john cale isn’t just better than lou, he’s louder and softer and closer and nearer.
what’s more, his 1973 album paris 1919 (download it here) is very pretty! plus it has lowell george and other members of little feat playing glorious backup, which goes a good way toward making up for leaving the velvet underground.
#515: kate and anna mcgarrigle - foolish you (1977)
kate mcgarrigle died yesterday, and the world already feels less sweet and tender.
she and her sister anna sang songs that sounded like they’d been grown in flower beds—they’re the only people i can think of whose harmony sounded like christmas, campfires, chaucer and champagne.
and they were at the center of a little world of music that in its own quiet way was godly: not only had kate been married to the folk singer loudon wainwright iii (whose sad, broken and perfect first three albums give the sense that he probably wasn’t a great dad to their son, rufus), she and anna spent decades singing with emmylou harris, and on their first two albums alone played with little feat’s lowell george, the rolling stones’ bobby keys, the velvet underground’s john cale, fairport convention’s dave mattacks, and the bluegrass god bill monroe.
“it’s my town but i had to leave it, and head south where the climate is kind,” kate sang in her 20s, “and if a time comes when i’m feeling better, i’ll be back with the birds in the spring.”
neon park, who had the excellent idea of putting a flesh-ripping weasel on the cover of frank zappa & the mothers of invention’s weasels ripped my flesh (and, better yet, a swinging cake and smiling tomato on the cover of two wonderful little feat albums), titled this poster—for a taj mahal concert in a san francisco ballroom—peyote bird.
i hope a real life bird eats peyote one day and designs a neon park at the taj mahal.
#202: little feat (lowell george) - china white (and interview) (1977)
watching the near-death lowell george smoke cigerettes, make dirty jokes about tuning up to b flat (versus “taking it in the a”), explain slide guitar to what i think are a bunch of germans, playing them something quickly, and then impersonating ry cooder, is like sitting on a park bench with manet while he just sketches something quickly to amuse himself. except lowell george used more heroin than manet (which is what china white may or may not be all about).
by the way, some super funky little feat is here.
also, this rockpalast clip reminds me of this tom waits rockpalast version of step right up, which reminds me of this mysterious, magical scene of tom waits suggesting a threesome to an old woman after offering her hard candy, which, if you haven’t seen, is pretty much worth dropping everything for and watching over and over immediately.
#73: little feat - rock and roll doctor (1975)
why is little feat so un-famous compared to southern rock clowns like the doobie brothers? (one of my favorite parliament lyrics is: “can you imagine doobie in your funk?” i don’t quite know what that means but i like it.)
beer-bellied frat kids should be singing little feat songs, not freebird. but little feat never wrote anything that sounds good in a baseball stadium, except maybe dixie chicken.
another problem is that lowell george, the band’s singer and songwriter and insanely buttery slide guitarist—he wore a sears socket wrench on his finger—died ten years after starting the band, which is definitely what a life of heroic drug consumption will do to you. (incidentally, his old bandmate frank zappa never approved of george’s heavy habits). and then little feat continued on, which is relatively sad because they’re not very good without him.
i think the rock and roll doctor they sing about here is a drug dealer (just like the beatles’ dr. robert or the beta band’s dr. baker), but when lowell george says, “if you like country with the boogie beat, he’s the man to meet!” he could be talking about himself: “at times like this it takes a man with such style I cannot often find/ a doctor of the heart and a doctor of mind.”
