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We are lucky to have you in our midst.

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Tim Walz not Waltz

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You like the J Geils band, so have a listen to Chicago’s James Dean Joint.

https://thejamesdeanjoint.bandcamp.com/community

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One of the great works of rock and roll scholarship is Peter Stampfel’s transcription of the lyrics of Sheriff and the Revels’ “Shombalor” (or “Shambalor” or any one of the other ways it’s spelled). Someone who worked at Vee Jay said that this group were some of the scariest guys you’re ever likely to see.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MNxQHbsCd78

You probably wouldn’t want to listen to this if it cured arthritis, but Joni Mitchell Archives 1 is a fascinating portrait of a young musician working up her act. (If the charge is egotism I suppose keeping recordings of every concert you did as a teenager would be Exhibit A.) Jerry Seinfeld once said that the life of a young comedian starting out is the desperate struggle to survive until you get to one joke you know works. With young Joni the one number that’s sure to go over is “Both Sides Now” and she’ll every folk singer trick to get to it. By disk five she’s got a whole set worked up and she’s ready to move somewhere warmer.

Listening to a concert recording of The Band once it occurred to me that their core oeuvre can be seen as a single unified work of art that can be performed in one night on stage. It’s an American opera, something like Treemonisha might have been if Scott Joplin could pull it off.

I suppose that if a standards album is the last resort of a musical scoundrel the concert tour of the band performing its most popular album is the stop before that.

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