Sunday, November 25, 2007

This blog should be played LOUD

Well, I enjoyed my Thanksgiving, and I hope you all enjoyed yours.

Thirty-one years ago today was another very special Thanksgiving - the famous Last Waltz concert was held in San Francisco. The Band, performing for the final time with their classic five-man lineup, had the mother of all going-away parties, with guests ranging from Neil Diamond to Neil Young and pretty much everyone in between. Best of all, it was captured for all time in a documentary directed by Martin Scorsese.

If you've not seen this, you really owe it to yourself to check it out. I'm so crazy about this movie I literally took a two hundred mile bus ride to see it on the big screen. (Okay, I was supposed to see it with someone, but she never showed. Nevertheless, I don't consider it a loss. THAT'S how crazy I am about this movie.)

Here's the very beginning, where we meet the Band members as they stomp through their closing number, a cover of Marvin Gaye's "Don't Do It."



And here they are doing "Mystery Train" with Paul Butterfield on harmonica.



Great story here - the lighting board blew a fuse, and the only light working was the spotlight on Butterfield. So one of the great effects in the show was a one hundred percent accident.

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