Martine's booty bag

[Brian]

Last week when the beautiful Martine of Manitoba was in Los Angeles, she handed me yet another bag of digital discs that could only astound and delight a lifelong fan of Ray Davies, Ian Hunter, Tim Finn and Neil Young -- like me. They're so rich, I'll need several weekends to address them.

I don't know how much I can put out on the Internets, so I'll just say that Martine's brother, who was the member of a rock band famous in the late 1980's and early '90's, became one of the finest and classiest purveyors of bootleg concert audio and rare archival video for every artist who matters.

Let's start with Neil Young's concert in Winnipeg's Centennial Concert Hall last July, because I only recently got his latest album. Neil debuted many of his new songs on his Twisted Road tour last year. And Martine's brother was there to personally record it for the rest of the universe.

It's a beautiful job. The attentive and appreciative home town audience actually enhances the recording -- no chatter, no drunken hoots -- even for the new material in a mostly acoustic solo show. Forty years later, he's still grappling with the same issues while updating his classic songs.

Our benefactor in Manitoba might have the only recording of that concert. I found a You Tube video of an unspecified show two months earlier with a performance of "Love and War" from the "Le Noise" album:

[Sharon W]

Very nice - thanks for sharing.

[Brian]

I sang for justice and I hit a bad chord but I still try to sing about love and war.

Steve, a guy my age who I know from work, is a bigger Neil Young fan in almost every regard. Both of us graduated high school in 1975, the year that Neil released two of the greatest albums in human history, we agree: "Tonight's the Night" and "Zuma." Steve saw him with Crazy Horse at the Dorothy Chandler Pavilion in 1976, which he says is the best concert he ever attended, so he spent the next three decades compiling a facsimile digitally, recreating the setlist from bootlegs at arena concerts that year stretching from the east coast of the U.S. all the way to Japan. Steve's disc knocks me out -- I heard songs that didn't show up on Neil Young albums for 15 years and a couple that are totally new to me.

I gave Steve "Le Noise" and the fantastic two-CD bootleg set made by Martine's brother in Winnipeg, and he burned them immediately to his mp3 on the office computer. For his files. I think that Neil has been on yet another of his recurring artistic renaissances for the past decade since "Greendale" -- especially with his "Prairie Wind" and "Living With War" albums -- but Steve doesn't appear to be interested in love or war.

For his first album since Ben Keith's death, Neil Young explores new sounds and textures with producer Daniel Lanois while confronting his past in brave lyrics. For some reason, he won't allow embeds, so here's the link to the official video of "Hitchhiker" on You Tube:



Next weekend, I'll stick my paw into Martine's booty bag and take a poke at a Ray Davies bootleg from the Winnipeg Folk Festival in July 2008, which may well be the last time Ray performed new songs.

[anni]

"Let's start with Neil Young's concert in Winnipeg's Centennial Concert Hall last July"
That's how our Saturday evening date started, too.

On our way to Columbo's in Eagle Rock, to eat yummy Italian food and hear one of Brian's oldest/best friend's band (L.A. Fender Bender) (also great) we enjoyed one of the BEST recordings of a live concert EVER! Old and new songs by Neil Young, all by himself. Perfect recording! Amazing guitar and his voice wonderful and rich...Most impressive. I've gotta admit a live recording of a concert can be a precious thing...given a genius recording engineer i.e. Martine's Bro! Thank you kind sir!

[Roberta]

Apr 24, 2011 0:56:08 GMT -8 Brian said:

I sang for justice and I hit a bad chord but I still try to sing about love and war.

Proving the truth of an online comment back when the L.A. Times profiled the MPV, something to the effect that I am just an old hippy chick trying to relive her glory days -- a description I am proud to claim in the present tense as in still living -- I adore Neil Young.

Don't stop me if you've heard this already. While I was in library school, which places it winter 1970/71, I rode up to UCLA from our Ohio Avenue apt (since torn down for a Uni High expansion) with my roommate's (she was working) boyfriend on the back of his motorcycle, then slept out in a pouring rain all night on the patio, to get student (they might have even been free, it was that kind of time) tickets for his solo concert that season. It was wonderful.

I will have the sense memory of the whole episode til the day my memories cease, and now thanks to the internet you can google neil young royce hall ucla and find it was on Jan. 30, 1971, and that Needle ... from that performance ended up on the Harvest album.

Random note, John and I are going to see John Prine and Loudon Wainwright one of these Friday evenings (after the corner!), because John promised me that they will magically be as young as when I first heard them, and so will I!

[martine]

Congratulations Roberta, you got me to de-cloak!!

My brother is constantly astonished when I moan on and on about not liking artists like Neil Young (maybe t his will get him to de-cloak) and Joni Mitchell and the Guess Who.

I think it's because by the time I was 15 I was so sick to death of being force fed their music via the radio (due to the Canadian airwaves had to have a certain percentage of Canadian content being broadcast) that I mostly was turned off in my adult years from their music.

Seriously, this has continued for a long time. They weren't of my era, I was more interested in British mid 60s stuff, then became majorly obsessed with Buddy Holly in my early 30s, then in my 40s got into 50s lounge/cocktail bar style music or talk radio.

If I accidently exposed myself to Cinammon Girl or Free Man in Paris or These Eyes, I'd shriek and quickly turn the radio off.

But even I can't ignore the millions of folk who profess a strong and everlasting devotion to at least Neil Young or Joni Mitchell (Sorry Curtain Bummings et al)

I never denied their talent or skill...I just had had a lifetime of the "hits" by my mid teens.

Someone who's opinion I more orless respect on what's good and what's trafe is my brother's (don't tell him)

He played me the Love and War song...plus I always kind of secretly liked that Harvest Moon song..(so I d/led it from iTunes) Plus, I saw a concert broadcast (from my description, George says it sounds like it was from around 2005) I remember Emmylou Harris being on stage (God, she's gorgeous!!) And I sat for around 45 minutes totally transfixed by the music.

It seems hugely daunting to dive into that back catalogue and the voice still grates on me a little..but I think I'm beginning to see the light somewhat. Joni and Curtain..your time might be coming...but don't hold your breath!

I even...d/ded some Mott and Ian Hunter in the not so distant past. What the hell is going on???

If I start raving about RUSH ... someone please, put me out of my misery...

[Brian]

Thank you, Roberta and Martine, for those fantastic posts about Neil Young in your lives!


This unidentified 2008 You Tube video is obviously taken from a television broadcast in the U.K.

Ray Davies promoted his last album of new songs, "Working Man's Cafe," with a tour in the spring and summer of 2008 with Bill Shanley and a fine young band. Anni and I caught them at the Wiltern. Ray and Bill later diverted to Manitoba to perform at the Winnipeg Folk Festival in Birds Hill Provincial Park in front of a chatty crowd, preserved on a 20-song CD available on the private label marketed by Martine's brother.

It must be a hard gig playing four new songs and some largely unfamiliar Kinks classics before an all-day festival audience of all ages. Ray gradually wins their attention with sing alongs, stage banter and way too frequent shouts of "day-o." Stripped of the adoration of middle aged fanatics like me seated comfortably indoors, he relies on his natural showmanship and, of course, the material.

I'm so happy that Martine gave me this disc because I own no other record of his tours for the two great solo albums he released since the Kinks disintegrated in the 1990's. "After the Fall," which might be one of the best songs Ray ever wrote, is rendered beautifully by Ray and Bill in Winnipeg. He played it again at the Orpheum in L.A. with Bill and the band in November 2009 on a tour to promote an album reprising Kinks songs with a choir. But the song was absent from the setlist at the Canyon Club four months later when Ray and Bill played by themselves until the opening band, The 88, joined them at the end.

Still, I'm a grateful guest. So were the other four members of the Montrose Peace Vigil message board who saw him and Bill last year and pronounced it one of the best shows in our long lives. I assume that Ray will be back in Los Angeles at some point to tout his latest CD of Kinks covers. If he's got some new songs for us then perhaps, indeed, the sun will shine again.

[Brian]

I've been telling everyone who'd listen -- and posting on the Internets since 2002 -- that I hoped Mott the Hoople would never reunite. They were the greatest rock and roll band on record and onstage from 1969-74, even better I say than the Rolling Stones, who managed to squeak out "Sticky Fingers" and "Exile on Main St" in those years. Yes, all five original members were still alive. But Ian Hunter had been successful artistically and commercially for 35 years, as had Mick Ralphs with various incarnations of Bad Company, while Dale Griffin, Overend Watts and Verden Allen had retired from music. So there was no reason for them to reassemble.

Nonetheless, I tried to move earth if not heaven to get to London for their 40th anniversary reunion concerts at the Hammersmith Apollo in October 2009. I settled for the official Concert Live release of the first show (pictured above) and wonderful bootlegs from Martine of the second and third. I'd assumed that the band would release an official DVD, but that has yet to happen. Thanks to Martine's brother, I finally got to see one of the concerts, the fifth and final, and fully appreciate what I had missed.

This wonderful DVD shot from the balcony blew my mind in so many directions that it will take a few weeks to track down all of the parts. Meanwhile, I wonder about its origins. A cursory Googling turns up a segment with two songs from the middle of the video -- "I Wish I Was Your Mother" without the beginning and "Ready for Love" without the climax -- put on You Tube by someone selling his bootleg via e-mail. A feast for Freudians, yet this is my Mother's Day gift from the World Wide Web:

[anni]

Yes. As a perfect END to a kinda lonely Mother's Day...Brian and I REALLY enjoyed the DVD live concert of Mott the Hoople's reincarnation.
Thank you so much, Martine and brother. I even totally enjoyed the official Mother's Day hymn, 'I Wish I Was Your Mother'...a song never one of my faves, now on the to reconsider list...again thanks...

[Brian]

"Saturday Gigs" was Mott the Hoople's last single in 1974. It was also the final song of their 40th anniversary reunion shows in October 2009. In the end, the band lets its audience sing good bye:



The fidelity on this You Tube audience video, which has only 30 views since it was posted last March, is so wonderful that it must have been lifted from the official Concert Live sound board recording of that show.