I had a blast hanging out in Memphis this weekend, attending the opening for the Art of the South exhibition at L Ross Gallery where my photograph “New and Used Glory” was hanging on the wall in a really impressive display of Southern contemporary art. Thanks again to Number Inc. for organizing the exhibition and to curator Mark Scala for including my work. Of course hanging out in Memphis also gave me a chance to touch base with the city’s musical history, and our visit to the Stax Museum of American Soul was a highlight — I found myself tearing up in the record store feeling a little overwhelmed with the history of that studio and the amazing cultural experiment that it represents.

Stax started out as a would be country music label before becoming home to a Southern soul revolution that provided the soundtrack to the Civil Rights Movement of the 1960′s. During that time Stax was actively involved in the cause and this summer we’ll remember the 45th anniversary of Wattstax — the Black Woodstock concert that celebrated the Watts community in Los Angeles 7 years after their tragic 1965 riots against racial injustice.

Here’s the whole concert. All power to the people…

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Today we celebrate the birthday of Arlo Guthrie who was born on June 10, 1947. Here’s Arlo at Woodstock singing Bob Dylan’s “Walkin’ Down the Line.”

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45 years ago, in 1969, The Band released their classic sophmore album and changed rock ‘n’ roll forever. But, how did a group of nearly-all Canadians seem to absorb the entire history of American music from folk, to blues, to country to jazz and recreate it in their own inimitable way?

While the band received a thorough education in American rhythm and blues during their tenure backing Ronnie Hawkins as The Hawks, the poetic magic of their second album required a PhD in American roots music that might have seemed impossible given the youthful faces that appeared on the record’s iconic cover. The Band’s Music from Big Pink debut hinted at their greatness, but few expected this masterpiece from the group.

Here’s the Wiki…

The album includes many of The Band’s best-known and critically acclaimed songs, including “The Night They Drove Old Dixie Down”, which Rolling Stone named the 245th greatest song of all time (in the updated version,[7] it was the 249th greatest song of all time). In 2003, the album was ranked number 45 on Rolling Stone magazine’s list of the 500 greatest albums of all time. In 1998 Q magazine readers voted The Band the 76th greatest album of all time. TIME magazine included it in their unranked 2006 list of the 100 greatest albums. Robert Christgau, having been disappointed with their debut, had expected to dislike the record and even planned a column for The Village Voice to castigate their followup. Upon hearing the record, however, he declared it better than Abbey Road, which had been released four days following, writing that The Band’s LP is an “A-plus record if I’ve ever rated one.”[2] He ranked it as the fourth best album of the year in his ballot for Jazz & Pop magazine’s annual critics poll.[8]

By the time of their second record, The Band had toured the world with Bob Dylan and created a collection of music with him in Woodstock, New York that would later be released as The Basement Tapes. The lessons they learned during their time in their rustic retreat, sharing songs with Dylan finally came to fruition on the classic 1969 release.

Here’s a documentary that tells the story of that time, and helps to illuminate The Band’s evolution into one of the most important groups in the history of rock…

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This past weekend we celebrated the 45th anniversary of the Woodstock Music and Art Fair. The event was a legendary happening that’s been illuminated from so many angles, it’s hard to shed any new light on the subject. That said, it is — and always will be — a milestone in the establishment of the American counterculture after World War II, the atom bomb, the Beatniks, the 1960′s anti-war movement, the dawn of the sexual revolution and the rise of psychedelic culture.

While all of the socio-political implications of the event will always reverberate on such occasions, it’s important to remember that Woodstock was ultimately about the music.

Here are some of my favorite moments from the fest…

Crosby, Stills & Nash performed their second gig at the festival. It starts out rough with their famously out of tune guitars and vocals, but eventually settles into a legendary performance of “Suite: Judy Blue Eyes” from their hit debut album.

When I think of Woodstock, I think of Richie Havens. His nearly-three-hour performance opened the festival with the frantic energy of Havens’ rhythm guitar playing, poetic lyrics and emotive vocals, but it’s his closing tune that made him a legend and created his career. Here’s the Wiki…

Havens as a live performer earned widespread notice. His Woodstock appearance in 1969 catapulted him into stardom and was a major turning point in his career.[2] As the festival’s first performer, he held the crowd for nearly three hours. In part, Havens was told to continue playing, because many artists scheduled to perform after him were delayed in reaching the festival location with highways at a virtual standstill. He was called back for several encores. Having run out of tunes, he improvised a song based on the old spiritual Motherless Child that became Freedom. The subsequent Woodstock movie release helped Havens reach a worldwide audience. He also appeared at the Isle of Wight Festival in late August 1969.

The Band didn’t make the cut in the feature film of the concert, but their inexorable legacy and this footage of their performance of “Tears of Rage” says that they deserve a spotlight in a remembrance such as this…

The Who played a medley of their rock opera songs at the fest before leaning into this incendiary, deconstruction of their iconic hit, “My Generation.” Pete Townsend apologizes before the band kicks off the obligatory performance, but he definitely didn’t need to…

We can’t talk about Woodstock without talking about Sly & The Family Stone. Here’s Ultimate Classic Rock‘s take on their iconic performance…

Sly & the Family Stone were already stars when they took the stage at 3:30 Sunday morning. But they had recently released their first classic album, ‘Stand!,’ and were at the tightest point in their career. Their early-morning show is a bit sloppy, but the blurry-eyed delivery digs into the dirty, nasty pull of the music. Their entire 50-minute set is pretty remarkable, but the stumbling-toward-ecstasy drive of ‘I Want to Take You Higher’ is the highlight.

Jimi Hendrix’s performance of “The Star Spangled Banner” has been heard in every capturing of the event, but it remains the bullseye document of the festival’s flashpoint marriage of politics, rock, sex, drugs and what it meant to be a young American at the close of the 1960′s. May we all be patriotic enough to live up to this outrageous call for liberty, love and freedom.

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