RECOMMENDATIONS & MISCELLANEOUS MUSIC RELATED EVENTS
For all of you fans of Saturday Night Live, the Complete First Season has just been released on DVD and for a very reasonable price. This is truly a great release. The Simon and Garfunkel episode, Episode 2, is worth the price alone! Besides all of the humor you will also get performances by Paul Simon, Billy Preston, Janis Ian, Simon & Garfunkel, Phoebe Snow, Randy Newman, Jesse Dixon Singers, Joe Cocker, Esther Phillips, Abba, Loudon Wainwright III, Martha Reeves, The Stylistics, Anne Murray, Gil Scott-Heron, Bill Withers, Toni Basil, Neil Sedaka, Jimmy Cliff, Al Jarreau, Leon Redbone, Patti Smith, John Sebastian, Carly Simon, Leon Russell, Gordon Lightfoot, and Kris Kristofferson & Rita Coolidge. It's available at Amazon and most places where DVDs are sold.
Several DVDs of performances from the Midnight Special have been made available in the last few months directly from them. They are fantastic! I am so glad to see these releases, although I wish complete episodes or seasons were available like SNL above.
America Live was a real treat to find. It is a 45 minute DVD of America performing for the Musik Laden TV show. They are live in the studio without an audience. It's very up close and personal and the performances are excellent. They perform 11 songs including the hits; Ventura Highway, I Need You, Don't Cross the River, A Horse With No Name, Lonely People, Rainbow Song, and Tin Man. This is also before Dan Peek left the group. It's only $9.98 at Amazon. Click here to check it out.
I found the Blind Faith Live at London Hyde Park on June 7, 1969 in front of 100,000 people to be a very good show. It's great to see this footage being released, and again the price is very reasonable. It's a nine track, 73 minute DVD with extras.
The Concert For George is one of the best releases of "new" concert footage that I've seen in a long time. This tribute concert was assembled by Eric Clapton and performed at the Royal Albert Hall on November 29, 2002, one year to the day of the passing of George Harrison. It is a very moving spiritual concert that includes bits of humor at times and fantastic performances by everyone involved. Normally I'm not a fan of tribute concerts but I picked this one up when it first came out and it is definitely an exception. I highly recommend it. You can purchase this at Amazon or most stores that sell music DVDs. For more information you can go to www.concertforgeorge.com
Another release that has been out there awhile (2003) but is excellent is the 2 DVD set of previously unreleased Led Zeppelin live footage. I've always liked Led Zeppelin a lot and I have all of their albums but don't consider myself a huge fan. This set is fantastic and has nearly 5 1/2 hours of footage for a very low price. I highly recommend this one also! Click here for a direct link to it on Amazon.
The last one I'm adding today is an excellent DVD of the Mamas and the Papas that slipped past me. It's called California Dreamin'. This has been shown on PBS recently and is great. The DVD has bonus footage that was not shown on PBS. I love this band and purchased the Straight Shooter video when it first came out years ago and thought that was excellent. I'm happy to say very little is duplicated on this release. It's also very inexpensive and can be purchased through Amazon or most stores that sell music DVDs.
Artie Kornfeld has written an excellent book on Woodstock '69 called 30 Years of Peace & Music & Other Things. Artie was the co-creator and promoter of Woodstock. His book tells the story of how Woodstock came together and includes many photos of the three day celebration. It also touches a bit on his days as a songwriter and producer. Artie has done many interesting things in the world of rock and roll. He truly is a peace loving music entity and has been awarded many platinum albums in his 40 year career before and after Woodstock--all of which he generously donated to charity. I really enjoy the book and I think you will also. It also comes with a "book on CD" for people that don't have a lot of spare time to read. The CD is enhanced with several more photos. The price has been lowered to $19.69 plus postage. There is a long story behind that but the bottom line is the book was originally released without his knowledge at a considerably higher price.
Artie: "As soon as I had control I said those now famous words again, 'This is a free festival,' meaning the book is little over cost. I always intended (the price of) $19.69 to be a continuation of our heritage together."
Copies are available at: http://www.woodstock30.com/purchase.html
Or for more information about Artie and his book, check out his website at: www.artiekornfeld-woodstock.com
UPDATE:
The name of Artie's book is sort of a play on words of a song he co-wrote for the Cowsills called "The Rain, the Park, and Other Things." He also produced the song for them in 1968. It was a huge hit and peaked at #2 on the Billboard charts. Barry Cowsill, a member of that band, was in New Orleans when Hurricane Katrina struck. His body was identified on January 4, 2006. Our condolences go out to his family and friends.
A couple of DVD releases that I found enjoyable lately are Deep Purple Live in Concert 72/73 and Alice Cooper Good to See You Again. The Deep Purple video has the only known complete concert of the band that consisted of Ritchie Blackmore, Ian Gillan, Roger Glover, Jon Lord and Ian Paice. It's a very laid back setting with great performances. I found the quality to be excellent. It is black and white but that was not annoying to me. As a bonus it also includes them performing three songs on the television show "In Concert" from 1973. These performances are in color. The Alice Cooper DVD was actually a movie starring the band interspersed with concert footage from the Billion Dollar Babies Tour of 1973. The movie is probably not for everyone but the performances are great. The band is excellent and so are the song selections. It hasn't been available since it was in theaters in 1974. Both DVDs are inexpensive and well worth the price. They can be purchased from www.amazon.com.
On November 10, I had the pleasure of seeing a live performance of Arlo Guthrie. I'm happy to say his voice hasn't changed a bit. His band consists of his son Abe, and popular session man Gordon Titcomb. Also opening for him and backing him on several songs was a group called The Mammals. The combination worked very well. This isn't the type of music I listen to all that often but I found it to be an excellent show. I didn't realize how funny he is also. Arlo and his band toured Australia in the summer of 2004 and recorded a live show in Sydney that is available through his website along with several of his solo CDs. Some of these solo CDs were selling for very high prices on ebay recently and can be purchased directly from his label for only $13.50. He still performs many, many shows a year. Check him out if you get the chance. I really think you'll enjoy it. www.arlo.net
I've recently been reading a book by Tim Van Schmidt called King Koncert: Memoirs of an American Rocker in the 1970s. It's a well written fun book where Tim reviews and gives insight on the many concerts he attended in that decade while living in Phoenix, Seattle and Los Angeles. At the end he has ranked his Top 20 concerts of the time and at the top of the list is the second show he ever saw. On that night, October 20, 1970, Sugarloaf opened for Leon Russell and Jethro Tull. They played a 45 minute set that included several songs from their new, soon to be released album, Spaceship Earth. What a treat that show would have been. The book is available in hard and softcover from www.amazon.com or check out his website of the Colorado concert scene at www.kingkoncert.com and purchase it directly from him.
A DVD has been recently released by photographer Henry Diltz called Under the Covers. He has photographed many of my favorite musicians and has taken countless photos that were used for album jackets and sleeves. The list is truly incredible. I'm not sure what his official website is but the DVD can be purchased for $9.95 plus shipping at www.amazon.com
Lastly for now is a CD release that may not mean a lot to some, but I find it to be quite incredible. I was a big fan of the music of Elton John in the early seventies and his album Captain Fantastic and the Brown Dirt Cowboy ranks up there as one of my absolute favorites. He played a festival that I believe he and his manager put together on June 21, 1975 at Wembley Stadium. Elton was the headliner but the show also featured Stackridge, Rufus featuring Chaka Khan, Joe Walsh, The Eagles and The Beach Boys. This was the only time he ever performed all of the songs from that LP live, and he performed them in the same order as they appeared on the album. I never knew positively that this was recorded. In a recent interview with him on the BBC he said he didn't know it either. I figured it had been recorded because this was such a huge event. I've always hoped, but never thought I'd see the day that this was released. It happened on September 13. It's a great show and the sound quality is excellent. It is a 2 CD set and also features the studio album remastered with bonus tracks. This is also the debut performance of Kenny Passarelli (former bandmate with Bob in Beast!) as Elton's bass player. This can be purchased at www.amazon.com
That's it for now.
3/26/07