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RIP Levon Helm

beer good

beer good

Well-Known Member
msnbc.com Entertainment - Levon Helm of the Band dies at 71

Damnit, that's all three voices of The Band gone before their time.

The Night They Drove Old Dixie Down, The Band en The Last Waltz - YouTube

As for The Band, we never sold millions of records or got attacked by groupies, but we're still here. We never thought our "career" was more important than the music. That's our whole story right there.
"They were grown men, "wrote The Philadelphia Enquirer, "who had climbed the mountain together, spoken to the gods, and returned to the valley, where they once again became mortal."
Hell, all I know is that I haven't had to cultivate cotton since I was seventeen. - Levon Helm, This Wheel's On Fire, p.304
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Nooooooooo! This year is really shaping up to be a crappy one for great musicians. Maybe we need to start a prayer chain for the good ones still standing. I hear George Jones is not doing well, for one...
 
The Band - King Harvest 1970 - Long Black Veil 1970 - YouTube

Levon gets a lot of props as a singer, as well he should, he was a fantastic one; Bill Monroe meets Otis Redding. But just check out what he did to drumming as well, especially in the late 60s when a lot of people were going for loud and showy. This alternate take on "King Harvest (Has Surely Come)" is so quintessentially The Band, even more so because of the way they goof around at the beginning. First, they play the song the way other bands would: a leadfooted, earthy blues, the sort of music you'd expect a bunch of bearded white guys to play, and you know there's a huge distorted guitar solo behind the next chorus. Then they play it the way The Band plays it: a ghostly choir moaning the chorus, Richard Manuel pleading with an unfair world, Garth Hudson's organ veering between horror-movie despair and drunken carnival dancing, and Robbie, Rick and Levon laying down this broken-up homespun funk groove that treads so lightly you can see the light shining right through it. There was always enough air pockets in The Band's music for you to fill in the blanks yourself, and they had a drummer who could whisper a beat.

He was my bosom buddy friend to the end, one of the last true great spirits of my or any other generation.
- Bob Dylan
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Also, a nice article.
 
It's been awhile now but I give everyone kudos for remembering Levon. I'm not a celebrity chaser by any means, but Levon's death really made me sad. He was The Band. If you read the history of the group Robbie Robertson was basically a douchebag.
Levon and the rest of them were the heart and soul. Another video that is wonderful is one of the award shows where Elton John, a recent group that looks like the Band way back when, and that amazing young lady from Alabama Shakes take on "The Weight".
 
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