar, appeared on the verge of really taking off once 01 twice. Where the Brothers came closest to really getting it on, though, was in a planned encore with their old favorite the “First There Is A Mountain” medley, and people were finally jumping and moving. But not like in the park or the Sports Arena, with the dying light and soft shadows and the common groove that folks have been working into all day high on each other and the trees and music and dope and freedom and room enough to run. So maybe again it was the whole set of a concert situation with fixed places and arbitrary distance between performers and audience that limited the show. But if it was not a mind-blower of a performance it was still quite mellow, and we look forward to Grease and the Allmans sharing a bill again soon. ; Incidentally, here’s a beautiful example for your primer book of the star system and the arbitrariness of concert promotion. Certain sources had it that the Allman Bros. were paid around $13,000 for their appearance, whereas the Grease band got $400. Isn’t that •weird’! Is there really $ 12,600 worth of difference between the two? Arid is it really necessary for someone (probably not even the musicians) to charge thirteen grand for a night’s work? Strange world. When asked for comment, International Ventures (the promoters) denied the thirteen figure but refused to say what it was they had paid, Phil Walden, Macon manager of the Allman band, also denied the thirteen grand figure and also refused to name the true sum, although he did mention that the band plans to do some more free concerts soon as they have a chance. Good news. But one has to wonder what all the secrecy is about- The Allman Brothers themselves were out of town and could not be reached. Ah, the romance of the music business and the sweet smell of…. BULLSHIT.
Later, craving some peace and quiet after the giant bash, I retreated to the Twelfth Gate again just in time to hear the tail end of Doc Watson‘s set there. Now this too was odd. For, lacking not only a huge group to back him up but also a massive p.a, system to put him across, armed only with a guitar or banjo and behind him a bassman, and sometimes not even any of those, this man was just sitting there generating more good vibes and magic and music than anything I had heard all week. Singing folk ballads and some slow country tunes and stuff like that. Not really what he sang, but the way he sang it. As if there were some sort of message hanging around it or something like that, not in the words but maybe in the feeling, or .. .. well, there was something he said.
“If any of you people out there happen to own any big hippie clothing stores, I’d just like to remind you that you wear your clothes on the inside.” .
Could it be that this.,. .is closer?
This may not have been a great week for -MUSIC’, but it was a mighty damn good one.
-cliff enders