Robert Plant and the Band of Joy - The Roundhouse, London, October 29, 2010

1st Band of Joy, with Plant (middle) and Bonham (front)

Musically, Robert Plant has been around the block. He and drummer John Bonham were picked out of a band called Band of Joy by a certain guitarist to play in a band that I'm sure a few of you may have heard of.

That band broke up after reaching cult status, and afterward Plant performed in the Honeydrippers, reunited with Jimmy Page in a group curiously named Page and Plant, recorded and toured with the Strange Sensations for a half dozen years or so, and then at the request of  renowned record producer T-Bone Burnett, recorded an album called Raising Sand with country music singer/violinist Alison Krausse of Union Station and did a world tour in support of the album, which won multiple Grammy Awards. Raising Sand was a mixture of blues, folk, country, and R&B and seemingly was a relevation to Plant.

Jimmy Page and John Paul Jones, two of the remaining members of that cult band, planned a reunion album and tour but were unable to convince Plant to join them. The Led Zeppelin reunion now appears to be all but a broken dream to many.

Plant on the other hand, seems to have awakened in a huge way to other forms of music. I saw him about 13 months ago in San Francisco's Golden Gate Park during Hardly Strictly Bluegrass. Plant walked on stage unannounced during Buddy Miller's set and perform two or three songs. Plant recently recorded a new album of music with a group called he decided to call Band of Joy. It's not like he's trying to forget that other band he's identified with, he's still performing songs first done by them, but with a twist. Plant is simply returning to the his roots, his new roots.

Here's a great sounding show recorded way back earlier this week at the Roundhouse in London. Check out Robert Plant and the Band of Joy.



Like always, either stream it or download it for later by clicking on the Divshare logo.

Gregory Isaacs - RIP to the Cool Ruler - UPDATE

Gregory Isaacs died today at the age of 59. He was known throughout the reggae world as the foremost proponent of "lovers rock". He was the favorite performer of many women reggae fans. He had the smoothest style of anyone in the genre I can think of. Listen to him once and you know why he was called the Cool Ruler.

The first time I ever saw Gregory was in a movie called Rockers. He played a character called Jah Tooth and he sang Slave Master in the film. Of all the reggae stars in that movie - Sly Dunbar, Robbie Shakespeare, Burning Spear, Jacob Miller - Gregory came off the best.

I have a very good soundboard of a recent show but I'll get that posted in the next day or so. Here's Gregory Isaacs performing Night Nurse at Reggae Sunsplash, 1983. 




**UPDATE**

I said I'd post a show so if you never heard him sing before, here's your chance. Here's a show from 2008 that he did in Baltimore that was recorded digitally off the soundboard. Sounds great.

U2 - the Pro bono ethic

U2 began its life as an Irish rock band in 1976. Paul Hewson (Bono),  Adam Clayton, Larry Mullins, Jr., and David Evans (The Edge) got together, taught themselves how to play their instruments, practiced, and about 5 years later managed to become good enough to secure a contract with Island records. In another 5 years they'd become one of the top bands in the world.

It is impossible to write about U2 and Bono without mentioning their social activism. In 1984 they played Band Aid for Ethiopian famine relief, in 1985 they played at Live Aid which was a bigger venue for Ethiopia and in 1985 played at the Conspiracy of Hope for Amnesty International and Self Aid for unemployment in Ireland. They've since raised money for Greenpeace, raised awareness for the Bosnian war, worked in the aftermath of hurricanes Katrina and Rita. The band's activism is better documented  here and here and here. Paul Hewson was given the nickname Bono, short for bono vox, or good voice. Now it could be taken from pro bono, for the public good.

There are many people who think that Bono and U2 as being international meddlers, self-important people who use their celebrity to bring attention to an issue solely because of publicity it generates for themselves. I believe that's the furthest thing from the truth. There should be more people like U2. And there are, and I'll shed some light on them from time to time.

U2 first and foremost is still a rock and roll band. Here's an absolutely great concert from their Joshua Tree tour, which was documented in the film Rattle and Hum. I can think of more than a couple of times that a band was recorded on consecutive night for a project and then only one of the nights recording were used. The last post on Clapton included a dynamite sounding show from the first night that wasn't used. This U2 show was recorded along with another show at McNichols Arena in Denver to be used for Rattle and Hum. The other show was used, this one wasn't. Lucky us! The following is that complete show from November 7, 1987.

Eric Clapton - Nothing But The Blues

I mentioned Eric Clapton on an earlier post, about how he battled alcohol and drugs for years. He managed to overcome both and had been living a sober life for many years. It was in 1993 when he began work to found the Crossroads Centre in Antigua. The facility is dedicated toward teaching ways to be abstinent towards drugs and alcohol and other addictive tendencies and changing the lifestyle that leads to that kind of behavior. Clapton's auctioned off his collection of guitars and has mounted a series of benefit concerts call the Crossroads Guitar Festival. He further augments funding through the sale of DVDs and other merchandise.

Clapton always manages to select and have perform some of the greatest guitarists alive. He said that his criteria for selecting the artists are simply to pick the performers he himself really wants to see. Being asked by one of the world's best received guitarists is too much for most people to say no to.

One year after beginning work on the Crossroads Centre, Martin Scorsese shot an Eric Clapton concert at the Fillmore in San Francisco. The music consisted of nothing but blues music, because that's what Clapton always felt most comfortable playing. Scorsese grew up loving blues as well, so he felt it was a natural collaboration. The documentary was made for PBS and was never released elsewhere. There were two nights of music, and Scorsese used the first to make sure everything was mic'd and mixed perfectly. He never used that first night's recording in the finished documentary. This is that first night with a couple of additional rehearsal tracks as well:

Janis Joplin - Kozmic Blues and great beer

I was in Anchor Brewing a few years ago for work when I spotted some photographs hanging on the wall in the tasting room. They showed Janis Joplin and the rest of Big Brother and the Holding Company drinking beer during their own brewery tour. They all were smiling as they held their beer. I'm usually smiling too when I'm holding one of their beers. I'm particularly fond of Old Foghorn, their barley wine.

Janis was known for her drinking, but it wasn't beer that she developed a reputation for drinking, it was Jack Daniels. Unfortunately for her, it was her taste for other forms of intoxicants along with an over fondness of  whiskey that led to her early demise.  She was always pretty much a loner in life. She was an outcast at her high school in Port Arthur and eventually began attending the University of Texas, where she was voted the "Ugliest Man on Campus". It was little wonder she ditched school and Texas and hitched to the Bay area and wound up singing in coffee shops and other locations around town before she would up fronting Big Brother and had a beer at the Anchor brewery. That loneliness was probably a big reason for her drinking too much.

After she left Big Brother, she formed a new band she called the Kozmic Blues Band, which had more of an R&B flavor. By then she was deeply into heroin and had a $200 dollar a day habit. They did a tour of Europe in the spring of 1969 and among the stops was Amsterdam.




Janis Joplin managed to get off drugs, at least for a time but she was still a very heavy drinker. The last thing she ever recorded was a version of "Happy Trails" which she sent to John Lennon for his birthday. She was dead by the time the recording was delivered to Lennon. Joplin was 27 years old when she died.

ZZ Top - Beer Drinkers and Hell Raisers

I have a great recording of a ZZ Top show I want to share with you in a minute, but first I've got to tell you when I started thinking about what I was going to write, I realized I didn't know a whole lot about the band. I started listening to them beginning with their second album entitled Rio Grande Mud. I'd thought that was their first until I saw ZZ Top's First Album in the record bins.

While I was doing some reading about them, I was pretty amazed by the history of the band, how they met each other, who they started out warming up for, and was surprised to see that Jimi Hendrix said on the Tonight Show that Billy Gibbons was going to be the next hot guitarist after himself.

I also ran into a video interview of Billy Gibbons that you'll find next that tells the story of ZZ Top much better than I am able to. I'll stop about here so you can watch the interview and afterward, listen to the show.


Musician Billy Gibbons from Texas Monthly Talks on Vimeo.

And now the concert. I left the short beer commercial in, because hey, it's beer!

Led Zeppelin - After the 2007 reunion

After Led Zeppelin broke up following John Bonham's death on September 25, 1980 due to alcohol related causes, the remaining members went their own way for a few years. The Live Aid benefit concerts in 1985 enticed Jimmy Page, Robert Plant, and John Paul Jones to reunite and the show was a total failure. There were problems with Page's guitar, the monitors weren't working and Plant's voice was extremely hoarse. They tried again for Atlantic Record's 40 year anniversary concert in 1988 but the feed from Jones' keyboards was lost and the performance suffered because of a shouting match between Page and Plant just before they got on about whether or not to play "Stairway to Heaven".  Led Zeppelin pretty much died that day.

Page and Plant finally made nice in 1994 and did a show called Unledded for MTV, (a television station that actually played music at the time). It got great reviews and the two decided to tour to support the CD release of the show. Jones was not informed of the others getting together. At the press conference that was called to announce a Page/Plant tour, Page was asked where Jones was. Page replied that he was outside, parking the car. The next year, in 1995 Led Zeppelin was inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame. When Jones took his turn to accept the trophy he turned to the other two and said "Thank you, my friends, for finally remembering my phone number". It could've been an outtake from Spinal Tap.

Ahmet Ertegun, the founder of Atlantic Records passed away shortly after going to a Rolling Stones show in 2006. He was held in such high regard by everyone in the industry that the three surviving members of Led Zeppelin tried once more to bury the hatchet and have a reunion show at Ertegun's memorial concert on April 17 of 2007. This time the show went extremely well, with Page and Jones expressing interest in another tour with perhaps some new material.

However, immediately after the show while the Gallagher brother from Oasis banging on Plant's door calling him the "real F@(king thing",  Plant stormed out and went to a pub down the street where he proceeded to drink four beers and half a bottle of vodka.

Here's a show from Zeppelin's happier days, recorded off the soundboard at a show in Dallas on March 5, 1975.