Goodnight Brother Helm, Wherever You Are
It's a season of politics in America, a time when carnival barkers and blow-dried charlatans stroll The Great White Way; I desperately look for something real and all I can think about is The Band and the passing of Levon Helm.
There are not many artists who can sum up what it really means to be an American. I knew that The Band's music was special the first time that I heard them. This was no ordinary rock n roll; no ordinary country music; this was no run-of-the-mill R&B; not your average cake-walkin dixieland, or ordinary Cajun fiddle tunes -- it was all of them, a unique expression of our American identity. And there in the middle of it all was Levon, the driv'n wheel, the beating heart, the dirt farmer at the plough, telling tales of minstrels and medicine men, of ordinary folks, speaking the truth.
It is not surprising that what drew many to the sound of The Band was its spirituality,its gris-gris, born of days with Dylan and nights at Big Pink--those existential hymns, those tribal incantations of life and death and home. If my memory serves me well, the first time I heard The Band I stopped dead in my tracks -- "I know this music!" I found myself saying. And in a moment came the deeper truth: there will come a day when I will hear it for the first time once again.
It's a season of politics in America, a time when carnival barkers and blow-dried charlatans stroll The Great White Way; I desperately look for something real and all I can think about is The Band and the passing of Levon Helm.
There are not many artists who can sum up what it really means to be an American. I knew that The Band's music was special the first time that I heard them. This was no ordinary rock n roll; no ordinary country music; this was no run-of-the-mill R&B; not your average cake-walkin dixieland, or ordinary Cajun fiddle tunes -- it was all of them, a unique expression of our American identity. And there in the middle of it all was Levon, the driv'n wheel, the beating heart, the dirt farmer at the plough, telling tales of minstrels and medicine men, of ordinary folks, speaking the truth.
It is not surprising that what drew many to the sound of The Band was its spirituality,its gris-gris, born of days with Dylan and nights at Big Pink--those existential hymns, those tribal incantations of life and death and home. If my memory serves me well, the first time I heard The Band I stopped dead in my tracks -- "I know this music!" I found myself saying. And in a moment came the deeper truth: there will come a day when I will hear it for the first time once again.
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