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sam_webmaster

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  1. 10 hours ago, SteveAJones said:

    Seeking any information on this photo (date/location/photographer).

    243716812_10159942440452577_6937074817316850228_n.jpg

    Europe 1973 by Wolfgang Heilemann (I believe that's him behind Robert), who travelled with the band for a few shows and shot for Bravo & others. This photo is either in Germany or Vienna. 

    Here's one from Montreux 72:

    72-montreux-wh_jb_1.jpg

     

  2. On 9/25/2021 at 11:03 AM, Pure Frosting said:

    I wonder how good the original filmprint would look like. These are clearly by someone filming the projected screen?

    There's two sources he's using: The main one is a decent 1080p digital transfer but has been adjusted a bit here & has some extra compression artifacts etc. 
    Second source: Clips the filmer's friend did from nearly the same angle is an older 480p transfer and is kind of out of focus.

  3. ‘We’re like Mork and Mindy!’ Robert Plant and Alison Krauss, music’s odd couple

    Fourteen years after their Grammy-winning debut, the roots duo have reunited – facing high expectations. They explain how they left their comfort zones with a ‘nuts but tasteful’ all-star band

    by Marissa R Moss  | Fri 24 Sep 2021 06.00 BST

    rpak-01.jpg

    More than half a century since arriving to play his first show in the US with Led Zeppelin, Robert Plant was in the strange position of having to explain himself to the authorities.

    “I had to prove that I was contributing to the betterment of the American system somehow, which is kind of cute, really,” Plant says of this post-lockdown trip to Nashville. He is sitting in the city’s famous Sound Emporium studio with his collaborator, the bluegrass legend Alison Krauss. It is the same place where they recorded their second, highly anticipated record as a duo, Raise the Roof, before the pandemic put the world on pause.

    Due to various restrictions, Plant had to get special permission to get back into the country for this week of preparation and promotion; Krauss, he points out in a sarcastic huff, had to drive for only 10 minutes. “I had to present a form to Homeland Security and all that,” he says, sitting on a burgundy velvet couch in one of the facility’s dark, moody rooms. “Fifty-three years of coming here … they should have my number down by now.”

    Raise the Roof, the follow-up to 2007’s much lauded debut LP Raising Sand, could have worked as Plant’s immigration application. Fourteen years in the making – as long as Led Zeppelin’s entire career – it is a sublime re-imagining of roots music traditions, from unsung English folk singers to modern torchbearers and lost blues gems. Highlights include a magical rework of the Everly Brothers’ Price of Love, which Krauss and Plant turn from harmonica-laced pop into a slow burning lament anchored in Krauss’ infinitely emotive vocals; an exquisite, melodically joyful version of Go Your Way by the early Led Zeppelin influence Anne Briggs; and High and Lonesome, an original written by Plant and their returning producer, T Bone Burnett.

    It is a warm day and Plant has just got back to the studio on foot after grabbing a bite down the street. Nashville is a driver’s city, so the 1.85-metre (6ft 1in) musician, with his silver curls tossed loosely in a ponytail, would have surely been a roadside attraction to anyone cruising down Belmont Boulevard, were it not for the white mask obscuring his face. Krauss is cosied up on the couch in a quilted black jacket, despite the late summer weather, a box of tea stashed in her tote. When she talks, she grabs the mic nearby, as if by instinct.

    The pair had tried several times to make a second record, but nothing had stuck: the title is as a nod to the jubilation they feel about finally getting the band back together. “You can’t wait 14 years to try to get it right and then put it under the couch and say: ‘Well, that was good,’” says Plant. “You’ve gotta shout it out and raise the roof.”

    It was a song by the Americana band Calexico that finally broke the creative barrier. Krauss was driving in Nashville, listening to a burned CD – she is not au fait with making digital playlists – when the song Quattro (World Drifts In) came on at an intersection. “We’d send songs back and forth, and you might hear the same song at a different time and it didn’t have the right moment, for whatever reason,” Krauss says, “This one had such a sparkle on it. One song sets the mood for everything – and that was the song.” She texted Plant immediately. He, too, fell in love with the lyrics. Their version of the track opens the new record, just as the original opened up the record to them.

    3062.jpg

    Plant is as fascinated by border stories as he is by tales from the American south. Calexico, named after the city where California and Mexico join, sing of immigrants fleeing everything they know for the dream of a better life. “Where they are living is what they are playing. It’s coming out of the ground,” Plant says of the band, now based in Tucson, Arizona.

    Ever since he made Raising Sand in Nashville, Plant spotting has become urban lore in the city. There was the rumour that he lived in an apartment above an ice-cream shop in the east side; some people insisted they saw him eating dinner when he was supposed to be on tour. Plant seems to take to the place naturally, hanging out at a traditional country-themed night called Honky Tonk Tuesdays, grabbing a low-key Mexican breakfast at a place recommended by the musician Buddy Miller, or visiting a mural in Grimey’s record shop of John Prine, the late songwriter Plant described on social media as “the real wordsmith”. The last time he saw Prine, “he made some really funny John Prine comment about me being Frodo or Gollum”. The story cracks Krauss up.

    The duo assembled some musicians from the Raising Sand sessions, including the guitarist Marc Ribot and the drummer Jay Bellerose, along with some new forces, such as Miller and the renowned jazz guitarist Bill Frisell. Burnett insisted that no one get acquainted with the song choices before entering the studio, to get “the freshest idea with the most life”, as Krauss puts it.

    She remembers walking into the Sound Emporium for overdubs and seeing Ribot with a set of car keys, scratching them along his instrument – a long way from the traditions of bluegrass, but she loved it. On the previous record, Burnett would suddenly appear in a robe, brandishing a toy piano.

    “They all have the combination of being so nuts and so tasteful at the same time,” Krauss says. “Shocking. It’s shocking.”

    “See, I can’t buy into that,” Plant says, doubtful that nuts and tasteful could coexist, at least in the genre from which he emerged. “I’m British and a rock’n’roll singer.”

    Plant and Krauss both enjoyed the exercise of trying to shake off who they have come to be – she the traditionalist, he the flamboyant frontman. “No decision was made other than lyric and melody,” Krauss says. The blues isn’t her default style, but she wears it well. Plant, meanwhile, tried not to go into character or default to comfortable vocal tricks and signatures, but there is one song on the album that – thankfully – is particularly Plant. While the title, High and Lonesome, conjures up images of early Hank Williams and tears on acoustic guitars, it is far more like Led Zeppelin than weepy acoustic country.

    Even when outside their comfort zones, though, Krauss and Plant’s disparate worlds overlap perfectly. A previous interviewer, Krauss says, was determined to find out if they argue. “It was so funny, just: do you fight?” she says, chuckling. “Did any of you fight? Did T Bone fight?”

    “We’re like Mork and Mindy,” says Plant: an odd yet harmonious couple.

    They have proved that all musical traditions can meet in the middle if you dig back far enough. When Raising Sand came out in 2007, it was an outlier in a landscape entranced by watered down arena folk. Its songs, such as the blues singer Little Milton’s Let Your Loss Be Your Lesson and Sister Rosetta Goes Before Us by the alt rock singer Sam Phillips, served as a reminder that the roots of roots music were far more diverse than the emerging Americana genre might lead one to believe.

    Raising Sand won five Grammys, including album of the year, beating Radiohead’s In Rainbows and Viva la Vida or Death and All His Friends by Coldplay. The concept for Raise the Roof is the same, digging up unsung artists such as Louisiana’s Geeshie Wiley, as well as Plant’s more close-to-home influences, such as Briggs and Bert Jansch. Plant says with a laugh that when he plays their cover of Go Your Way for Briggs, “she’ll probably wag a finger at me about some stolen piece of timeless folk history purloined by some bloke with long hair and cowboy boots”.

    He continues: “Alison and I have something – theoretically – to live up to, as far as how it worked out before. But the most important thing to do was maintain a really interesting variety of sources of song. Because what do we do in our quietest times, when we have a music machine? We go to places that really, really make us feel good.”

    And who doesn’t want to feel good after months of lockdown and restrictions? Krauss recalls how, early on, she had trouble even listening to old bluegrass; similarly, Plant couldn’t hear new music – he spent the worst months of the pandemic pillaging his own archive, finding cassette recordings he plans to allow the release of only after his death. They promise that the next collaborative album – if there is another – won’t take so long, though. “I can’t wait 14 years,” says Plant, who is 73. “Otherwise it’s going to be a bit dicey for me.”

    For now, he is enjoying this long detour. “None of this music is rock, it’s not about power and posture,” Plant says. “How remarkable for me to be able to jump ship so long ago now. But I have a jetpack on my back in case I want to go back.”

    That person is still in there, after all. On the way out of the studio to meet Burnett and the musician JD McPherson across town, Plant stops and makes a joke about his “Viking finger”. “If I come from the land of the ice and snow,” he says, a bit of mischief firing in his eyes, “I’ll be OK.”

    Raise the Roof is released on 19 November on Warner Music. Plant and Krauss will tour together in 2022.

    https://www.theguardian.com/music/2021/sep/24/were-like-mork-and-mindy-robert-plant-and-alison-krauss-musics-odd-couple

     

  4. Framingham was the bomb.' Carousel Theatre drew Jack Benny, Jimi Hendrix

    Cesareo Contreras | MetroWest Daily News | Sept. 17, 2021
     
    FRAMINGHAM — LD Glover was 16 years old when he started working as a house crew member at the Carousel Theatre.  

    He was one of many local residents in the late '60s who helped set up the stage for the likes of Jimi Hendrix, The Supremes, Led Zeppelin and others. 

    "We were all 16, 18 years old and it was the best job ever," he said. "We would put up the tent, take care of the grounds, load the bands in and out, take care of the dressing rooms, do security, stagehands for the shows and roll the tent up at the end of the season."

    The Carousel was a popular music venue in the 1950s and 1960s
     

    The Carousel was a popular summer music venue on Old Connecticut Path that was in business from 1958 to 1969. Travelers on the Mass Pike could see it from the highway. The large theatrical tent, which was reportedly the largest in the United States at the time, could accommodate between 2,500 and 3,000 people, according to former Daily News arts writer Bob Tremblay. New England theatrical producer Francis Connelly was the owner.

    The venue was a theatre in the round, meaning the stage was surrounded by the seated audience. The first performance at the venue was the musical "New Girl in Town" with Joan Blondell on June 30, 1958. 

    Glover said Framingham was a popular nightspot throughout the 1950s, '60 and '70s — a "hub of entertainment."  

    Mr. Know-It-All: When music made the rounds in Framingham

    Alongside Route 9, popular spots like the restaurant and nightclub Maridor were very popular, he said. 

    "That area was jumping back in the day," Glover said. "Framingham was the bomb. In between Ken's Steakhouse and the Maridor and the Carousel, you had the season." 

    Glover found his love for the concert scene just a year before he started working at the Carousel, when his dad brought him to see American pianist and composer Duke Ellington there. 

    An advertisement from 1967 showing the schedule of upcoming concerts at the Carousel.
     

    "About a year or so later, I went up to the Carousel to buy some tickets to Simon & Garfunkel, and there was a little note on the box office that said 'Help Wanted,' so I applied. Four seasons later, we were still there." 

    Glover, now 70, went on to have a career working as a roadie for bands throughout the country. He attributes the Carousel for setting him down that path. 

    To celebrate the Carousel Theatre, Glover created a Facebook page that now has 459 followers.   

    Music in modern times:Boch Center offers rapid COVID-19 testing before Saturday's performances at Wang, Shubert

    One of them is Richard Alberty. He was 13 when he saw his first show at the Carousel. He snuck out of his house to see Hendrix. He jumped from his bedroom window in Southborough, then walked several miles from his house to the venue.

    It was a life-changing experience, he said. 

    "It was a magical place," Alberty said. "They really had a lot of great talent." 

    Crews get to work building the Carousel Theater one summer
     

    He went on to see numerous shows at the Carousel, including Iron Butterfly, Led Zeppelin and Orpheus.    

    He compared that area of Framingham to the Las Vegas Strip. Like Glover, he pursued a career working as roadie for a number of popular rock bands. 

    "It was just magical," he said of the Carousel. "It was a real cool place." 

    Ruthann Tomassini, a volunteer at the Framingham History Center, worked as a hostess at the Sea n Surf Restaurant along Route 9 between 1960 and 1970. She remembers people eating at the restaurant before heading to a show at the Carousel. On occasion, musicians and other celebrities stopped by. 

    'As cautious as possible':Framingham's atac requires proof of vaccination

    Italian actress Anna Maria Alberghetti, who won a Tony Award in 1962 as Best Actress (Musical) for "Carnival," would often rent a room in the back of the restaurant, Tomassini recalled. 

    "It was exciting times for sure," she said. 

    Mary McCann worked as a property mistress at the Carousel. She was in charge of making sure the talent had the props they needed when they were on stage. She worked throughout high school and college, she said. 

    The grounds at the Carousel Theater on Old Connecticut Path in Framingham
     

    She loved the job and did it for about five summers. McCann saw the Carousel change from having more Broadway and classical music to rock concerts. She kept a few of the printed programs, but recently donated them to the Framingham History Center. 

    One of her most memorable moments was getting to meet entertainer Jack Benny. 

    "He was huge at the time," she said. "Instead of being this arrogant jerk who had something to prove, here was this guy who everybody in the world knows and here he is just sitting here chatting with me and being nice and low-key."  

    After closing in 1969, the venue was destroyed in a fire shortly afterward, according to Tremblay.  

    Today, office buildings sit on the property, which nevertheless pays tribute to its history — the Carousel Office Park at 500 Old Connecticut Path.

     

    https://www.metrowestdailynews.com/story/news/2021/09/17/framingham-ma-carousel-theatre-facebook-group-concerts-jimi-hendrix-supremes-led-zeppelin/8257240002/

     

  5. When hippies converged on Lewisville’s Texas International Pop Festival
    In the last summer of the sixties, drugs, rock ‘n’ roll, and communal spirit took the Texas International Motor Speedway and Lewisville Lake by storm.

    https://www.dallasnews.com/news/from-the-archives/2021/08/26/when-hippies-converged-on-lewisvilles-texas-international-pop-festival/

     

    Headliners at Texas International Pop Festival

    https://www.dallasnews.com/news/from-the-archives/2021/08/26/headliners-at-texas-international-pop-festival/

    G4BITB4LXZAMPJ5A6XA4MVNZ5A.jpg

  6. Robert Plant and Alison Krauss Return for a Second Duo Album, 14 Years After Their Grammy-Sweeping Debut

     
     
     

    Robert Plant and Alison Krauss at no point appeared to be in a hurry to record a follow-up to their first album together, 2007’s “Raising Sand,” which was a surprise sales hit and swept all six Grammys it was up for in 2009, including the top two prizes, record and album of the year. But some good things do come to those who wait, and the unlikely pair are making a by-now unlikely comeback 14 years later with a second duo album, “Raise the Roof,” due Nov. 19 on Rounder.

    The template that made the first album such an unexpected monster has been put back in place, with T Bone Burnett producing and assembling some of his all-star studio players, and a track list made up almost entirely of cover versions of less familiar tunes by some well-known names.

    The first single, out today, is “Can’t Let Go” by Randy Weeks, heretofore known as one of the highlights of Lucinda Williams’ classic 1998 “Car Wheels on a Gravel Road” album. Other tracks dip into the catalogs of Calexico (whose “Quattro (World Drifts In)” leads off the collection), Merle Haggard, the Everly Brothers, Allen Toussaint, Bert Jansch and others. One track, “High and Lonesome,” is an original co-written by the former Led Zeppelin singer with producer Burnett.

    A tour is planned for 2022, with dates to be announced later.

    “We wanted it to move,” Krauss said in a statement announcing the record. “We brought other people in, other personalities within the band, and coming back together again in the studio brought a new intimacy to the harmonies.”

    “You hear something and you go ‘Man, listen to that song, we got to sing that song!’” added Plant. “It’s a vacation, really—the perfect place to go that you least expected to find.”

    Among the musicians, familiar to anyone who knows Burnett’s inner circle and/or the lineup for the first album, includes guitarists Marc Ribot, David Hidalgo (of Los Lobos fame), Bill Frisell and Buddy Miller; bassists Dennis Crouch and Viktor Krauss; pedal steel guitarist Russ Pahl and drummer Jay Bellerose.

    “Raising Sand” debuted at No. 2 in the U.S. and went platinum on the way to its sixfold Grammy sweep. After successfully touring behind the album, Plant and Krauss dove into what was expected to be a fairly fast follow-up at the time, but never finished the project.

    The track list for “Raise the Roof”:

    1. Quattro (World Drifts In)
    2. The Price of Love
    3. Go Your Way
    4. Trouble With My Lover
    5. Searching for My Love
    6. Can’t Let Go
    7. It Don’t Bother Me
    8. You Led Me to the Wrong
    9. Last Kind Words Blues
    10. High and Lonesome
    11. Going Where the Lonely Go
    12. Somebody Was Watching Over Me

    https://variety.com/2021/music/news/robert-plant-alison-krauss-album-t-bone-burnett-reunite-1235040000/amp/

    Raise-The-Roof-Cover-Art-e1628751918495.jpg

  7. 17 minutes ago, John M said:

    These are fantastic.  Thank you for sharing.  I wish more of the movie had been shot from a vantage point like this, where you can see the whole band at once, without all the quick cuts and moving cameras.

    ^ 👍

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