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this monday's music video: another beautiful song about home, this time from sheryl crow. i don't necessarily consider myself a fan of her work -- emmylou harris did it first and she did it way, way better than this -- but ms. crow has so many songs that i like, i almost can't resist appreciating her in this indirect peripheral way. great songwriting is definitely where it's at.

too bad i couldn't embed the longer version. visually, it's tremendous. but hey -- i can't have everything i want, now can i.

A Strange Thing Happened On The Way to The Beacon...

there i was, on the every edge of the stage at the beacon theater taking pictures of greg allman with the digital camera that tracey moffatt and franco mondini-ruiz gave me for my birthday, surrounded by drunken freaks that were dancing in a haze of pot smoke, and all i could think was, how did i get here?

i'm glad i asked.

some weeks ago, i wrote about a book i'd read called layla and assorted love songs on allconsuming.net and posted it here. it was about layla and assorted love songs the album by derek and the dominoes. it basically told the story behind the music and delved into the legendary 7th century islamic poem that tells the tragic love story of majnun and layla. riveting stuff. i loved it.

some weeks later, i get an email from john lyndon who offers me an orchestra seat ticket to see the allman brothers. it seems that he and 66 of his friends are making the annual trek to new york city for march madness. how did he find me? the essay i wrote was sent to him from someone's rock and roll list -- it even reached the author jan reid somewhere down the line, who wrote to me as well -- but strangely enough, bobby whitlock's wife coco was the one who found me initially. the author was the real surprise. his family is close friends with linda wetherby, someone i shared a stage with for three years as a member of rotel and the hot tomatoes when i lived in austin some years ago. for all either of us know, i probably met him in passing somewhere on sixth street. the world isn't small, folks. it's teensy.

john and his friends make sure that they come to new york city for march madness every year. he's been making a habit of seeing the band and hanging out backstage since '69 when his brother twiggs was the allman brother's original road manager and his brother scoot was their guitar roadie. john is now a divorce lawyer in athens, georgia. sweet man. he even had a backstage pass for me. i met up with him and about 20 others at ruby foo's up the street from the beacon. they had all read the layla remarks and were very much interested in meeting me. one of them, a rather perky apple-cheeked mom of a blonde said that she was surprised that i wasn't older. "i thought you'd be in your fifties or something," she shrugged. she almost sounded disappointed. after i plopped down next to her and she took a good look at my uppity negress t-shirt, she laughed and said that she wanted one.

the show was everything i wanted it to be: acid trippy visuals, top-notch musicianship and an audience that was absolutely on fire for their band, their heroes. it was crazy, hearing so much music coming at me all at once, music that i was so deeply connected to, emotionally. so much of it was a part of my southern childhood. flashes of relatives long gone played out against my mind's eye -- bits and pieces of conversation and situations and happy times i thought i'd long forgotten. it was completely overwhelming. later, there would be an ever-churning hoarde backstage, laughing and talking and leaning against the walls, with greg allman was secreted away on another floor, far from the maddening crowd. i was introduced to jaimoe backstage and i even got his autograph for nicole's boyfriend pete, as a surprise birthday present. but that feeling that exploded in me when i heard those songs out loud, that still hasn't left me.



i think that's the whole point, really. when you're emotionally attached to a song, it belongs to you. what you're buying (or downloading illegally, whatever the case may be) is that emotional pull. the thing is, there's so much crap out there music-wise that does not move me whatsoever that i think i'd forgotten what that pull felt like. it took this show at the beacon to remind me.

now i want more. but where will i get it?

this might explain it

Layla and Other Assorted Love Songs by Derek and the Dominos (Rock of Ages)

by Jan Reid

i can’t remember when the song layla sank into my consciousness.

i was a proper church-going little girl, i was in the deep, deep south and hee-haw was on tv every week. i was surrounded by cousins and sweet dirt and sky, and the sun was always shining, even when it rained. everything was drenched in twang and rock and gospel. i remember a little battery operated transistor radio in my bedroom that had a strap on one side of it. i remember lying on my stomach, playing with my paper dolls with that radio right next to my head, listening to the allman brothers.

no one told me that what i was listening to was for white people, that i was supposed to be at the r&b end of the table because i was black and that’s what black people listened to. i instinctively knew that table was mine and i could sit whereever i wanted. later, much later, in college and even in my early time in nyc—when i was supposed to be surrounded by smart cool talented individuals—i can distinctly remember them (black and white) balking when i said which butthole surfers record i preferred or how much i liked bands like husker du and captain beefheart and the pixies or how i loved mudhoney way more than nirvana for that supermuff but cobain wrote catchier songs or how i was going to go see john doe somewhere downtown the next night. the question hung in the air like pastel colored streamers at a mexican prom: how did i know so much about rock? rarely ever would anyone ever actually ask. (too bad.)

“you’re an anomaly,” some white someone told me once.

“oh really,” i said flatly. i couldn’t believe that he meant that as a compliment. but he did. “maybe i’m the norm,” i casually suggested. “either way,” i continued, “how would you know?” (and no, that's not all i said. not by a long shot.) i'm probably always going to remember how his face changed as that one sank in.

that whole blipster thing is just one more stupid chapter in a continuing bizarre racist saga of “how to sell music to america” that some yahoo set up when they figured out how to make money off of records back in the day. now that they’ve come up with a name for The Only Black Person At The Show, they can patronize with some degree of accuracy and still be completely off the mark.

but i digress.

i think duke ellington was dead-on correct when he said there’s only two kinds of music—good and bad. unknowingly, the song layla set it off for me. or was it freeform fm radio? i don’t know.

i never thought much of eric clapton as a vocalist or as a guitarist (yes, he’s great—no, he’s not a deity) but i did love derek and the dominos. the more i listened to the music, the more i wanted to know more about where all of that passion and feeling and desperation came from. i heard snippets of stories here and there. and what happened to the drummer sounded like a wierd urban legend. but then i found this layla book and had it all explained to me, in such lurid detail that i could almost feel their collective exhaustion after some drug addled binge in the english countryside.

all of that 70’s excess—the heroin, the alcohol, the ferraris that were paid for in cash, the hookers that duane allman had imported from macon for their sessions in miami—that’s in there. but the love story at the core of it all is compelling stuff. and ultimately, the way clapton takes his feeling and pain and makes art is effing brilliant.

but it's the never-ending twang of that slide guitar that embraces something inside of me -- that something that knew sacred steel in a traditional church setting before elmore james made his presence felt and then duane allman turned it into something else. my southern ways are still there. they're completely intact and ever-present. thank Jesus.

oh. and duane and greg look like some hayseeds i went to school with, for real—which made me love them even more and miss the south of my childhood.

i don’t want to meet eric clapton. i want to meet bobby whitlock.

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