Tag Archives: Patti Smith

Bergenfest, Patti Smith

Alldylan reporting from Bergenfest 2015 – Day1

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Patti Smith 2015 Bergenfest-6

Highlight of Bergenfest 2015 day 1 – PATTI SMITH

The dark poet & brilliant musician Patti Smith returned to Bergenfest after 3 years. Last concert on June 23, 2012 – was wonderful. Strong and vivid memories can sometimes be your enemy when trying to be present and open minded.  Stakes were high, my mind was boiling.. I knew the setlist would be the “Horses” (album) songs, a couple of old greats and “My Generation” (last on “Horses”) last. But how would she perform the “Horses” material, some of the songs rarely performed live ? Excited & nervous.. and a bit juiced up on smooth bourbon (mandatory).

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Bob Dylan, Music Calendar, Patti Smith, Paul McCartney

May 17 in music history

Bob Dylan & The Hawks: Free Trade Hall, Manchester, England 17 May 1966 (read more)

Live 1966: The “Royal Albert Hall” Concert is a two-disc live album by Bob Dylan, released in 1998. It was recorded at the Manchester Free Trade Hall during Dylan’s world tour in 1966. Extensively bootlegged for decades, it is an important document in the development of popular music during the 1960s.

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The Bob Dylan documentary, Dont look back premiered in 1967 (read more)


Dont Look Back  is a 1967 film by D.A. Pennebaker that covers Bob Dylan’s 1965 concert tour in the United Kingdom.In 1998, the film was selected for preservation in the United States National Film Registry by the Library of Congress as being “culturally, historically, or aesthetically significant”. Wanting to make more than just a concert film, Pennebaker decided to seek out both the public and private Bob Dylan. With unobtrusive equipment and rare access to the elusive performer, he achieved a fly-on-the-wall glimpse of one of the most influential musicians of all time and redefined filmmaking along the way. …and it is funny!

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Henry Saint Clair Fredericks (born May 17, 1942),who uses the stage nameTaj Mahal,is an American Grammy Award winning blues musician. He incorporates elements of world music into his music. A self-taught singer-songwriter and film composer who plays the guitar, banjo and harmonica (among many other instruments), Mahal has done much to reshape the definition and scope of blues music over the course of his almost 50 year career by fusing it with nontraditional forms, including sounds from the Caribbean, Africa and the South Pacific.  Taj_Mahal_(musician)
 Johnny “Guitar” Watson (February 3, 1935 – May 17, 1996)was an American blues and funk guitarist and singer.A flamboyant showman and guitar picker in the style of T-Bone Walker, Watson recorded throughout the 1950s and 1960s with some success. His raunchy reinvention in the 1970s with disco and funk overtones, saw Watson have hits with “Ain’t That a Bitch”, “I Need It” and “Superman Lover”. His successful recording career spanned forty years, with his biggest hit being the 1977 “A Real Mother For Ya”.  Johnny_Guitar_Watson
James Ridout “Jesse” Winchester (May 17, 1944 – April 11, 2014)was an American musician and songwriter who was born and raised in the southern United States. To avoid the Vietnam War draft he moved to Canada in 1967, where he began his career as a solo artist. His highest charting recordings were of his own tunes, “Yankee Lady” in 1970 and “Say What” in 1981. He became a Canadian citizen in 1973, gained amnesty in the U.S. in 1977 and resettled there in 2002.  Jesse_Winchester_Smile_JazzFest_2011
Wave is an album by the Patti Smith Group, released May 17, 1979The title track was a tribute to Pope John Paul I, whose brief papacy coincided with the recording sessions. The first single off the album was “Frederick”, a love song for her husband-to-be Fred “Sonic” Smith with a melody and structure bearing resemblance to “Because the Night”, the group’s biggest hit. The second single, “Dancing Barefoot”, has been covered by many art  Wave_-_Patti_Smith_Group
Ram is a studio album by recording artists Paul and Linda McCartney, released 17 May 1971 on Apple Records.The album was recorded amid Paul McCartney’s legal action in Britain’s High Court to dissolvethe Beatles‘ partnership, following their break-up the year before. The only album credited to the couple, Ram was the second of two albums that McCartney released between quitting the Beatles and forming his own band, Wings. He and Linda recorded it in New York with guitarists David Spinozza and Hugh McCracken, and future Wings drummer Denny Seiwell. Its release coincided with a period of bitter acrimony between McCartney and his former bandmate John Lennon, who perceived verbal slights in the lyrics to songs such as “Too Many People“.  RamMcCartneyalbumcover

Spotify Playlist –
Bob Dylan other, Cover versions

12 more Bob Dylan covers done by some incredible women

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baez dylan

12 more Bob Dylan covers done by some incredible women

We like cover versions here at JV, and here are some more good examples. They are not better than the originals, but they are different and they are good. …and before you kill me in the commentaries, listen to Miley Cyrus’ effort, it is surprisingly good!

We got mail, comments and facebook messages about who should have been included in PART 1, we just had to do a second post on this wonderful subject. It is great fun to dig into this matter once again.

To do a cover version is sign of appreciation, the artists show their love of other peoples creation. We try to find interpretations that add to the experience of the song, versions that are not too similar to the originals. We also trust our emminent taste when it comes to picking the renditions that we present here.

Enjoy!

Oh, and here’s part one

…and here are many more cover versions of Bob Dylan’s songs

Joan Baez – Sad eyed lady of The Lowlands (audio):

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Books, List

The 10 Best Memoirs Written By Musicians

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music books

The 10 Best Memoirs Written By Musicians

When musicians decides to write their memoirs they are often uneven (this is a kind statement). They often struggle to give words the life that do in their songs, this “new” format may not come naturally to them. That said, many of these men and women have great stories to tell and often provide compulsive reading. They do stumble in their wording and structure from time to time, but the stories are compelling and they succeed in capturing the spirit of their cultural moment with astonishing insight.

These twelve ten books are great examples of how it can be done if the authors manage to adjust to the new form. They are good period, not because they are written by famous artists, but because they reflect all the creativity, movement and human drama you’d expect from people driven by art. We kept it to memoirs, so no fictional prose (sorry, Nick Cave), no poetry (sorry, Patti Smith and Leonard Cohen), there are some of the books that touches different genres but all these books are mainly memoirs.

They are not necessarily the best biographies about artists written (although sometimes they are) but they are the best books written/narrated by the musicians themselves!

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Classic Concert, Concert films, Patti Smith

Classic concert: Patti Smith Group Full Concert Capitol Theatre NJ 1979
Photo: Klaus Hiltscher 1978
Photo: Klaus Hiltscher 1978

Patti Smith Group Full Concert  Capitol Theatre NJ 1979

“Redondo Beach… is the beach where women… love other women.”
– Patti Smith intro to the song, Redondo Beach

This is a gem from Music Vault, an almost two and a half hour with The Patti Smith Group right after the release of Easter. What a band and what a great time for the band and Patti Smith. They tear through the songs, the band is as tight as they get and the power is immense. I can understand Bob Dylan’s admiration of this force of nature.

Patti Smith could not have been met with a more enthusiastic home-crowd, and it’s a really great performance. This is from the year I discovered this wonderful artist (from Rockpalast 1979) But it is here in New Jersey that Patti Smith is at home and the performance really feels like she is with a familiar bunch of people.

Primal performance with a band at the top of their game!

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