What better way to ease out of a holiday weekend and into the work week than with some early morning links:

• A recently rediscovered document dissolved Thomas Paine’s marriage and gave him the money to travel to America.  The East Sussex records office, located in Lewes where Paine worked before emigrating to the colonies, purchased the item for nearly £13,500.
• Upon the release of the film adaptation of The Road, Scott Timberg traces Cormac McCarthy’s rise from obscurity.
• A private collector in Kansas City has amassed an impressive number of artifacts related to George Washington and the American Revolution.  As long as these relics are preserved somewhere, it’s a good thing, but I take exception to his statement that these items are necessarily better cared for in private hands than in institutions.
• The burial of a skull believed to belong to a Revolutionary War soldier demonstrates the importance of symbols in historical commemoration.
• Many in Spain believe Francisco Franco’s body should be removed from the publicly funded Valley of the Fallen and returned to his family.  As with any clash over history and memory, there are a lot of factors at work here.  I link; you decide.
• Cynthia Crossen suggests works of fiction that represent the “American character.”    I’m not sure she’s right about  the representativeness of Rabbit Angstrom and TS Garp, but I’m not sure she’s wrong either.
• Fletcher Christian and the other HMS Bounty mutineers settled on Pitcairn Island and went undiscovered by the British navy for 25 years.  The logbook of the ship that found the island and the last Bounty survivor recently sold at auction for over £40,000.
• And, unfortunately, this is too late to be the soundtrack to your Thanksgiving dinner, but the complete, unedited Last Waltz concert is streaming at Wolfgang’s Vault.  If you have four hours to kill (or 3 hours and 45 minutes if you do the right thing and skip the Joni Mitchell tracks), give it a listen.

Here is a great video of The Band playing (1) at their Woodstock basement studio, recording/rehearsing “King Harvest (Has Surely Come)” and (2) “Long Black Veil” live.

On November 25, 1976, the Band played what they had advertsied as their final concert at the Winterland Ballroom in San Fransisco.  Their performance, along with that of dozens of other performers, was filmed by Martin Scorses and released as The Last Waltz.

My favorite Band song is “The Night They Drove Old Dixie Down.”   Even though I hate the Confederacy, what it stood for, and the way it destroyed the South, this song always makes me cry.

The most famous version besides the Band’s is by Joan Baez.  Her version hit #3 on the Billboard Top 100 in 1971.

Here’s a band I sorely miss – the Black Crowes.

And wrapping it up in an ironic sort of way is this version by Richie Havens.

Strange that one of the greatest songs about the South was written by a Canadian band.

My favorite performance from The Last Waltz, filmed on Thanksgiving Day, 1976:

Other highlights:

The Band’s performance of “The Night They Drove Old Dixie Down” from the same night…

…and the Staple Singers perform “The Weight” on a sound stage with the Band.

Happy Thanksgiving!

Straight up God !

Whew! Back to my old self again. It’s been a great tour. Thanks for following! Check back for more news. After I fire my webmaster.

All the best.

Elisabeth

Tess circa 1978!

We’re starting something new! Ladies and gentlemen, I give you: Backstage at The ArtsCenter, a new series of posts written by members of the ArtsCenter staff, talking about things they see at The ArtsCenter, why they do what they do, and what that whole “arts” thing means, anyway.

Our very first post is by Tess Mangum Ocana, the concerts and facility director at The ArtsCenter. You may have seen Tess introducing a band at a concert or heard her on 1360 WCHL’s The Arts Spot.

Let us know what you want to hear about the ArtsCenter by commenting on this post!

–Lisa

The CD Playing In My Car 30 Minutes To Work And Back This Week
Tess Mangum Ocana

I live in Durham, so the drive to Carrboro takes a while.  I’ve discovered a new “back way” that seems to not zap my soul as much as the chain stores, car dealerships and construction on 15-501 but I’m not going to give away the secret because it will become like 15-501.  Anyway, what I’m listening to this week is Ray Lamontagne’s debut album, Trouble.  He played here back in ’05 and I still remember the energy in the air as people took their seats in the Earl & Rhoda Wynn Theater.  Women were especially excited to see their bearded, beautiful lumberjack-looking Montagne.  I was running back and forth between my office, the gallery and backstage but remember listening to Van Morrison’s Veedon Fleece as my own mood music.  Music critics were going nuts about Montagne, saying how brilliant his first release was, and that it sounded like Neil Young and Van Morrison.  It does, but only musically.  Vocals are his own.  Some tracks sound like The Band, which ain’t a bad thing either.  Listen carefully for Nickel Creek’s Sara Watkins (who played this year’s American roots Series) on fiddle and vocals.

Hi guys,
we have a few people interested in the band. Excellent! I see two major directions: rock and folk – with some international content. Very cool. If you are interested in playing or singing with us, and you are from the Faculty of Languages – don’t hesitate to contact me at peter.cullen@uniurb.it. I’ll add you to the organisational mailing list.
Keep on Rockin’!
Pete Cullen

Regarding the above:  bite me.

And if you don’t know which Band I’m referring to, this should clear a few things up.  But all of you know me better than that…right?

It’s weird to think about past elections.  (Yes, this is a nostalgia post.  It’s one am, I’m tired, and I don’t have any more patience for summer program research.  Again, bite me.)  But seriously, elections kind of stick out in bandies’ minds, simply because they’re long and kinda painful and oh, did I mention long?

Freshman year, it was all new and exciting (and kind of hazy because I was really sleepy).  As a reasonably new person with few-to-no friends outside of the Band, I was still very much in the “desperately clinging” stage of my college career.  I was very much in love with the Band (still am in a lot of ways, though maybe not as much as before), and I was positive that I wanted the Band to be the center of my life for my four years.

To be fair, I was still operating under the assumption that I was going to be an astronomy major and that the Band would be the only music in my life (other than voice lessons, which sucked massively at that point) for my four years.  Of course I clung.  So I sat through the whole painful four-and-a-half hour process, ran for everything that I was nominated for (including Drum Major – LOL!), and finally got myself elected (somewhere around 2 am – ouch) as Treasurer.

I loved being on Bored, freshman year, and I fully intended to keep running for everything – with the eventual goal of being Drum Major, of course.  Granted, the Bored that year had a very odd dymanic, no denying it, but I still loved it.  I also carefully arranged to live in the BandSuite™ the following year.  But then, I got a job as the choir director of my lovely, lovely church, and I wound up taking German at nine am three days a week (including Fridays) all last year – the result being that I couldn’t go to away games and had to back away from Band parties (class on Friday mornings, church on Sunday mornings).  (And yeah, I slept through band parties.  WIN.)  But elections last year happened when those things were still fairly new in my life.  I knew, at an intellectual level, that I couldn’t run for anything serious.  I couldn’t – still can’t – go to away games because of Vespers, and my various academic and extracurricular commitments were starting to pull me away socially.  I knew that I probably wasn’t going to be Drum Major, ever, and I wasn’t sure that I should be running at all.

But I did have to run for treasurer again.  There was really no getting around it.  We were in the middle of changing the way we dealt with the budget (read:  getting so much more hands-on about it), and I knew that it wasn’t fair for me to hand that off to someone else.  So I ran, I got the position again, while making it very clear to the band that I was going to be fairly “absent” from away games and other things.  And that hurt a lot – to watch my friends get voted into positions that I knew that I was never going to get and still be wishing that I could get them.  But I got my second year on Bored.

It was a fantastic year.  I loved this Bored (despite the impeachment complications – the Boreds were both wonderful).  I loved the emails.  I loved the involvement.  But as I got more and more serious about music in general, I started moving away from the Band for musical reasons – I was seriously annoyed by the lack of musicianship, the lack of commitment, the lack of improvement over time, and as I had less time for the social aspects of the Band, it was harder and harder for me to remember why I loved the Band so much.  And this fall, it finally broke.  I was so overcommitted and so tired and stressed that when I broke and realized that something had to go, Band was what had to go, no question.  I could maybe have dropped a choir…dropped a class…stepped down from being choir director…but I couldn’t bring myself to do any of those things, whereas I could bring myself to step away from my position on Bored.

I offered to resign; they turned me down because elections were so close.  I made it clear that I was going to miss a shitton of stuff.  My wonderful fellow Bored-ies made it clear that that was ok, as long as I didn’t disappear as a Band member, and that they were just worried about me – as long as I was ok, they were ok.  (This is why I LOVE my Boredmates.  Or my former Boredmates, since the turnover is happening literally as I write this.)  And now, here I am, risking oversleeping tomorrow morning so that I can talk about why people should be Treasurer or not.

I guess part of me is still clinging desperately to the Band.  I do still love them.  I want them to win.  I just won’t always be there when they do.

But congrats to the new Bored.  I’ll be happy to be off the Bored, I’ll be happy to have fewer responsibilities, I’ll be happy to not be feeling guilty about missing shit so much.  But I’ll be sad to be out, to be so disconnected from the Band, and to step back from the group of people that I love so much.  (I’ll also be so sad to be off the email list.  Those emails got me through sooooooo many long TIC shifts.  LOL.)

There’s a time for everything, right?  This is time for this.  Here goes nothing…

A banda Alberta Cross acaba de lançar seu 2o album, Broken Side of Time. Sabe com quem eles sao comparados? Neil Young, Kings of Leon, The Raconteurs, The Band. A nova musica (ATX) até me lembrou um pouco do Oasis. Gostei pra cacete!

Eles sao ingleses mas moram em NY. Aqui vao duas musicas, a 1a é a ATX, single do novo album e a 2a e a 3a é Low Man e Lucy Rider, do 1o album. E logo em seguida, como é dia de musica, uma banda que a Lu me enviou, Kings of Convenience.

ATX

 Low Man

 Lucy Rider

Kings of Convenience

So before there was Natalie Wouldn’t there was Easy Big Fella. These guys were great and fans still today seek them out on the net for music downloads and to watch rare video footage. Here is a great video I found today that you might like as well.

Well, I’m still on the road but I should be home and back in the studio tomorrow morning which is always a relief.  Back to the routine that I really like and can thrive in.

As I drive I listen to my iPod, usually just leaving it on shuffle so that anything can pop up.  Sometimes things come on that I haven’t heard in a while and it’s always a pleasant surprise.

Here’s one that always makes me wish I could sing.  It’s from Martin Scorsese’s The Last Waltz which is a documenting of The Band’s last concert.  It’s a great film and this is a great version of The Weight with a lot of help from the Staple Singers.

Enjoy!

Don’t let us get sick
Don’t let us get old
Don’t let us get stupid, all right?
Just make us be brave
And make us play nice
And let us be together tonight
- Warren Zevon

It is Social Justice Awareness Week again at KUST – the twice yearly opportunity for us to explore an issue of importance to our community, nation or world in the context of music. Great River Radio has decided to tackle the very current and very hot problem of health care reform – the topic that we hear about every day, from the extremist pundits and the self interests and the sincere reformers. It is a very personal issue – if we haven’t found ourselves sick and broken and in need of healing yet, our loved ones have, and it is inevitable that we will all interact with America’s huge and complex health care system at some point in our lives.

We want to take this opportunity to bring to GRR listeners some songs that came to mind (including many requests from our listeners) as we ponder the health care debate that is underway in this country this very day. We will supplement the music this afternoon with some readings and thoughts on the situation – one which is too often obscured by rhetorical excess, misinformation and outright lies. If you have (like we have) tried to sort out the accurate information from the politics, you may have just thrown up your hands in frustration.

Unfortunately, we can’t explain the intricacies of the bill which just passed the House, or what the Senate will do to it next. We can’t tell you how the doctor and hospital you go to price their services. We can’t explain what constitutes a “pre-existing condition” and why it isn’t covered by your insurance. But we can entertain you for two hours with music about health, healing, hospitals, illness and, finally, mercy. Tune in to Great River Radio this afternoon as we tackle health care reform in our own tiny way, and catch music by Panda Bear, Fountains of Wayne, Loudon Wainwright, Tom Waits, Annie Lennox, Conor Oberst, Ben Kweller, Ted Hawkins, The Band, Mary Gauthier, The Replacements and others – songs selected by Brian, Dan and YOU.

Next week we’ll return to regular programming at Great River Radio, bringing you a mix of the music we’ve been listening to lately. Our regular feature, Confluence, will concern our best friends: dogs. Let us know your favorite dog songs and maybe Brian and I will bring Sonny and Finn into the studio!

Playlist
Chest Fever-The Band
Rockin’ Pneumonia and th Boogie Woogie Flu-Dr. John
Sick Day-Fountains of Wayne
Hurt-Johnny Cash
Everybody Hurts-REM
Rattle My Bones-The Suburbs
Everything Is Broken-Bob Dylan
How Can A Poor Man Stand Such Times And Live-The Del Lords
Don’t Let Us Get Sick-Jill Sobule
Allergies-Paul Simon
Sorry You’re Sick-Ted Hawkins
Doctor Robert-The Beatles
Doctor Blind-Emily Haines & The Soft Skeleton
Bitter Pill-Annie Lennox
The Healing Game-John Lee Hooker/Van Morrison
That Hospital-Loudon Wainwright III
Hospital Bed-Ben Kweller
Take Me Down To the Hospital-The Replacements
I Don’t Want to Die (In The Hospital)-Conor Oberst
When Water Comes To Life-Cloud Cult
Mercy Now-Mary Gauthier
Handle Me With Care-Travelling Wilburys