If I can play one note and make you cry, then that's better than those fancy dancers playing twenty notes.
~Robbie Robertson
For Music Monday, Robbie Robertson twice. I love all the different musical instruments in the first song. So cool to hear them!
Playing for Change:
(This is also an amazing version: The Band with the Staples Singers)
I wasn't sure whether to share this song or "Somewhere Down the Crazy River," but this came out on top.
Two more Robbie Robertson quotes:
I do not have yearnings to get back on a bus. If it means getting on a bus, I don't want to do it.
I always like to keep one hand in the tepee and the other hand in the synagogue. Wouldn't it be great if there was a combination of the two? You could go to synagogue, and it would be really hot in there. (Robertson's father was Jewish and his mother is Cayuga/Mohawk.)
3 comments:
Wow, that video of The Weight was fantastic, Tabatha. The Weight is one of my all-time favorites and the international flavor of the video was marvelous. Hadn't heard the one that featured the Staples Singers but it was great, too.
I've heard (and loved) many versions, including the original by The Band (from the album Music from the Big Pink), Aretha Franklin's soul-filled take, and the one by Gillian Welch & Old Crow Medicine Show.
Don't know exactly why it is such an incredible song, but it is!
Enjoyed Broken Arrow, too. BTW the Grateful Dead did a really good cover of this, too.
Yes, I love Aretha Franklin's version of "The Weight." Don't know if I have heard Gillian Welch's. I think the line in the first stanza where "'No' was all he said" is a great way to establish character in just a line.
Robbie Robertson wrote "Broken Arrow"...I didn't realize The Grateful Dead had covered it, although I had heard the Rod Stewart version (which became a hit in '91 or so). Robertson's feels more intimate, even plaintive, to me than Stewart's.
A lot of the magic of the song comes from those words/phrases here and there that establish characters...and yet, there's so much mystery to it, including who, indeed, is Miss Fanny and what is The Weight?
And I definitely agree that Robertson's version is more intimate than Stewarts, though I must admit that The Dead's take is heart-felt, too.
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