Bob Lefsetz blog - Lefsetz Letter

Don't remember how I discovered this Lefsetz Letter blog, but I look forward to his almost daily postings. His insight into the music industry can be interesting, but that's not what draws me in. It's his LOVE of music and how it affects you. He gets SO excited and remembers what music felt like back when music actually made us feel something. Like this posting:

Fat Man In The Bathtub

I saw Little Feat at the Troubadour.

When I was a junior in college, all the music magazines testified about this new album by Little Feat, entitled "Dixie Chicken". So, of course, I bought it. And played it. And if you’d taken a picture of my face upon that first time through you would describe my expression as quizzical. As in HUH? This is what they were raving about? It didn’t sound quite like anything else, kind of like white boys from L.A. got sidetracked on their way to New Orleans. There was no hit single, and if this were the modern era, I probably wouldn’t have given the album another spin, but it being 1973, I played "Dixie Chicken" again and again and AGAIN, because I’D PAID FOR IT!

That’s how it worked. We could only afford a small amount of music. Every record was picked with TLC, no purchase was casual, to buy a bummer was to indict oneself as a lame, uneducated music fan. No one else might have known, but you would, so you gave these records a chance, and more often than not they exposed themselves to you.

But "Dixie Chicken" was a bit beyond that. First I loved "Juliette". Then other tracks started to reveal themselves to me, and then not only did I like "Dixie Chicken", I LOVED IT! I had to go back and buy "Sailin’ Shoes", I was a fan of a band almost no one had ever heard of, never mind had an opinion on.

Moving to L.A. is like arriving in a musical cornucopia. Not only do the street signs and locations make sense, from their placement in your favorite songs, suddenly all your favorite musical acts are AVAILABLE! You can SEE THEM!

I dragged Danny to the gig. He was the only guy at Star Sporting Goods who’d heard of Little Feat.

And this was back when there were tables in the venue, before it was necessary to stand to hear rock and roll, when the music touched not only your body, but your soul. You’d sit tucked into your seat grooving, with your mind bouncing like a pinball through the stratosphere.

I saw Little Feat again. At the Santa Monica Civic a few years later. But that Troubadour gig was the shit. Because it was solely about the music. They didn’t have a new album, it wasn’t like this one gig was going to ignite their career, this was a band of players locking into a groove for their fans.

And Little Feat ultimately had a radio hit. But not only did they not live up to their potential, they never broke through to mainstream consciousness. Everybody knows who Vanilla Ice is, even if they don’t want to listen to Rob Van Winkle’s music…but stop people on the street and ask them their opinion on Lowell George and they’ll say HUH?