It’s the greatest musical performances ever caught on film.   You’ll see.

And Enjoy.

“Life is a crazy, dark circus.”

FANTASTIC, inspired filmmaking. (I gotta look for more Todd Haynes.)  Maybe I was super-well prepared for it by this late date, but as it was, I could easily follow it, and it painted a brilliant million-dollar-picture.

Obviously the unsuspecting could be caught off guard by the allegory and non-linear storyline, and I can see how it might come across as not entertaining or helpful for non Dylan fans – but for those familiar with this major artist’s life and work, it’s just full of humor and incredible detail in scene recreations (which are then played with), all mixed in with archival footage of Greenwich Village and such. — Especially the dustbowl Hattie Carroll, and all the Don’t Look Back reenactments! :-) . . . the press conference, the hotel rooms, and the encounter with the Duchess and the overly analytical fan!

I just LOVED the script! How it skipped around in time, but still flowingly told a chronological story. It was like a merge between Bob’s books Tarantula and Chronicles — poetically licensed autobiography (see, also: Kerouac, Jack).

And nobody seems to talk much about the editing, but it’s Brilliant! And the sound editing, and cinematography. (sorry, this is just post Oscars )

It was a lot like Masked & Anonymous — both very surreal musical dramedies starring Another Side of Bob Dylan — both with similar wonderful soundtracks of original Bob mixed with other’s versions — and both featuring a calliope of strange characters, and with a black child singing and stealing the show.
And B), it’s a helluva lot like Renaldo & Clara in many of the same ways. Life is a crazy, dark circus.

This is the kind of movie, like a great CD, that you could just put on at a party and let it play in the background — a series of music & words with images, called “scenes” instead of “songs” — you can dip in and out anytime, for as long as you want, then go back to your conversation. With all the Bob-inspired dialog and songs woven together it’s like a Dylan musical for two hours.

And how ‘bout that hilarious scene at the cross on the hill with Ginsberg & Bob yelling up at it! “Why don’t you do your early stuff?!”

Or that sweet Hitchcockian overhead B&W slo zoom-in of Dylan writing Tarantula with all the pictures surrounding him on the floor.

Or the scene in the car after the great, “That was Allen Ginsberg, man!” –> into the battle between Bob and the reporter –>  into that epic Ballad of a Thin Man!! Sick!

And the whole thing interspersed with a Spinal Tap mockumentary riff! woven into Don’t Look Back and a nature documentary about a grizzled Grizzly Adams Gere living in the woods! Great poetic storytelling.

I really liked every one of the Dylan actors’ performances — (in order) Cate (of course), the black kid (Marcus Carl Franklin), Bale, Gere, Heath, and even the 19 yr old in B&W at the table, Ben Winshaw. And how cool about Richie Havens playing the soulful father figure?!  And his partner mother-figure telling the young boy, “Write about your own time.”

It was realistically surreal. Like Terry Gilliam can capture it, or van Gogh, or Lewis Carroll, or Alvin Ailey. It’s crazy, it’s distorted, but it’s real.

All around, a playful joyous complex poetic work of art befitting its subject.

*  *  *

oh, and I noticed in the Special Thanks at the end: Neil Young! , Jeff Tweedy (Wilco), and Ramblin’ Jack.

And that it was mostly shot in Montreal! Beauty, eh!

and A Grate Family Friendly Film Tip – Watch Masked & Anonymous RIGHT After this –
the greatest One-Two-Blow-Off-My-Shoe
Bob Brain-blast Double-Feature Ever!
Bake the brownies in advance.

.

Captain Bob’s Arresting at Copps

Brian’s Field Report to the Global Bobster Brotherhood 

Bob & His Band – at Hamilton’s Copps Coliseum – August 20^th, 2008

Stunning.  Blown away.  Has he been this good all year?  This was my first show since the NY City Center tour-ending gig about 2 years ago (when he debuted Ain’t Talkin’).    

I’m stunned, I’ll just tell ya straight-up.  I thought Bob was on, let’s say, not on an upward trajectory.  I’d love it if any regulars who were there and have seen / heard multiple shows this tour can say whether this was average – or was more “on” than usual?  It was like – Wow.  I’m speechless. 

But I’ll try . . .

:- )

For those of you who weren’t there – this is a fanfreakintastic venue!  SO much better a crowd and hall than the arena in nearby Toronto.  For one thing, everybody on the floor stood up for the entire show!  I couldn’t believe it.  I now know I’d go to a show at Copps Coliseum ANYday over one at Toronto’s ACC.  It’s like a baby arena – small floor, small sides, small everything.  I was front center floor, and you could run out of there, go to the bathroom, stop and get a beer and be back at your seat before one song’s over.  Serious.  Everything was that close.  It was like being at a show in your house. 

It felt like a crowd-size circa 1966 – Before The Flood.   Both myself and an old veteran stagehand estimated the house at about 7,000. 

There were a ton of Dead shirts there – so nice to see – in fact the last time I was in that building was on a very psychedelic couple of nights back in the spring of 1990 seein’ The Boys just before Brent Myland died – including that awesome Hey Jude – Dear Mr. Fantasy medley.  Anyway  :- ) . . .

One Weird Thing:  I had long conversations with about 30 different Bobheads (from the Toronto-Hamilton area) and not a single one of them had ever even heard of  ”Masked & Anonymous”.  It’s just SO bizarre how unknown that great work is, even by fairly hardcore Bob fans. 

One Funny Thing:  This is Canada, and Hamilton is nicely off the beaten path, and, well, there were just PLUMES of pot smoke billowing out from behind the side-of-stage scrims!  I mean, it looked like a freakin dry-ice smoke machine!  Giant CLOUDS of it wafting slowly across the stage.  It was SO funny.  It was SO loose.  I mean, MSG ain’t like this anymore.  The ACC in downtown Toronto is like going to a concert at your phuckin’ parent’s house.  But this is like goin’ back to the ‘70s man!  :- )  Total time travel.  Free-form everything everywhere.  Loved it!  No posing or pretentiousness.  Just wild uninhibited dancing, freedom smokers, and beer flowing like crazy (but not a single obnoxious drunk spotted all night long). 

One Canadian Thing:  Not only do the big white hockey rink boards go all around the floor, but the freakin’ benches and penalty boxes are right there too!   And people are sittin’ in ‘em.  And nobody thinks anything of it.  That’s the beauty part.  It felt like I was back at the Winnipeg Arena. 

One Guitar Thing:  The “new” guy is just outstanding.  I can’t get over it.  I don’t know whether he was really “on” or is simply this amazing all the time.  I don’t know why I had doubts about this “new” band, but they were just So spot-on.  Maybe it’s just me, but I think Bob & His Band just keep getting better & better.  How is that possible?  Luckily the sound was crystal clear, and wonderfully, Bob was annunciating every syllable of every word! 

One More Thing:  He closed Woodstock ‘94 with a transcendent “It Ain’t Me, Babe”, and basically opened this show with one as well — with a bouncing, lyrical guitar, and a long harmonious harp solo to end it.  Then the rockin’ Memphis Blues Again with Bob on organ trading solos with the guitar.  High Water was just outstanding – so articulate and precise in both the vocals and instrumentation. 

Rollin’ & Tumblin’ is such a wonderful live rock n roll dance song.  What a great performance card to be able to play any time you want.  Then Tryin to Get To Heaven was ethereal, and again, with gorgeous accompanying solos by both the guitar and Bob’s keys.  Gawd, for a tape of this show!  Then this smokin’ Highway 61, and, I know, he’s played it a lot, but for both this and the encores, I pretended like it was the first time I’d ever heard these songs — which was easy cuz for so many people in the room that WAS the case – and people were just goin’ bananas.  And 61’s dueling solos, with Bob in the Al Kooper role playing off a feisty 21^st century Bloomfield.  It felt like one of those traveling “Rock n Roll Revues” of the late 50s early 60s – dancin’ in the country shed to the big rock n roll radio hit of the summer.  “How does it feeeel?” 

A:  SO much fun. 

The highlight for me was the song where I first “got” Bob — “It’s Alright Ma” – somebody hit me back if you know where to download a recent version of this song.  It was so beautiful, so melodic, so rich, flushed out . . . so complete.  Gawd bless the gawds n bawbs for guiding this onto my flightpath. 

And, just like Rollin’ & Tumblin’, how great a live song is Thunder On The Mountain?  A born show-closer.  Those two songs can stick around forever as far as I’m concerned.  He ended with this trance-endental Ain’t Talkin’, which reminded me of the way Neil Young sometimes ends shows with Tonight’s The Night.  Haunting, mystical, lots of air & space – a transportive, trace-inducing meditation.

Then of course the big party ending with thousands of people hearing Like A Rolling Stone and All Along Jimi’s ‘Tower for the first time.  Rock n roll dancing pandemonium. 

As it should be. 

surreally & Sir Bobly,

Brian Hassett

karmacoupon @gmail.com

Shine A Light  (2008)

The Rolling Stones, with Darryl Jones, Chuck Leavell, Blondie Chapman, Bernard Fowler & Lisa Fischer, and a 4-piece horn section led by a wailin’ Bobby Keys.

Special Guests:  Buddy Guy, Christina Aguilera, Jack White 

Directed by Martin Scorsese

Cinematographers:  Scorsese brought together seven of the best in the business, all of whom would normally be heading up their own pictures:  lead d.p. Robert Richardson (The Aviator, JFK);  Robert Elswit (just won the Oscar for There Will Be Blood, also Good Night and Good Luck);  Andrew Lesnie (all three Lord of the Rings;  King Kong);  John Toll (The Last Samuri, Braveheart);  Emmanuel Lubeski (Sleepy Hollow, Lemony Snicket, Children of Men);  Stuart Dryburgh (The Painted Veil);  Ellen Kuras (The Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind),  and several other top cameramen.

Filmed over 2 shows, in the fall of 2006, at the Beacon Theater, NYC (cap. 2800).

Length:  122 minutes

Shine A Light  is originally a song from Exile on Main Street.

18 songs – “some never played live before” – probably just “Champaign & Reefer”. 

(although some reports say 20 or 22 songs)

            (4 from Some Girls;  3 from Exile;  2 each from Beggars & Let It Bleed)

All songs Jagger/Richards, except Just My Imagination and Champaign & Reefer.

.
Jumpin’ Jack Flash  (released as a single, June ‘68, recorded during Beggars Banquet)
Shattered  (Some Girls, 1978)
* She Was Hot  – some cite as a highlight  (released as 2^nd single from Undercover, 1983)
All Down The Line  – Ronnie on slide — (Exile, 1972)
Loving Cup,  with Jack White  – reportedly fairly lame  (Exile, 1972)
As Tears Go By  — Keith on acoustic 12-string (December’s Children, 1965)
Some Girls  – a highlight – the band has fun with it — (Some Girls, 1978)
Just My Imagination  (Temptations song, from Some Girls, 1978)
* Far Away Eyes  – is great!  Ron Wood on peddle steel; Jagger on acoustic — (Some Girls, 1978)
* Champagne & Reefer,  with Buddy Guy (Festival Express star! J ) – a movie highlight – Mick on harp; (written by Muddy Waters, on his King Bee album, 1981) 
Tumbling Dice  (from Exile, 1972)

   band introductions
You Got The Silver – slide guitar, with Keith lead vocal (his first ever on a Stones record; Richards original, Let It Bleed, 1969)
Connection  – only partial  (Keith song & lead vocal, from Between The Buttons, 1967)
* Sympathy For The Devil  – great version — (Beggars Banquet, 1968)
* Live With Me, with Christina Aguilera – doing one sexy song, where she takes a scat solo for the 2^nd instrumental break.  —  (Let It Bleed and Get Yer Ya-Ya’s Out, 1969)
Start Me Up  – reportedly only so-so  (Tattoo You, 1981)

encore:
* Brown Sugar   – great Bobby Keys sax! — (Sticky Fingers, 1971)
Satisfaction   (Out of Our Heads, 1965)

= = = = = = = = = = = = =

you can hear the Aguilera duet here:  http://youtube.com/watch?v=7e4dOi46wa0

American-based computers can watch it here:  www.mtv.com/overdrive/?vid=220655

= = = = = = = = = =

original Beacon concert set lists:
10/29/06:
Start Me Up
Shattered
She Was Hot
All Down The Line
Loving Cup
As Tears Go By
I’m Free
Undercover (Of The Night)
Just My Imagination
Shine A Light
Champagne & Reefer
Tumbling Dice
You Got The Silver
Little T&A
Sympathy For The Devil
Live With Me
Paint It Black
Jumpin’ Jack Flash
Brown Sugar

11/1/06:
Jumpin’ Jack Flash
Shattered
She Was Hot
All Down The Line
Loving Cup
As Tears Go By
I’m Free
Some Girls
Just My Imagination
Far Away Eyes
Champagne & Reefer
Tumbling Dice
You Got The Silver
Connection
Sympathy For The Devil
Live With Me
Honky Tonk Woman
Start Me Up
Brown Sugar
Satisfaction

Additional songs played during rehearsals at the Beacon (Maybe for some DVD extras):

Shine A Light
Undercover of the Night
Fool To Cry
Mannish Boy
Beast Of Burden
I’m Free 

LIVE WITH ME
(M. Jagger/K. Richards)

I tell ya,

I got nasty habits, I take tea at three,
The meat I eat for dinner
Must be hung up for a week,
My best friend, he shoots water rats
And feeds them to his geese,
Don’cha think there’s a place for us
In between the sheets?

Come on now, baby
We can build a home for three,
Come on now, baby
Don’t you wanna live with me?

There’s a score of harebrained children
They’re all locked in the nursery,
They got earphone heads, they got dirty necks,
They’re so 20th century;
Well they queue up for the bathroom
‘Round about 7:35
Well don’cha think we need a woman’s touch to make it come alive?

You’d look good pram pushing
Down the high street,
Come on now, baby,
Don’t you wanna live with me?

sax solo

Come on now, baby,
We can build a home for three,
Come on now, sugar,
Don’t you wanna live with me?

The servants they’re so helpful, now,
The cook she is a whore,
The butler has a place for her
Behind the pantry door,               (and ya gotta think of Bill & Hillary who were in the audience!)
The maid, she’s French, she’s got no sense,
She’s wild for Crazy Horse,
And when she strips, the chauffeur flips,
The footman’s eyes get crossed.

Don’cha think there’s a place for us
Right across the street,
Don’cha think there’s a place for you,
In between the sheets?

Christina’s scat solo

Come on now, baby,
We can build a home for three,
Come on now, baby,
Don’t you wanna live with me?

Originally recorded May 24, 1969. Released on Let It Bleed on December 5, 1969
Lead Vocals: Mick Jagger  Electric Guitars: Keith Richards & Mick Taylor  Bass: Keith Richards  Drums: Charlie Watts  Tenor Sax: Bobby Keys  Pianos: Nicky Hopkins & Leon Russell  Backing Vocals: Keith Richards
Brian – karmacoupon@gmail.com

http://www.brianhassett.com/

                                                                     Or

           Everything I Ever Needed to Know I Learned At A Grateful Dead Concert

            The weekend of my 30th birthday, four old friends drove from Winnipeg to New York to help celebrate it, and the Grateful Dead flew in from San Francisco to play.

            It’s a curious story how the Dead have ended up following this displaced Canadian around all these years.  I first heard them at an older friend’s house when I was about 16.  Of all the musical vibrations emanating through my teens, I’m still not sure why it was these guys who were strumming the rhythm of my inner pulse.  Why wasn’t it The Beatles, The Stones, Elvis, Bruce, or any of the other aural entities who captured my peers’ ears?  Why was it the Grateful Dead, a San Francisco acid-rock band from the sixties, and not some Canadian beer-rock band from the seventies?  I mean, I’d barely even heard of acid, let alone knew what it was, let alone done it at one of their concerts.  And I’d certainly never been to San Francisco.  Fifteen years later, I’m still amazed that what struck me then, continues to strike me today.

            After I first heard this otherwise unknown band in Winnipeg, I held their sound between my ears and went off in search of their records.  The stores in my farm implement outpost didn’t have a Grateful Dead section.  Most didn’t even have them under “Misc – G.”  Finally in some basement New & Used joint I found one, and the journey began.  At the time, no one else I knew was listening to them.  I mean no one.  And since they weren’t on the radio or anything, it was difficult to put their records on at parties.  I remember it got to the point where I would plead to get one side played, which would give me a fix for the night.  Even then, before I’d ever seen them, or even thought that I would, I was living on nightly fixes.  Little did I know the size of the future doses.

            The concept of seeing a band live wasn’t even in our frame of reference.  In Winnipeg, we weren’t too sure what a concert was, and were hardly aware that they existed.  So few tours came to town, the ones that did were more like a traveling exposition that everyone felt obliged to attend but didn’t quite understand.  And it seemed like the Grateful Dead were something that happened a long time ago, in a galaxy far, far away. 

            But one afternoon, there in a 7-11 on the corner of this lily-white elm-treed neighborhood in a mid-western prairie town, I was flipping through a Rolling Stone magazine when I came across a two-page photograph of a huge crowd of people that looked like an aerial shot of Woodstock ─ only the caption read, “100,000 rise for The Dead.”  I later learned this was the famous Englishtown, New Jersey concert, and I was looking at the heads of many of my future friends.  I remember crouching there, slurping a slurpee out of a plastic hockey cup with the condensation dripping to the floor, looking at this black & white spread of people pushing toward the stage, and realizing it wasn’t for Jimi Hendrix and a cast of hundreds.  “The Dead again?  Who are these guys?”  A hundred thousand was the population of my town.  I realized then that something was definitely going on in America that we didn’t know anything about.

            These odd little experiences began piling on top of each other out there on the frozen tundra.  There was the time that out-of-town band played at The Zoo and covered their tunes.  There was that poster on the wall at the babysitting place.  There was that chapter in Electric Kool-Aid Acid Test. 

            After high school I bought a van, with my subconscious mind muttering, “This’ll get me to a Grateful Dead concert.”  The next spring, friends and I drove to Vancouver and settled in.  Before long, word filtered up that the band was playing in Seattle.   The show was sold out by the time we heard about it, but I remember phoning and pleading, and somehow getting to mail them a money order because the extra soundboard pulls or something would be going on sale in a week.  Either way, from our naive little apartment on the wrong side of the border we were able to procure our first tickets to a lifelong adventure.

            The initial show was general admission, and there was this unusually comfortable conformity in the amount of space each person took on the floor.  The Deadheads we talked to all seemed surprised that this was our first show.  We were wondering, “What do you mean?  Isn’t it yours?  Why do these people all think this is strange?  Why are they grinning at us like that?”

            After a summer of starving out west, I ended up in college in New York, whereupon the Dead promptly came to town for eight shows at Radio City Music Hall.  Suddenly the phenomena I’d brushed up against in Seattle was in town for a fortnight.  What were once misunderstood expositions was now a visiting circus!  And what a spectacle it turned out to be, with the camped-out American hippies pulling off a coup at music’s Palace of Versailles!  This was the sacrificial whiplash of my indoctrination, where The Innocent Canadian gets snatched up and flung through the American Animal House Fraternity, with everyone plastered on a 20 year bender of social freedoms.

            And now, on this most recent birthday weekend, as I danced across the threshold from my first three decades and into the next, the house band was playing once again. 

            My old school buddies from Canada and I arrived in the parking lot at noon for a 7:00 show, joining tens of thousands of tailgaters already in full twist.  Every car, hatchback and van was smothered in transparent Dead decals, every window exposing the backpacks, cloths and gear of a moving army with too few vehicles.

            Various periods of the band were playing from stereos in every direction.  Wherever we stood, dancing licks from some incarnation would dominate, until we wandered on and a different one would weave into focus.  The most deadicated were blasting crystal-clear speakers perched on rooftops, inspiring you to linger a little longer when the tune was sweet.

            There we were, broiling on the blacktop of a steel-filled parking lot in the devastating heat of a Greenhouse summer, with beers and juice were for sale every few feet, and grilled-cheese sandwiches twice an aisle.  The visiting foursome had never been to a Dead show before, and despite my fervent preparations, they were still stunned silent.  But after we had encircled the Giant coliseum once, they seemed to have internalized the dancing shuffle and oft-interrupted pace, and were singing the collective tune of the kind, kind day.

            Granted, there were overripe school kids guzzling beer, and here we were in our thirties, but there was no question that they were us and this was the culmination of a personal dream.  From those little tid-bits in a 7-11, and chance platters at a pal’s place, I was finally able to pull a group of old friends into the Kaleidoscopic Dancehall after all these years.  I’d spent much of my teens trying to convince everyone we should move to California.  The Great Migration never took place, but now some latter-day version was. 

            The long, circular asphalt stroll somehow condensed the years gone by.  Here, far from the madding Mounties, were free-styling Americans ─ that most shocking group in the eyes of Cautious Canucks ─ who were smoking joints, tossing frizbees, and GOING FOR IT, something that’s as foreign to Canadians as all-English labeling.  Here were my four porcelain-white brothers a million miles from the jaywalking tickets of home, sashaying through the breast bouncing, sun worshiping euphoria of a world they’d never seen.

            I wish I could have time-traveled the optimistic faces of my youth into the land I discovered later, but then who doesn’t?  In New York I was able to find what we’d been striving to build on our own on that frozen permafrost.  I’ve never been able to share, except on occasional weekend outings, the findings of my Expedition South of the 49th.  But now, here we were, crossing the boundary between the plans of our twenties and the work of our thirties, and the faces and flames were together once again to share it.  It’ll be a different picture at the next decade’s dawn, but for now, as youth was burning away like that last slurp of gas from an empty tank, at least the car was full of the same faces as when the journey began.

            Not everything was perfect.  It was stupefyingly hot, and a couple of the gang didn’t quite get The Big Picture, but that’s part of it too.  It’s what we are not that defines us as clearly as what we are.  We weren’t of one mind back then, and we weren’t that weekend on the tarmac.

            But what we were was together, and if there’s anything homo sapiens crave, it’s more of the same.  If you can gaze into the human mirrors of your childhood every couple of years, you’re never going to grow too old, or wander too far astray.  If you can’t tell how fat you’re getting by trying on your pants, invite your soulmates over for coffee and check the waistline.  You can be full of shit, but they’ll see it.  You can blow your balloon as full as you want, and they’ll pop it.  Your carefully stacked rationalizations will topple in a breeze of your own reflection.

            And it’s a joy.  It’s a joy when you wake up to find you that you’ve been doing something right all along.  And it’s even a joy to see where the sails need trimming.  Only old friends can bring that into focus.

            And so it is with any band, … or novel, or movie, or canvas.  Good art grows with you.  If it’s real, it’s there for a lifetime, and you’ll grow up in its landscape.  Charlie Parker when you’re 50, or van Gogh at 60, will still inspire a celebration of life, but they’ll be in a different shade than today.  All the tingles you ever felt are still there for the rekindling.  The masters of eternity knit with the golden thread of our spirit, and have weaved a little of each of us into their song.

= = = = = = = = = =

by Brian Hassett

karmacoupon@gmail.com

www.BrianHassett.com

Drivin’ That Train . . .        

The Festival Express Rolls Again After 30 Years

by Brian Hassett

“That was the best time I’ve had in rock and roll,” said Jerry Garcia. “There were no straight people.”

In the summer of 1970, the Grateful Dead, Janis Joplin, The Band and scores of other musicians took a chartered train trip across Canada. And it’s on film. Really, really good film. Coming to theaters this summer. DVD to follow. But go out of your way to catch it on the big screen for the full concert experience. At the Toronto Film Festival last fall, tears were rolling down cheeks during Janis’s soul bearing, and spontaneous applause erupted mid-song, as if it were a jazz club.

Plus, this is the best Jerry Garcia on film. I’ll let that sink in for a minute.

And it’s the wildest Band on film; looser, younger and even more alive than The Last Waltz, playing in their home country with the Hawks soaring thru ‘em.

The Village Voice said of The Janis Voice: this is “by far the most vivid evidence of her presence ever committed to film.” You will ‘get’ Janis-goose bumps, guaranteed.

And the swirling cinematic trip that Beatles Anthology director Bob Smeaton wove together from the 46 hours of uncovered footage is “the third jewel in the crown,” as Dead and culture historian Dennis McNally puts it, grouping it with Woodstock and Gimme Shelter.

“Woodstock was a treat for the audience, but the train was a treat for the performers,” somebody said on the train, no one remembers who.

But someone did remember a camera and captured the best backstage party these sculptors of modern music claim they ever attended, at a peak in their collective creative lives. “Never had such a good time in my life before,” as Robert Hunter put in “Might As Well,” his ode to the train trip. The Band had just crawled out the window of Dylan’s basement and are sprinting through their solo prime. The Dead are in their original-six lineup, Pigpen trim and on harp. They’d just presciently written “Casey Jones,” and preciously recorded Workingman’s Dead-which hit stores the day before the Toronto show and included a brand new song about playing outdoor festivals called “New Speedway Boogie,” which they deliver a fresh-out-of-the-studio version of. Garcia wrote “Ripple” in Saskatoon, and Janis worked up her biggest hit, “Me & Bobby McGee,” just three months before final flameout. It’s like finding a film of Michelangelo sculpting David.

In a garage. In Canada. “The original filmmaker had it just sitting in an old box,” says film consultant James Cullingham, who’s writing a book about it. “He called me over, and I look in the box and there’s cans of film labeled ‘Dead,’ ‘Joplin,’ ‘Band.’” (Oh look, mom, it’s our summer vacation movies from that train trip with Auntie Janis and Uncle Jerry!) “Then we found the negatives and 8-track audio masters had been mysteriously stored in the National Archives of Canada.”   

“It’s in pristine shape,” testifies film soundmaster Eddie Kramer. Both the audio and video seem like they were recorded last summer, not last century.

The pioneering promoter and conductor, Ken Walker, who brought John Lennon to town the previous summer for his historic non-Beatles Live Peace In Toronto show, said, “If we were bringing all the acts together for one festival, why not do more than one? So I got the idea of the private train and started negotiating with CN Railways,” many comical details of which are in the film.

“We were supposed to open in Montreal but it was cancelled last minute by the mayor. And we tried to do Vancouver, but couldn’t get the stadium. So we did the two shows in Toronto, June 27th and 28th, with different bands each day. Then one in Winnipeg, July 1st, and two in Calgary, July 4^th and 5^th, after which Janis wanted to hijack the train to keep it going!”  

And just like Woodstock, the whole thing came together because of Bob freakin’ Dylan! “I’d just gotten Lennon, and I wanted Dylan,” Walker said. “So I called Albert Grossman, who was also managing Janis Joplin. She’d been looking for a new band and figured Dylan had done alright with his Band from Toronto, and so her new group, Full Tilt Boogie, was from there, too. So Janis wanted to do it right away. And I was talking to Grossman, so we got The Band. Once we had them, and word of The Orient Express got out, we got the San Francisco acts.”  

The Dead brought along Jerry’s ‘other’ band, The New Riders of the Purple Sage-this being the “Evening with The Grateful Dead” era that included a Riders set with Garcia on pedal steel, and a Dead acoustic set. The other lucky gamblers onboard were the Flying Burrito Brothers the month after Gram Parsons left, Delaney & Bonnie, Buddy Guy, Mountain, Ian & Sylvia Tyson’s Great Speckled Bird, Mashmakan, Seatrain, Eric Andersen, the Good Brothers, Tom Rush, plus some local acts in each city, and that ubiquitous festival oddity, Sha Na Na. Traffic and Ten Years After also played the opening Toronto shows and are on film, but not in the movie. 

And with all these assembled masters in their prime, “Jerry was the natural born ringmaster of that 3-ringed dream train,” as pedal steel pioneer Buddy Cage put it. Not only does he seem to be in on every jam, but also as the crowd gets out of hand at the opening show, it’s Garcia who actually rises to the microphone for a solo stage-front plea for “coolness,” and he initiates the violence-diffusing free concert in the adjacent park.

“Garcia was the obvious leader in a scene that claimed no leaders,” says tour scholar Cullingham. “Jerry, Janis, Walker and [Rick] Danko were the forces of nature behind the whole thing.” 

And it wasn’t just the music Casey Jones was driving. “Jerry wanted to go up to the engine,” Walker said. “He was really interested in the geography and wanted to be up front for the moment the prairie flatlands suddenly open up in front of you. So we go up there and Jerry climbs up in the seat and sticks his head out the window until the engineer warned him about the bugs! He showed Jerry where the whistle was, and just as we were crossing into Manitoba he was blowin’ the whistle and giggling away!” 

Garcia: “It was the musicians’ train. There wasn’t any showbiz bullshit. It was like a musicians’ convention with no public allowed.” John Till, Full Tilt Boogie: “It wasn’t only a concert on stage, it was a concert for the entire trip.”   Mickey Hart: “It was like a dream music camp with all your friends.”  Eric Andersen: “It was this little La Bohème society.” 

“The promoters promised us all the pot we could smoke cuz we had to cross the border,” Mickey said. “Of course they didn’t come thru. They had cars full of Canadian liquor, but we weren’t experienced drinkers, so we all got just shit-faced drunk. I’ve never seen Jerry so green in my life! We were just heaving out the windows. I hope they don’t have that on film!”  

No, but they do have Jerry telling Janis he loves her. And Delaney playing “Goin’ Down The Road Feelin’ Bad” in the bar car where he taught it to Garcia. And Danko, Janis and Garcia singing together on a couch like a drunk hippie Rat Pack. And there even seems to be a bonafide, three-act drama played out on the stages of the three-city arc: The players first meet in Toronto, face some conflict, then bond on the road to Winnipeg where they rise and play their best “top this!” sets to each other. Then there’s more trouble ahead, but they all come together in different configurations for the triumphant Calgary climax.

In the heart of the movie and country is Winnipeg, a blissfully black and white 1950’s Pleasantville. Suddenly the swirling-color psychedelic train hits town 12-cars-long! And just to stir the prank, it’s Canada Day, out of nowhere there are gate-crashing protesters, the summer fair’s in town, and . . . the Prime Minister pulls up alongside in another train! Meanwhile, over in the small-town nearly-empty-anyway football stadium, Janis and The Band are laying down Olympian, Hall of Fame performances.

Fortunately there is a small wild crop thriving in the same wacky-weed prairie soil that budded Neil Young and The Guess Who and the real-life characters Matt Groening based Homer on, and the freak underground comes through with a healthy dose of psychedelics and combustibles for the rest of the ‘trip.’

Another soon-to-be classic scene is when they run out of booze in Saskatchewan and the Marx Brothers meet Spinal Tap on the train platform in A Hard Day’s Night. “I dunno,” Eric Andersen says, almost disbelieving his own memories. “They just stopped in Saskatoon, the whole damn train just stopped, like, in front of a liquor store!”   

“Everything was constantly revolving,” Mickey remembers. “There was a blues car, a country car, a rock-n-roll car. It was like musical chairs. There was never anything like that level of talent and musicianship encapsulated in such close quarters for that length of time.” 

And it was also an impromptu country-rock summit, with Buddy Cage a central bridge, playing with the influential Great Speckled Bird, and inadvertently passing the audition to replace Garcia in the New Riders. “Ian Tyson’s folk-country grew into country-rock, and suddenly here was everybody,” he says of the Grateful Speckled Purple Sage Burrito Band onboard. “Jerry asked me to set up the steel on the train, and that carried over to the stage in so many ways,” like when an ecstatic Garcia and others join Speckled Bird for a sunset “C.C. Rider” that explodes with the newborn joy of the train’s country-rock-blues ménage á trois.

“It was a fusion,” Mickey says. “All these different kinds of players playing each others’ music. I thought, ‘This is the world’s music.’ Here’s Buddy Guy playing country, Mountain doing gospel, Janis singing Canadian folk…” 

          Trains are hypnotic, mythical, inspiring, magical, eternal. And so is this transportive movie. From the Western Expansion to any kid hopping a freight out of town with Kerouac in their rucksack, trains meant freedom and untold adventure. And that’s without instruments. By some blessing from the archeological gods, some tremendous positive energy gift is rollin’ down the track, and for just a moment we’re all gonna get to be that headlight on a northbound train.  

As Janis adieu’s, “The next time you throw a train, man, invite me!” 

= = = = = = = = = =

SIDEBAR:

Festival Express has joined a very small family of the great rock films ever made, and it comes by its magic honestly.

It has… 

• the split-screen, too-much-happening-to-catch-it-all atmosphere of Woodstock, except common performers the Dead, Janis and The Band are in the movie!
• the backstage intimacy of Don’t Look Back – in fact, it may be the first real challenge to Pennebaker’s portrait - except this is in color and the songs are complete.
• the story-telling, big-picture of Gimme Shelter, except nobody gets killed and the Dead get to play.
• an Academy Award-winning cinematographer capturing The Band and music’s brightest lights like The Last Waltz, except it’s on a train trip and everybody’s six years younger.
• the child-like joy of A Hard Days Night set in the psychedelia of Magical Mystery Tour.
• the fiery landmark live performances of Monterey Pop, with as much backstage footage as onstage.
• the Python madness of the textbook ‘rockumentary’ Spinal Tap, except they went too far with this one and the characters are barely believable!
• a feisty promoter at the center of a high-speed, week-long all-star rock ‘n’ roll freight-train like The Last Days of the Fillmore, and filmed exactly one year to the day earlier.
• the natural, relaxed and intimate outdoor setting of Celebration at Big Sur, but . . . you’re gonna get to see this one soon!  

= = = = = = =

Brian Hassett

karmacoupon@gmail.com

BrianHassett.com  

Beers, you could smoke, and it wasn’t over packed. 

He comes on about 8:35 wearing big white cowboy hat, and black western show suit. 

First 3 or 4 songs his voice was raspier, more horse, scraggled, worn, shot than I’ve ever heard it.  First time age or the weather seemed to show in my nigh-on 20 years of Bob-hoppin. 

Maggie – standard but real rockin and got the whole crowd right into it.  Very animated for Canada I thought

Lay Lady Lay – 2^nd drummer (richie) joins, larry on pedal steel

kinda stunned, don’t know if I’ve heard it before, maybe once, loved it, country, that voice & vibe.  Really takes me back to another time. 

Lonesome Day – this and others kept sounding like Leopard Skin Pill-Box;  rockin;  2 drummers works great – love the extra KICK.  huge applause, big rocker. 

I don’t believe you – harp solo.  this sure sounded like Mostly Likely You Go Your Way . . .

Tweedledee beer run. 

You Ain’t Goin Nowhere – nuther country peak, Larry back on pedal steel, harp solo #2, and p.s. the sound was GREAT.  Mind you we were in front of the board, but could hear every instrument at will. 

Cold Irons Bound – the rock n roll frenzy highlight of the night for me – no greatest song, but greatest rock ride.   The dance part of the song & dance man. 

It Ain’t Me, Babe – upright bass, larry on acoustic, always great o hear and all, but didn’t take me to that other place. 

Watchin The River Flow – that got there – love it — trancy, transportive, more country rock theme and vibe

Tom Thumbs – tries harp solo, doesn’t seem to go, so it’s tres short.   But a great set so far, pretty perfect playing, NYC ending nice to hear, and coming at the end there was a nice hoot in this young New York. 

Shooting Star – fourth, final and maybe best and longest harp solo;  only one drummer – pretty lively. 

Summer Days – great silly rock n roll song, I call it “the Chuck Berry song,” I dunno.  Or his Jumpin’ Jack Flash. 

goes off, still hasn’t said a word to the audience. 

Rolling Stone – which I thought was great, surprised, how does he keep breathing new life into these after version gazillion-and-one.  (“I know, maybe it’s  how good the song is.”)  I’ve been a little bit homeless lately and there he was bringing it all back home, singing right to me. 

intros band, into Watchtower – which, again, I was expecting to be bored by but just loved it and people were dancing and going for it. 

Larry was smiling, good two-guitar interplay / balance, but I found Freddy a little predicable.  Not complaining, but you’d think he could have a real innovative guy in that slot. 

All-in-all a cracker-jack rock-n-roll band, playing the small venues for the hard-core.  Maybe I’m spoiled by now, and that his shows kept getting better for about 5 years running, but for me kool haus was sort of average great bob, except for the beginning where it sounded like he’d just gotten up from a long night of partying. 

= = = = = = = =

Brian

BrianHassett.com

karmacoupon@gmail.com 

I noticed that no one seems to be talking about Bruce’s Dylan rap moment. 

So, first Bruce returns after the 1st round of encores, “And I’m thinking, ‘Okay, if anybody’s comin out, this is it.’”  Being a New Yorker, I’m always pullin for this, there being so many musicians in this town on any given night, and the NYC shows always being the special look-forward-to-it show, the call-out night for most touring musicians. 

This being the closing night of a 14 month tour, i know everything’s rehearsed and down pat, so bruce comes up the stairs to the mic to do his standard “Thanks a lot Cleveland” rap, BUT !

he looks back over his left shoulder! 

and i’m like, “YEAH!” 

wouldn’t do that after a year of performances unless something was unusual!  Then Boom, he says, “Let’s do a Bob Dylan song.  . . .  Bob?”  and the man in the long black coat comes up the stairs behind him! 

great moment, the place goes crazy, and all the Dylanheads are suddenly quite evident  

“Highway 61″, starts out with a long instrumental, obviously chaotic, rockin, blistering, Dylan on electric guitar after past years of keyboard tours, black leather coat, curly hair blowin in the wind, giant screen camera has this great angle shooting up at him from below, Big Bob!  beltin it out! 

Though his mic’s kinda f*cked the first verse or so, sounds like it’s cutting in and out a bit, but he’s takin it, doing all sorts of playful, twisted only-Bob phrasings, and springsteen’s just beaming like he’s watching his child play, or like he’s living a dream, playing guitar on stage with his greatest hero of all time, open-mouth beaming like his face’ll break, enjoying the moment as much as we are, just playin and crazy and Bob!, loose, all unrehearsed black-leather-jacket-Beatles-in-Hamburg rock ‘n’ roll,  . . .  “archetypal!” Walter screams at one point, screachin bleacher fans like Beatlemania, seering guitars like Neil Young, curlicue vocal twists like Bob Dylan, putting some big Shea bleachers out in the sun, and a whole stadium sings out, “And have it out on Highway 611111″!!    rrrrrreeeerrrrroooo 

sorry, a little crazy right now just goin there  :- )

Then, like, an eternity later, Bruce follows with a real haunting “City in Ruins” – solo, I think.  But me and Walter are kinda in shock.  In fact I think we even stepped out the nearby exit to get a “holy f*ck, what just happened?!” moment.   uhhhhhh.   ”Kay.  No . . . way.”   then “Kay, let’s go back in.” 

And just as we do, he’s just finished “Ruins” and

THEN – he does this whole Dylan rap !!   

He starts out talking about growing up in a small town in New Jersey and how it was Bob Dylan albums that made him first realize there was a bigger world out there and how it made him see and think beyond what was around him. 

Then he said something about how Bob always spoke his mind no matter what, and how that was so inspirational to Bruce. 

–  for you non-Dylanheads, examples maybe check out, say Masters of War, Positively 4th Street (about 2-faced ‘friends’), or Ballad of a Thin Man (about the press)

Anyway, then Bruce goes into this Whole thing about the importance of protest and speaking out and questioning the government and how That is what’s patriotic to him. (!)   

– it was a pretty powerful statement.  i’ve seen a lot of major artists perform since this Iraq war started, and not one of them including Dylan, Jagger, Neil Young, the Dead etc. ever spoke directly to their audience about what’s going on, let alone encouraging them to question it!    

– and it was cool that his thought-dreams mind-riff went from his love of Bob and what he meant to him, into the need to speak up, how poetry and songwriting led into the need to Question, and he actually used the word “patriotic” to describe it. 

– it was so wonderfully wild and weird to be in these stands in America, this ultimate giant American coliseum with stars & stripes flapping all around the upper stadium rim . . . it was this national anthem moment — all the lights were on, everyone’s standing up kinda hat’s off at this point (cuz it’s the encores) yet there’s no action on the field (the performer’s not performing) and there’s just one person at a mic, 60,000 people saluting Bruce, but instead of singing about “bombs bursting in air” he’s talking about how Poetry and songs changed his life, made him look beyond his own borders, and what patriotism means to him.  quite powerful, and i mean, this went on for like 3 or 4 minutes. 

then he ends with, “I don’t know if history makes great men, or great men make history, but Bob Dylan is one of the greats.  . . .  This is for Bob,”

and he goes into Land of Hope and Dreams . . . 

which begins . . .

Grab your ticket and your suitcase
Thunder’s rolling down the tracks
Don’t know where you’re goin’
But you know you won’t be back
Well darlin’ if you’re weary
Lay your head upon my chest
We’ll take what we can carry
And we’ll leave behind the rest

I will provide for you
And stand by your side
You’ll need a good companion, darlin’
For this part of the ride

I’m wonderin if, on a spiritual level, Dylan was that companion for Bruce?

the whole thing was just this magic musical spiritual inspirational moment I be cherishin forever. 

Post Bruce-site-post script: 

 just so you know how it ends !!  . . . 

(My Cousin Vinnie: “There’s mooore?”) 

Yeah! 

After this he does Rosalita, 60,000 people punching the air and screaming out “Rosalita, jump a little lighter . . . “  stadium lights on, people in multi-colored raincoats (none fell)  (though maybe some people tripped)  that made the whole stadium look like this massive bed of small multi-colored wildflowers, yellows and greens and reds all lit up and fresh and swaying in the breeze! 

- – > Dancing in the Dark for about 15 dancing minutes, it’s getting close to midnight, extra long even for Bruce, close of tour, Willie Nile and Jon Landau(!?) come out on guitars!  Willie’s bopping all around, total jumping-jack lightning ball, and hopping over to do raucous mic-sharing harmonies with the boss.  

Then Bruce calls out Gary U.S. Bonds, and Bond’s wife and daughter on harmonies, and Garland Jeffries for this crazy bluesy sloppy-but-joyous rock n roll “Quarter to Three” 

Then former-Georgia Satellite, & Rising producer Brendan O’Brien comes, somebody else on tambourine, and it’s the old 15 or 20-person unrehearsed rock n roll chaos jam routine.  Walter leans in at some point, “A R&R Hall of Fame induction jam at the Waldorf!”  :- )

And Then, here we are at Shea,  Dylan’s already played,  only one band not representin’, Bruce is suitably hoarse after 14 months of filling stadiums with his voice, so in the same desperate end-of-the-road exhaustion John first recorded it in, he belts out “Twist and Shout” and suddenly The Beatles were at Shea Stadium again!  The Beatles are playing at Shea Stadium    again   . . .   Joyous pandemonium, passionate arm-flailing, a bubbling bopping sea of human flowers, lights-on, Beatlemania ecstasy, it goes on for hours it seems, everyone screaming the escalating “ah, Ah, AH, AHHHHH” part, testifyin by the deck-full to the beatleific gods of rock n roll.   . . .  

Oh, ah, as if there was anything else, but he then clears the guests and ends with his soul song about his band, “Blood Brothers” which he never plays the whole tour, as a tribute to his band, and several eye-witnesses down front said Clarence Clemons was crying his eyes out. 

Just thought I’d share. 

= = = = = = = =

Brian 

BrianHassett.com 

karmacoupon@gmail.com

“Live Earth” was the most watched event in human history, the single event experienced by more people at the same time than anything else we’ve ever pulled off. 

I love the way she just stares out at the audience before she starts! 

part 1:  http://youtube.com/watch?v=MGtCiDfcIos

part 2:  http://youtube.com/watch?v=JI8nyOqHakQ

part 3:  http://youtube.com/watch?v=HTD21FXtjUc 

Besides her Oscar-winning song, “A Inconvenient Truth,” it’s all about the improved raps she riffs she lays down for the day’s global eyes. 

I watched much of this 24 hour day event with my mom.  In fact, it was the last month she was in the house.  She’s now in a nursing home, and there’s no more of those kind of shares, both insomniacs, up watching the beautiful Japan temple concerts at 5 in the morning, and then Giants Stadium (where I took her to see the Grateful Dead) in the afternoon.  She was into the environment before I was, but she was always so far ahead of her time.   In a way, Melissa is her, in a different vessel.  

= = = = = = = = =

Brian

BrianHassett.com

karmacoupon@gmail.com

Herbie, besides everything else in his brilliant career, was a key to the “Yes We Can” Obama video.  And the guy climaxes the Grammys, saying, “Yes, We Can” from the stage when he wins.  I’m freaking out.  

you can see the Herbie – Obama moment at the end of this short highlight package:

http://youtube.com/watch?v=hAfmi4e-Gcc

Plus, Obama himself actually won a Grammy!! (for Best Spoken Word, for his reading of “Audacity of Hope“)  AND he beat a Clinton doing it!  (Bill for the audio of his book.) 

And, on top of that!  In just the last few hours — Obama won Maine by 20% (making it 4 straight states); Hillary fired her campaign manager; the airing of the winner/loser 60 Minutes; and Herbie’s climactic winner’s speech at the Grammys . . . this is all the news going into Monday morning and next week. this is insane.

I leave it to you to explain, but how did Obama have the Giants Meadowlands booked IN ADVANCE for the day after the Super Bowl?
If they had lost as the bookies and conventional wisdom had it, he would have looked so stupid appearing there. But he booked it and had everybody heading there before the game was ever played.

and now Herbie “Yes, We Can” Hancock wins frickin Album of the Year!!??

whether it’s a conspiracy, or a fluke, or karma, or fate, or Obama himself, something is happening here, and you don’t know what it is, Mr. Rove.

i’m just freakin out too much to breathe right now — but here’s what the Grammies were like before everything changed at the end: 

That was quite a show!  (as long as you hit “mute” for about 3/4 of it!)  but seriously — Gershwin — Cab Caloway —  Let It Be — and Tina Turner!!! 

I’ll let my brother Phil lay down what he saw from the seats in the house, but i’ll tell ya, Tina!!  What better inspiration to any of us under 60!  That babe’s never laid down a bad show in her life.  Overwhelming show-stealer from this couch. 

and a huge late-breaking smile to the Fogarty, Jerry Lee Lewis, Little Richard’s playoff! 

Let’s all go see Fogarty next time he’s in town!