Catch a Cannonball

Sometime last Summer a couple of my friends and I were hanging out watching TV and on a whim I put on my friend’s copy of The Last Waltz to watch the above performance of “The Weight.”

Very few times has a piece of music or film sent real chills up and down my spine. It happened to me when I heard the cascading refrain to Radiohead’s “Subterranean Homesick Alien” (uptiiiieeeettt) and it happened again when I watched The Band play this song at their farewell concert on Thanksgiving Day, 1976.

I didn’t really know very much about The Band until some car commercial used the song a coupla years back (kinda seems like this is the way a lot of people are introduced to music nowadays). Sure, I’d heard a little of Before the Flood, a live album capturing performances from a 70’s tour with Dylan, but ol’ Bobby sounds absolutely awful on that thing so I wasn’t exactly playing it to death. Anyway, I heard this song in a commercial, and suffice to say I found it a whole lot more interesting than buying anything with a hemi in it. Still, it wasn’t until some time later that I actually got wind of The Last Waltz.

Take a look at the video clip. Just listen to the way the Staple Singers, sing their hearts out on the chorus (one of the best in the history of rock ‘n’ roll) and watch the furrows flash over singer/drummer Levon Helm’s face as he belts the first verse. It’s so real and excruciatingly brilliant that it’s almost painful to watch. Spine tingling, as I mentioned earlier, it’s sensational in the most literal sense of the word. It’s incredible how well the whole ensemble pulls off such a stunning performance, considering that it was their last performance and tensions had been running high for a few years. Everyone’s in top gear here. Richard Manuel throws down a bed of Saloon-hall piano, Rick Danko’s all over the bassline, his high harmonies like the ghost of some long-gone vagabond, while Robbie Robertson’s glassy guitar twangs over the top of it all.

I can’t begin to express how thankful I am that footage of this unbelievable performance exists. You can watch the video on the link above, but I highly recommend Netflixin’ The Last Waltz for the full effect. Another personal favorite is “The Night They Drove Old Dixie Down.” Make sure to watch Levon as he plays the living hell out of those drums, his shoulders twitching in time to each accented beat. You hear him singing about the defeat of Southern pride and the fall of the Confederacy and you’ll swear he was really there, sweating out on his front porch watching the haggard Yankees riding by.

Amen.

Breathless – Nick Cave & The Bad Seeds

I first heard Nick Cave when I caught a live video of “The Mercy Seat,” a song from his 1988 album with the Bad Seeds called Tender Prey. I ended up buying the CD a couple years later and became really thrilled by its harsh, bluesy sound.

This post isn’t about that album, but rather about a single I chanced upon when the Tower Records on Broadway was having its going-out-of-business sale last year (it was a pretty gruesome thing, a bit like watching a beached whale carcass rot away or something).

Anyway, I was digging through a bin of assorted singles of mostly appalling quality—A little Avril Lavigne, some bad neo-soul, you know the stuff—when I came across a sort of creamy blue colored one with a little picture of a robin sitting in a tree on the front. Turns out it was a single for the song “Breathless,” from Cave’s last outing with the Seeds, 2004’s double LP Abattoir Blues/The Lyre of Orpheus. It was ninety-nine cents or something so I grabbed it, not really having any expectations.

I should have had some. On the strength of this song I eventually bought Abattoir and it’s one of my favorite albums of the decade. That said, “Breathless” is pretty much an anomaly in the Nick Cave catalog (or at least what I’ve heard of it). I still prefer the mix on the single to the version on the album, since it nixes an ear-splitting spaghetti of flute runs in the intro, but what makes the song stand out from the rest of Cave’s tunes is the fact that it’s just a really sweet, ambling pop song. It's got a great groove and some awesome, soulful backing vocals too (something far from uncommon when the Bad Seeds are involved). Nick Cave’s also a master lyricist, tempering themes ranging from the political to the personal with dark stories filled with violence and ribaldry that somehow end up having hilarious punch lines. On “Breathless,” however, he sticks to a more traditional approach, and you get a glimpse of Nick Cave the romantic poet, spinning idyllic lines like “it’s up in the morning, it’s on the downs, little white clouds just like gamboling lambs, and I am breathless over you.”

I’ll shut up now and you can listen, whoever you are:

Breathless (Alternative Mix)

Lived in Bars - Cat Power

Check out the previous posts for a cool live mp3 from Paris '05.

Caricatures by Ken Knafou

Ken's another great artist who works at Sea World Orlando. Sketches like the one above are really making me look forward to working back at the park this winter break. More good stuff on his blog at the link below.

ka-blaam! Ken Knafou's Blog

Dreams / Blue Moon - Cat Power

Just the other week I finally picked up The Greatest, and after a few spins I’ve become completely infatuated with all things Chan Marshall. Here are three reasons.

1. She's from the South and her voice is the sound of soul. If I had to describe it, I would say it sounds like she was born in the window booth of a Georgia roadside diner—the kind of place where you wash down a stack of syrupy pancakes with three or four cigarettes and five or six cups of black coffee. It’s a lot more romantic in my mind than it sounds, trust me.

2. She can do indie-bleak better than anyone who comes from a place where it snows.

3. She's absolutely gorgeous.

Cat Power’s second album of covers, the aptly entitled Jukebox, comes out on January 22nd of next year, and to celebrate, (the royal) we here at Anesthetic Hymns are posting a smoky little medley of tunes by the Everly Brothers and the Marcels, respectively, bootlegged way back in ’05.

Listen, if you will, to the way she says, “moon” as if it were “moan.” I almost can’t stand it.

Right here, guy:
Dreams/Blue Moon (Live at Le Cigale, Paris 2005)