Category Archives: Music

Levon Helm, RIP

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I just heard that Levon Helm, drummer and lead singer with The Band, passed away this last week. He was 71.

Early in 1986, Jane and I went to see the reunited Crosby, Stills and Nash perform in Orange County. Originally there wasn’t going to be any warm-up act; but we’d heard on the radio that The Band was going to be playing with them, and so the show was going to be starting an hour earlier. Neither of us knew much about The Band; we’d heard “The Night They Drove Old Dixie Down,” and probably a few others that we couldn’t have put names to. We had low expectations. Still, The Band was part of music history, so we made it a point to get there in time.

And after The Band was done, CS&N was a major anti-climax. We could have gone home after hearing The Band, and been happy. Never have I heard a rock band playing with so much delight. And a large amount of that delight emanated from Levon Helm, sitting at his drum kit in the back, his head turned to the mike, singing songs like “Up On Cripple Creek” with joyous abandon.

We were hooked.

We were also in one of the last audiences to hear The Band in all its glory; because a month or so later, Richard Manuel, the group’s other lead singer, committed suicide.

And now Levon Helm is dead, too; it’s the end of an era. Bill Vallicella, the Maverick Philosopher, has a list of links to songs by The Band, headed up with (you guessed it) “Up On Cripple Creek.” Go over and give ’em a listen.

Leonard Warren

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I have just discovered that one of my favorite albums is available on iTunes: Lebendige Vergangenheit — Leonard Warren (Vol.2). Leonard Warren was a mid-20th century operatic baritone; he died young, 49 years of age, in 1960. He was reasonably famous at the time.

This album, however, is not an opera album. Rather, it’s an album of sea shanties, folk songs, and Kipling poems set to music, sung by a man with a huge voice and amazing expression. His recording of “The Battle Hymn of the Republic” will lift you right out of your seat. If you think that “Blow the Man Down” and “The Drunken Sailor” are old chestnuts, you’ve not heard Warren sing them.

The whole album’s great, but my two favorite pieces on the album are by Kipling: “Gunga Din” and “Boots”. The latter is from the point of view of a British soldier serving in Africa. Soldiers in those days got from place to place by marching, and Africa is a big place. Soldiers marched for thousands of miles. And there’s nothing to see as you march but “Boots, boots, boots, boots, going up and down again, and there’s no discharge in the war!”

Seriously, get this album…either from iTunes, or, if you prefer, from Amazon. (Note, I don’t get any kickbacks.)