Manassas live

Its fairly safe to say that Manassas is an underrated rock band. I wasn't really much aware of them until The Black Crowes started covering a few of their songs in 2005. We recently watched this live DVD from German TV in 1972 and were impressed at their jamming, tight rhythm grooves and the diversity of musical styles they hit on in just a handful of songs. They've got the weepy country ballad, the Latin-flavored jam, blues rock, and folky singer-songwriter stuff. Its clear after watching this just how much influence The Black Crowes have drawn from Manassas. Stephen Stills is a far better lead guitarist than I had given him credit for. He's smoking Hendrix-style on that Les Paul in the song Jet Set. Al Perkins on pedal steel is like a secret weapon and holds his own on guitar and pedal steel in the jams and rockers. What a treasure to have former Byrd and Flying Burrito Brother Chris Hillman on vocals, he sounds great with Stills, although he does look a little bit out of his element when the band starts jamming.

If you like 70s rock and you haven't listened to Manassas, this DVD is well worth checking out.

Black Crowes' Say Goodnight To The Bad Guys tour has begun!

...and if you wanna go crazy keeping track of the tour night by night in one convenient spot, this blog looks promising for being both a one-stop compendium of setlists, photos, fan reactions and YouTube videos as well as having some witty and amusing commentary on the whole Black Crowes fandom experience from an insider.

Tom Petty "I Should Have Known It" video

Photo By Chris Tuite for Rolling Stone

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3_iBKacXIA4

Can I just say this video footage rocks? Getting to see the whole record-live-with-no-headphones thing REALLY brings home what a tight hard rocking band the Heartbreakers can be. I still get blown away by the power of this band when they decide to unleash it. However, being reminded how great they can be is bittersweet for me because too often in their live shows, they aren't great. I think they tend to kill their own live show by playing boring versions of the same old hits night after night, year after year. There is no spontaneity and the band certainly don't look passionate any longer when I have seen them in the past 10 years. I strongly believe that TP and the Heartbreakers have fantastic potential to be one of the best live bands of all time (like they were on the 1997 20-night Fillmore run), and IMO, they mostly throw it away when they do an arena tour. It seems to me they are playing it safe, trying to leave no fan disappointed, playing all the hits every night. Its been virtually the same concert for all tours from the past 10 years with just a handful or less of new songs thrown in each tour to differentiate them. If they'd only play live like the Black Crowes do and the Grateful Dead did (keeping a large repertoire of songs that gets greatly changed up from night to night and tour to tour) , the Heartbreakers would be one of the most smoking rock 'n' roll shows you could ever see. The recent all-live box set is ample proof of what this band is capable of. It shows that the Heartbreakers, like the Crowes and The Dead, are masters of most of the major American popular music styles (rock 'n' roll, blues, country, soul, folk). But you'd never know it if you went to see them in an arena. Its truly baffling to me why they choose to downplay their strength in favor of doing the same thing over and over and over in their live shows.

RIP Ronnie James Dio

Another musical hero has fallen and the response from the metal world has been an outpouring of appreciation and praise for both the music and the personal ethos of the great Ronnie James Dio, former lead singer of Rainbow, Black Sabbath, and his own band Dio.

Even though my metal years for the most part are far behind me, I have always held Ronnie James in the highest esteem for his powerful, operatic metal vocals and songwriting. To me Holy Diver is still the best metal album ever made, period. His work with Black Sabbath on Heaven and Hell and Mob Rules is not far behind, either. And before that, he formed Rainbow with Ritchie Blackmore. Plus he is credited for inventing the "devil horns" hand symbol that has become synonymous with the entire genre of heavy metal. That's quite a legacy, none of which is surprising. What does surprise me is how well loved he was by so many. I had no idea guys like Lars Ulrich from Metallica and Brian May from Queen were such appreciators and fans. Apparently he had such a good heart that it seems he doesn't have a single enemy.

Certainly the music of Dio appeals only to a particular kind of music fan, the metalers who are not put off by the medieval imagery that RJD loved so much, but even so its hard to deny the metal power of the band on the Holy Diver and Last In Line tours. Check out this live take of "Stand Up And Shout" with Vivian Campbell absolutely shredding while Vinny Appice and Jimmy Bain on drums and bass brutally pound out the rhythm.

Stand Up And Shout - Dio Live in 1983

Black Crowes: new album and tour; indefinite hiatus in 2011

Didn't someone sing good things don't ever last? The Black Crowes have announced that they will take an indefinite hiatus at the end of this year. This is sad news for me, The Crowes have, in the last 5 years, become one those bands that, frankly, I just can't seem to get enough of. Its gonna be hard to not have "the next show" to look forward to for a long time. Thankfully, the rest of the year will be full of Black Crowes shows, including a 6 night run at the Fillmore in SF to close out the year.

The band members have put a lot of collective thought into this and have probably been planning it for some while, based on the fact that their soon to be released album and the 2010 tour are being presented as a massive and heartfelt "thank you" to every fan the Black Crowes have ever had. Even better news is that most of the shows in the late summer and fall will be three hour affairs, with an hour and a half acoustic set and then an hour and a half electric set.

Full tour details on cities, dates, on-sale dates as well as news about the soon-to-be-released acoustic greatest hits double album Croweology can be found in this press release.

Black Sabbath doing the heavy in 1970

This video came across my path recently and it reminded me of how great Black Sabbath were in their prime. Not like all us 70s rock fans don't know that already, but its good to be reminded of it, especially with some fantastic live footage. Its amazing to me what could be done with just guitar, bass, drums and vocals. I'm trying to think of something articulate to say about what made Sabbath so killer. Nothing really needs to be said when the music is this good and overpowering. Bill Ward is killing it on drums. With Geezer Butler on bass, its a formidable rhythm section. Iommi and Ozzy doing their thing. Simple, basic, and gloriously heavy! Getting labeled as demonic (not that they didn't project that image themselves) when really they were espousing late 60s hippie values, albeit with dark, plodding, war-hammer heavy music.

It does occur to me that there will probably never be another era in rock music like the early 70s. So much drama coming from the music and the music only. This is how rock is supposed to be and I don't care if I sound like an old curmudgeon if I say that very few rock bands today seem to have any clue about how to do it. How could there possibly have been so many legendary, groundbreaking bands peaking all in the same few years? What insane combination of unlikely variables had to come together perfectly for this serendipity to happen? Its an understatement to say that they don't make rock music like this anymore.

Goodbye and Godspeed, Alex Chilton

Alex Chilton has died, so I will listen to his music with Big Star, which I haven't listened to in some time. I will remember how good the music of Big Star has made me feel and the happiness and joy it has brought to me. I feel especially fortunate to have seen Big Star play live twice when I was living in their hometown, Memphis, Tennessee and also that I got to tell Jody Stephens and Alex how much their music means to me and how gracious they were. In spite of Chilton's reputation for being moody or gruff, he was open and friendly to me and I appreciated that alot.

Fans of the genre known as power pop that Big Star is the uber-touchstone of know the feeling well: the simple pleasures of a catchy pop song with bright and chimey guitars and lots of harmony singing. If you don't know the music of Big Star, just think about a bunch of American guys in the early 70s who just wanted to make music like The Beatles and other mid 60s British Invasion bands. It came out just a little different, the guitars were a bit dirtier, the music was just a tad more ramshackle, with a bit of a barroom swagger. Simply wonderful stuff, short lived, underappreciated in its time, endlessly influential to a whole cadre of 80s bands 10 years later. Do yourself a favor and check out some Big Star.

Big Star September Gurls