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INCREDIBLE NIGHT AT THE HOLLYWOOD BOWL: THIEVERY CORPORATION, BEBEL GILBERTO, LOS AMIGOS INVISIBLES,

Going to the Hollywood Bowl is one of those authentic incomparable LA experiences -- dining under the stars in a box, with firends, listening to great music on a beautiful summer's night, looking at that iconic Hollywood bowl --- it is wonderful.
Last night the headliner was Thievery Corporation, who are two Wash DC artists. who take to the DJ stands and then have a whole world mix of talent performing with them. Last nights guest vocalists including Perry Farrell and Seu Jorge.

Opening for Thievery Corporation were Los Amigos Invisibles who I enjoyed very much. Now I can't tell you that I understand any of their songs, or caught all the music they referenced but there was a moment when I think they slipped into a little Stevie Wonder and there were even a few bars from Was Not Was Walk the dinosaur. Maybe it's my imagination but that's what I heard!

Arts Journal's featured video today is Louis Armstrong and Danny Kaye singing a duet version of "When the Saints Go Marching in" It's available on You Tube, click here

You might think it's corny, but it swings -- Danny Kaye, a complicated man, was full of awesome talent -- check it out!

You might think that I'm using any excuse to showcase this photo of me and Dr. John

and you would be right!

But I do have a story to tell. When I met Dr. John last Wednesday night  outside Tipitina's in New Orleans, he asked where I was from.

"Los Angeles," I told him

"I know some people there," he said.

I offered that I knew someone he knew in Los Angeles, Stewart Levine" (a producer Dr John has worked with)

"I know two Stewart Levines in Los Angeles," Dr John said, "And one of them is an asshole. Which one do you know?"

Saturday night found all of us wandering around Frenchmen Street, visiting the clubs there, from the Dragon's Den where a combo of guy on mac, guy on drums and guy on turntable jammed together.

Over at the Blue Nile there was a great band called Toubab Krewe -- a bunch of white guys playing exotic African instruments -- it was sort of the David Byrne / Talking Heads / Fela Kuti influenced "remain in light" sound taken to a trance level.





Sunday I worked in one more outrageous meal at Commander's Palace. Commander's reopned after 18 months with a multi-million dollar renovation to make it look like it always did --  Easter brunch year round. the Blood marys were reportedly excellent, I had perhaps the best cosmopolitan I've had in New Orleans, I had an incredible chicken and andouille sausage soup, --the famous turtle soup was terrific, the eggs sardou remain true to classic, but a steak and eggs was off the charts --- but all is prelude to the bread pudding. Such was a perfect ending to a classic meal.

PS. Harry Shearer and Judith Owen were at the next table

Despite early morning rains, the sun came out as did the people to play at Jazzfest


People at Jazzfest were dancing in the mud

Saw quite a few great bands


there were the jazz hounds of Tokyo a traditional New Orleans jazz band --- straight from Tokyo




Spent some time in the gospel tent

Perhaps one of the highlights was seeing The Roots. Here are pictures of  Questlove and their set list


But the surprise was seeing Ludacris come out and perform a few numbers


Ludacris is now my new best friend




Here's my buddy George Rush or Rush & Molloy on the job interviewing Ludacris



What was Ludacris doing there? He's part of a new show to begin airing on Aug 3 on Planet Green in which he and Tommy Lee travel to various places and end up having some positive charitable or environment impact -- in New Orleans I think they did a benefit -- it's called "Battleground Earth" -- and I'll have more details as we get closer to air date.

Day one at Jazzfest:
Thursday was a hot one, with the occasional clouds and wind giving a break. But there was a healthy crowd there for a Thursday and some fine music as well.

Although I walked around and dabbled here and there I ended up spending most of the day at the Gentilly tent. It was a sort of New Orleans greatest hits.

Sammy Ridgely and the Untouchables cooked up a set of Otis Redding and other hits you would recognize but made them his own.

Kermit Ruffins, trumpeter par excellence, is the inheritor of Louis Armstrong's mantle -- he has become one of the favorite interpreters of classic and modern New Orleans music, and he delivered a set that was a love song to New Orleans including Professor Longhair classics.

Then Randy Newman took the stage. Now Newman has got himself to a place where he can make a song out of conversation, and his piano playing is masterful -- so he played some new songs -- about how the world hates us but we're not bad as some others before us -- a song about all the old performers who are still touring ("You're dead, but you don't know it) and some classics.

Newman told the crowd that he was down in New Orleans with a bunch of Disney and Pixar execs (he said Toy story made about $7 Billion and that his song for that movie had made them about $4,378 ) recording songs for a new animated film "The Frog Princess", he played a song that he said they had recorded that afternoon with Dr. John doing the vocals.

So the good Doctor is in the house, doing some Disney work as well. Turns out the good Dr is staying at our hotel here The Monteleone.

Now as I write this Dr John has ambled into the offices WWOZ the legendary New Orleans radio station (that you can listen to online).

I hope they archive it and you can listen to it, because that's it's like eavesdropping -- they just talkin talkin talkin

"Music is the language of New Orleans," is the Mayor's slogan Dr John explained," because nobody here speaks the same way."

Here's the video and first single from Was/Not Was' first album in 16 years - with Sweet Pea Atkinson on lead vocals

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That's the code to embed. Here's the link or try  this

And while we're on the subject of Don Was, I don't kow if you have checked out what Don is doing at MY DAMN CHANNEL, but you should --- he's doing a weekly video blog, he's posting free music and free music videos of artists he's produced (Rocket, Jackshit, Sweet Pea Atkinson, Maia Sharp, Wayne Kramer),there are interviews with Ozzy Osbourne and Duff and Slash, it's THE WASMOPOLITAN CAVALCADE OF RECORDED MUSIC. Yes, it is!

    I should mention that these videos are shot, edited and produced by none other than Gemma Corfield who shows great talent and style in this emerging internet format.
   
    There are advertiser sponsored segments like a Detroit road trip and a Nashville songwriter series -- it's very impressive.

    But my favorite feature is what is now called Radio Was: The Party Shuffle Show which is basically a free internet weekly radio program where Don streams an hour or so of eclectic music selections from his IPOD -- always interesting, always fun to listen to.
 
I've checked out a lot of music sites on the web, and I have to say, Don's is compelling. But don't take my word for it.

Check it out!

Since posting about Dylan covering other people's songs, I stumbled into a bunch of others on MOG -- www.mog.com , a music blog site. (By the way in my last post I said Wolftrap was in Maryland; turns out it's in Virginia -- which speaks volumes about what condition my condition must have been in at the time).

On MOG I found Dylan covering George Harrison's "Something"

There was also a cover of Sam Cooke's "A Change is gonna come" which Ossie Davis in his introduction says was inspired by "Blowin' in the Wind" -- never knew that! (but it can't touch Otis Redding's version).

There's also an audio clip from Dylan's XM radio show of his reciting "'Twas the Night before Christmas" and a clip of his singing some Shel Silverstein lyrics.


DYLAN ON ED SULLIVAN -- NOT
At the Skirball, at the very end of the exhibit, there's a video monitor where Dylan recounts how he walked off the Ed Sullivan in 1963 -- and how he regrets doing so.

MIKE BLOOMFIELD
He also says in another video clip that he thought Mike Bloomfield made a mistake not joining Dylan on the road. I agree -- Bloomfield's searing guitar on Maggie's Farm live at Newport was never matched.

DYLAN INTERVIEWS
In the course of my research for my column I came across two recent interviews with Dylan in Rolling Stone which are worth reading. one by Jonathan Lethem (September 7, 2006) and the other by Jann Wenner himself (May 7, 2007).
    In my column, I say that Dylan rejected the whole notion of leaders. To that opinion Dylan has remained true. Here's what he told Wenner:

 

“I think what you’re driving at, though, is we expect politicians to solve all our problems. I don’t expect politicians to solve anybody’s problems….We’ve got to take the world by the horns and solve our own problems. The world owes us nothing, each and everyone of us, the world owes us not a single thing. Politicians or whoever….”

      In Lethem’s Rolling Stone interview, Dylan makes an interesting point—that a lot of the songs he wrote during that era continue to be played by him and covered by others. He asks how many other artists of the era can one say that about?

“I love Marvin Gaye,” Dylan says, “But how often are you gonna hear “What’s going on? I mean who sings it….Where is that being sung tonight?”

Although much has been made of the fact that Dylan's work has been covered-- Dylan himself has covered a great many songs, beginning with the covers he did early in his career.

One of my favorites early on was Dylan's cover on his first album of Eric von Scmidt's "Baby let me follow you down." Dylan did a great version of this song at the 1966 Royal Albert Hall concert that was only available as a bootleg for many years (which was how I first heard it) but was released in 1998 as "Live 1966"-- for me, it has the freedom and joy of what Dylan called "that wild mercury sound" he brought to his albums at that time.

Speaking of that sound -- Robert Zimmerman's stated ambition in his high school yearbook was to play in Little Richard's band. Well, last night, at the Grammys Richard himself -- old as time but timeless nonetheless, performed and I heard in his wild yelps and hollers and pounding rhythm some of that sound that Dylan found in his electric albums.

But back to the covers. Dylan has also done some strange, awful and unusual versions of other people's songs. There was his 1970 cover of Paul Simon's "The Boxer." In 1973, in what I have to believe was a moment of contractual dispute, Columbia released an album mostly filled with covers that is now called "Dylan" (I think it may have been called "13" at one time). It includes covers of Jerry Jeff Walker's "Mr. Bojangles," Joni Mitchell's "Big Yellow Taxi" and Elvis' "Can't help falling in Love."

Recently, as Warren Zevon was living his last days, Dylan started performing some of his songs.

However, one of the most unusual set of covers I ever saw Dylan sing, was at a concert at Wolf Trap in Maryland where he performed Dave Mason's "We Just Disagree," Jimmy Buffett's "Pirate looks at 40," and -- this I'll never forget -- Dion's "Abraham, Martin & John."