King Harvest

"Corn in the fields, listen to the rice as the wind blows cross the water. King harvest has surely come. "


We aren't in the business of dead entertainer - praise. The fuckers stack like cordwood, and you run out of shit to say. But Levon Helm ain't dead as I write this, so let's call this a thank you note. That's appropriate too, cause if anybody deserves a thank you note from us, it's Levon Helm.

Our history makes our reality, and our history says Band's collaboration with Bob Dylan, from it's early years up until the time it was unofficially over, was the last new beginning for rock and roll. New lightning gifting new fire. Before it, things were one way, and after it, they were another way, and never quite the old way again.

Are there other ways to see this? Probably, but not credibly. Not for anybody born after 1945. '45 puts you age 20 when all this starts to move. Twenty would have been about perfect. Old enough to enjoy the front row seat for a very specific history.

The events!!

Dylan played electric music at Newport 1965, and by that time he'd made his intentions known: His folk thing was to become a rock thing. all these important words, he felt, might carry greater import spinning to a danceable backbeat. The Hawks - long sidemen to the great Ronnie Hawkins, and razor sharp from years and miles in the dirty rock joints of the great white north - were to become his band. The Band. They'd accrued a lifetime's worth of stories and gigs, ushering rock through an awkward, unpopular adolescence. They'd worn matching suits and string ties, playing the face of a nascent counter culture. Now, suits ditched, they'd be telling those stories to new worlds, on giant stages, with the brightest light of all leading them through nightly paces.

They lived, worked, wrote together. They reeled off a slew of records made of a high, fine music, one that would seal, for all time, the idea of rock transcending a sound, becoming a way to experience consciousness. The big questions, with all attendant cosmic implication, pressed into the shape of tits and ass moving in time.

The Band was composed of historically awesome players at all positions. I'm a drummer, so to me, Levon - singing leads while knocking out those beats - was pretty much the center of the storm. The singing seemed tuneful and effective, but the beats - all metronomic tone and soul with snare sounds like burning kindling pops - were some classy fucking beats.

"Rock of Ages" - the Band's essential live piece from NYE shows in 1971 - will always be the touchstone. If a surprise, and way looooong Dylan guest-sit just after midnight on New Year's is NOT the highlight of the show, than what the fuck happened at that goddamn show?! Grab it, hear it. Tonight. It's really, really awesome.

Thanks Levon Helm, for carrying the hottest fire the longest miles. We hope you do not die tonight, but if you do, we would not expect what comes after to be in any way unpleasant. At least, not for you.

Thanks, Levon Helm, for everything you've been so far.

DSL
April 2012