SPANISH MOON（SADDLE PEAK DEMOS）LOWELL GEORGE

I went down the rabbit hole. It started two days ago, I needed to hear Bonnie Raitt’s “Nothing Seems To Matter,” but I ended up getting sidetracked by this genius bootleg from Philly back in ’72, I wanted to write about it, how it tied in with the first album and…the night got away from me. But today’s been ultra-busy and after finally sending my last e-mail I decided to return to where I was, but I wasn’t in the same mood. Funny how that works, you’ve got to capture the lightning during the storm, the next day just won’t work.

But then I decided to look for live versions of “That Song About The Midway” on YouTube and I found one but the sound was imperfect, however Raitt was backed up by Little Feat.

They were tied together back then. Supposedly Lowell George started out as the producer of “Takin’ My Time” but then he got sick or didn’t deliver the goods and he was replaced by John Hall. “Takin’ My Time” was supposed to be the breakthrough, but it was not. That didn’t arrive until three albums later, with Bonnie’s cover of “Runaway” on 1977’s “Sweet Forgiveness.” And the truth is that the two best Bonnie Raitt albums are 1972’s earthy, immediate “Give It Up,” and “Luck Of The Draw,” the 1991 follow-up to “Nick Of Time,” Don Was allowed Bonnie to be herself and Ed Cherney got such an exquisite sound it’ll haunt you. “Something To Talk About” and “I Can’t Make You Love Me” are the famous tracks, but “One Part Be My Lover” is the best, with a lyric I’ve never seen done so well anywhere else, about the ambivalent lover, and then there’s the title track, written by Paul Brady and the down in the gutter groove of “Slow Ride” but now I’m going down a different rabbit hole. So, all this is to say there’s a cut on “Takin’ My Time” that transcends everything else on the album, a cover of Chris Smither’s “I Feel The Same,” a complete reworking, it’s the same song but not the same track, and what makes it so great is the slide playing, the chicken pickin’ which is not credited but just has to be Lowell George or inspired by him, Lowell was famous for being tasty, never playing two notes if one would do.

So, Bonnie’s cover with Little Feat of “Can’t Find My Way Home” is no longer a rarity, but what else did the band do together that’s findable on YouTube? Plenty it turns out. The most memorable of which is a performance on “The Midnight Special” from 1977. Yes, Little Feat were on “The Midnight Special,” which was famously live as opposed to Don Kirshner’s travesty on Saturday night. And the highlight is a cover of “Dixie Chicken,” a complete stiff back then, but a legendary song today.

But it gets even better. Lowell is in rare form, his honeyed voice intact, but what pushes it over the top is Bonnie Raitt and Emmylou Harris are backup singers, never mind Jesse Winchester adding to the mix.

So…when you watch Bonnie and Emmylou sing together at the single mic you’ll be brought back to what once was. They’re so into it, playing subsidiary roles, the only thing that’s important being the music. Check it out:

Little Feat – Dixie Chicken (with Emmylou Harris & Bonnie Raitt) Live 1977. HQ Video.

This is the kind of stuff we lived for in the heyday of Napster, but then file-trading died and we got excited about YouTube but then time went by and now it’s all in the rearview mirror, there’s a huge schism between what was and what now is, this stuff is easily searchable, easily findable, much easier than in the Napster days, but there’s no buzz about it.

But I’m one of the few people who don’t love “Dixie Chicken.” I mean I like it, this performance is amazing, but it’s not my favorite from that album. But one song that is my favorite is “Easy To Slip,” the opening cut on Little Feat’s second album, 1972’s “Sailin’ Shoes,” which I bought in ’73 after getting hooked by “Dixie Chicken,” but at the time, during the seventies, I never found another soul who owned the LP, not one.

“Easy To Slip” was the song I sang as I banged the bumps at the ‘Bird, back in ’75 & ’76, to the point where others started to sing it even though they’d never heard the record, could there be a live version of “Easy To Slip” on YouTube?

I couldn’t find one, but I found something even better, a demo of the song from February 5th 1971. REALLY? Well, you can’t trust the labels on YouTube, but this is definitely rough like a demo, like a rehearsal tape and it has a completely different chorus, and it’s so authentic, so from the gut it’s a revelation, assuming you care, which I certainly do.

So now I click to find out what else this guy has posted on YouTube.

Oh, right, check out “Easy To Slip” here:

Earl Guthrie

And this guy’s got a plethora of stuff, and now I’m searching for a definitive version of “Willin’,” but the truth is that Lowell’s versions are all slow, the best iteration is still the unavailable on streaming services one from Seatrain. But thank god it lives on on YouTube. If you’re used to Linda’s take, everybody else’s cover, you might not cotton to it at first, but check it out here:

Seatrain Willin’

But the truth is the killer on that LP is the follow-up track, “Song Of Job”:

Book of Job Seatrain Song of Job

No one makes music like this anymore, but it fit right in in the seventies.

So, searching for a live version of “Willin'” I of course come across ones by Linda Ronstadt, but then I find a version of “The First Cut Is The Deepest,” I never knew Linda sang that!

Linda Ronstadt – First Cut is the Deepest

But I’m interested in Little Feat. And then my clicking leads me to something called “The Saddle Peak Demos.” The track list is amazing, check it out (it’s the pic on the YouTube page linked to at the top), but they’re all not available, probably were in the heyday of Napster, but damn! And I’m listening, and it’s all interesting, and then I click on “Spanish Moon.”

“Spanish Moon.” It took four albums for Little Feat to break through, to have a hit, but it was Billy Payne’s “Oh Atlanta,” not one of Lowell’s numbers. And over time the band morphed, there were fewer Lowell songs and ultimately he O.D.’ed. Yup, at 34, can you believe it?

But the fourth album, “Feats Don’t Fail Me Now,” the one with Payne’s hit, from 1974, was uneven, it was not the breakthrough of the otherworldly “Dixie Chicken” which came before.

So, the band soldiered on. Word was they were a great live act, they got some traction in the U.K., but when I moved to L.A. in the fall of ’74 you could still see them at the Troubadour, I went, it was not sold out. And sure, there was the 1978 double live album “Waiting For Columbus” with the Tower Of Power horns but if you’d seen the band there was still something missing, you see Little Feat was not always loud and in your face, that side was not represented.

So I’m clicking around, the take of “Two Trains” from the Saddle Peak Demos is for fans only and then, and then, AND THEN…I STUMBLE ON SPANISH MOON!

“Spanish Moon” was on “Feats Don’t Fail Me Now,” but that version was superseded in the public consciousness by the live take on “Waiting For Columbus,” deservedly so. And I’ve got “Spanish Moon” playing on YouTube as I continue to research and then it starts to catch my ear. It’s obviously not a demo, especially when Lowell calls out to the Tower Of Power horns, but it hasn’t been through the studio wringer, it hasn’t been treated, it hasn’t been mixed to the point where the rough edges are gone, it truly sounds live, and it’s more immediate than anything on “Waiting For Columbus.”

Sam’s congas start it off, the groove is laid, but it’s Billy Payne’s keyboard that grabs you along with the horns, and Lowell is truly the leader of the band, he’s not playing to the back row, he’s not trying to impress anybody, he’s just doing what he does, which he can instinctively only do right.

And it’s Billy’s break that truly piqued my interest, he’s soloing after Lowell stops singing and the organ sounds almost cheesy, the way it sounds in church, it’s authentic.

And now the band is one cohesive locomotive.

There’s WHISKEY and BAD COCAINE!

This is the seventies, back when the marching powder was not considered addictive, when it ruled Hollywood and those at home were out of the loop, back when you could still be a musician living the musician life as opposed to being a star. Oh, everybody wanted more, but what they really wanted to do was get high, get laid and play music. Push the musical and personal envelopes both. This was not the internet era, we knew almost nothing about these people’s personal lives, their trials and tribulations.

And the truth is a lot of music was played in those bars, that’s where you started out, not TikTok.

There was HOOKERS and HUSTLERS they filled up the room

We just watched the hookers episode of “Borgen” last night.

The Spanish Moon’s attraction was the dark girl singing while she played the guitar. It was the music, not the brand, we were all following the pied piper.

And the way this version of “Spanish Moon” ends with Kenny Gradney’s bass…they truly captured lightning in a bottle.

So, I go to Spotify, what other takes of “Spanish Moon” can I find? None with Lowell, but I do find covers by Gov’t Mule and Derek Trucks and the String Cheese Incident and even the Arc Angels. Funny how Lowell and Little Feat influenced the players, even if many of the listeners were out of the loop, and may still be.

And then I start thinking, not only about the sadness of Lowell’s passing, but Little Feat’s career. The band really never broke through to the masses, to stardom. And that’s when I realized, they were out of time, their time is NOW!

It was nearly impossible for Little Feat to have a ubiquitous hit in the seventies, but now, in 2020, IT’S LITERALLY IMPOSSIBLE! There’s no reason to shoot for the stars because you can’t get there!

And this music lives live, and word is spread online. Radio is not a factor. And if you’re good enough, word gets around, you become a god in your world, and believe me Little Feat with Lowell George would be gods today. Can you imagine them on stage at Bonnaroo, any place where it’s one and done, purely about the experience? This world gets little press, but it’s huge, it’s the antidote to the Spotify Top 50, and the circuit and its fans will support you quite well, just ask Warren Haynes or Derek Trucks, and as good as they both are, they would admit that Lowell was better, sure, he could play, but he could also sing AND WRITE!

And if you’re a newbie, you might not get it at all. But this performance was done without a net, without hard drives, it’s all live, it’s music, it’s the essence of rock and roll.

Down the street I heard such a sorrowful tune
‘Comin’ from the place they call the Spanish Moon

What?

I hadn’t heard about it until this morning, but my inbox is filling up with references to it and one Norm Eisen, a name that will draw a blank with most people not part of the Murdoch bubble. This is Saul Alinsky all over again, a man almost no Democrat had ever heard of was suddenly the main force behind their efforts. This is the Republican playbook, create a target, demonize him or her and warn of the ending of society as we know it, therefore illustrating why Democrats should never be allowed behind the steering wheel.

Yesterday I wrote about the Democrats needing a plan to deal with Trump’s calling the election for himself whether he wins or not, how the rank and file need to be made aware of this, and now the right, the Republicans, are already ahead on this issue and saying the problem is the DEMOCRATS!

We’ve seen this movie before, with “fake news.” Somehow Trump turned it around, to his favor, that the problem was the news industry at large, not his falsehoods. And now we’ve got a recalcitrant media which reacts to the president at best, which is afraid of going out on a limb for fear of being excoriated.

The left really has no idea what is going on in Fox Nation, it’s got its head in the sand, believing if it just ignores the insanity it will go away. Susan Powter tried to stop the insanity, but that didn’t work, one person cannot stand up to either fat or an army of tens of millions, you need everybody to get on the same page. If you watch television news I implore you to turn on Fox, if you’re anti-flat-screen go to foxnews.com multiple times a day, it’s like an alternative universe, there are stories that never make it to the platform and every article is spun to the advantage of Trump, not that you can say this, no one has as thin a skin as a Republican, but you should be informed, since the number one rule of warfare is know thine enemy.

The left is clueless.

So, you need to watch this Tucker Carlson clip from last night:

“Darren Beattie & Tucker Carlson Discuss Color Revolutions & The Plot To Oust President Trump”

Then I point you to today’s “Independent”:

“QAnon: Mysterious conspiracy leader points followers to Tucker Carlson interview warning of ‘coup’ against Trump – Fox News host featured disgraced ex-White House speechwriter promulgating a Kremlin-style conspiracy theory about the Democrats’ supposed plan to wreck the election”

Why “The Independent”? Because it was the second hit on Google when I searched on “Norm Eisen,” the first from a well-known news outlet. We live in a networked world, “The Guardian” has more impact in the U.S., more traction than all the local newspapers brain-dead journalists living in the past are trying to save. Furthermore, “The Guardian” does it without a paywall.

So, if you read “The Independent” article you’ll see the power of not only Fox, but the power of Q. Yes, you’re laughing, but QAnon is real in the minds of Trumpers, and if you say it’s irrelevant get back to me after you read about Pizzagate.

This news is not in “The New York Times” or “The Washington Post,” I just checked. So, chances are unless you’re watching Fox you’re unaware, but you should know. Once again, our news outlets are letting us down.

And then we’ve got the ongoing campaign of Bill Barr:

“Barr’s undermining of the election is downright dangerous”

Barr goes on Fox and says it’s b.s. that Trump would stay in office if he loses, but then he goes on endlessly about fraud in the election, undermining the process.

Meanwhile, the Democrats keep trumpeting the process, saying to believe in it, it’s our route to victory. But have you ever heard the aphorism if you win you still lose? That is what is going to happen with the Democrats.

So, the Republicans are undermining the validity of the election results long before the counting begins, and fearmongering that the Democrats will end American society as we know it and most Democratic voters are absolutely clueless as to what is going on. All we’ve got is these inane e-mails from people telling us to VOTE! Sure, vote, I will, you should. But that is not the battle here. Look at the polls. Biden is ahead. But it’s not about the polls but the count. How can you win if the game is declared false, unreliable, rigged? This is how we lost truth, facts in America, and now the same thing is gonna happen with elections.

As for social media, I point you to the cover of the new edition of “Businessweek”:

“Facebook Is Basically In The Tank For Trump, Says Bloomberg Businessweek – On the magazine’s latest cover, Alfred E. Zuckerberg, let’s call him, dons a Make America Great Again hat and asks, ‘What, Me Partisan?'”

“Businessweek” and “The Atlantic” are being aggressive. “The New York Times” and “The Washington Post” are so busy just reporting the news that they’re not getting the proper message across. As for MSNBC…that’s like the He-Man’s Woman-Haters Club from “The Little Rascals,” an insular club of like-minded people that does not affect the world at large.

And now we’ve got Tucker Carlson featuring a woman claiming that the virus was man-made and it’s flagged on Facebook and Instagram and lives on Twitter:

Facebook and Instagram Flag Tucker Carlson Virus Posts

Yet now Carlson is fighting back:

“Tucker Carlson Cries Censorship After His COVID-19 Posts Flagged as Misinformation by Facebook, Instagram”

And you wonder why Republicans fail to wear masks.

Yes, social media is complicit. But, once again, the Democrats just tell us to vote for laid back Old Joe who can’t even get any traction in the media, who is two-dimensional in most people’s minds, other than the Republicans who keep saying he’s demented and evil, and that everything will work out. THAT’S B.S! Because first and foremost the odds of Biden actually getting into office are slim, because the right has been fomenting an all hands on deck campaign against the system itself.

Wake up. The right’s game plan is in plain sight. And if you’re not ready to stand up to it, if you’re not willing to go on the offensive, you’re gonna find yourself losing once again, scratching your head, wondering how we got into this fix as you truly lose your freedom. Yes, that’s a left wing concept, not a right, CAN’T WE RECLAIM IT!

Guitarist extraordinaire Joe Bonamassa opines on his upcoming couch concert from the Ryman on September 20th and also discusses his upbringing, his place in the musical landscape, how he and his manager four wall his shows and at the end we delve deeply into guitar collecting. Self-deprecating yet quick-witted, I could have talked to Joe for hours more.

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The only Democrat on the right page is Hillary Clinton, and she’s not backing down. She told Joe Biden not to CONCEDE!

At least one person learned the lesson of 2016. That Trump fights dirty and will do anything to win and if he doesn’t win he will still say he won. End of story.

Don’t believe me?

“Appearing on ‘Fox & Friends’ on Tuesday morning, President Trump again told his supporters to believe that if the election doesn’t deliver the result they want, the outcome is inherently illegitimate – that there are no democratically legitimate circumstances under which he and his supporters can lose in a fair election.

By my count, this is the third time he has stated this explicitly in recent weeks. Trump will generally say both that the election is likely to be rigged and fraudulent – say, due to vote-by-mail – and that he can lose only if that happens.”

Trump just repeated his ugliest claim about the election. Why isn’t it bigger news?

Trump is preparing not only himself for victory, but his minions. The Democrats? They’re still debating the issues, defending Joe Biden against all the bogus issues the right throws at him. So when the going gets tough, the Democratic constituency will be completely unprepared.

My friends want to argue the horse race, they want to whip out statistics, talk about Nate Silver, wince over Trump’s behavior, but all of those are completely irrelevant. Trump is gonna declare victory no matter what, then what?

The Democratic insiders are getting prepared. They don’t want to be outplayed like they were in 2000. But those not on the inside? THEY’VE GOT NO CLUE!

Let’s go back to Hillary. The problem is still her e-mails, they caused Covid-19 and global warming, of course. The Democrats played defense in 2016, but you can only win if you play offense. Kinda like the “deplorables.” Hillary and the left were badgered into retreating, taking back their words, and then they were lambasted for them all the way until election day, even after. The truth is Clinton should have doubled-down, isn’t that what Trump has always done? He owns his statements. And the truth is a lot of Trump’s supporters are deplorable, and what difference does it make if you label them so, they’re going to vote for Trump anyway.

There’s this canard that there’s a great swath of undecided voters out there. If not, why do we have this endless election process which takes up the better part of two years? If voters are already aligned, what difference do the articles and the debates make? NONE! We live in a completely tribalized society and yet when it comes to voting for president a great number of people don’t know which side they’re on, they haven’t made up their mind? That’s like the Yankees playing the Red Sox and fans not knowing who to root for, but it’s worse, it’s a matter of life and death, of democracy. As for those friends, if you’ve got any, who say they’re not sure, they just don’t want to endure abuse from their circle. Come on, you know some of these people, if you get them alone and push them a bit they admit it, they voted for Trump and will again, but if they say so they’ll be excommunicated from the group. You know, the ones who are educated but refuse to ever discuss politics. The undecided voter is a myth, I tell you.

So, Trump is playing the long game. He not only took control of the post office and hobbled it, he installed his own judges, who are tilting the playing field his way. Like the Trump judge who ruled the Democratic governor of Pennsylvania’s lockdowns unconstitutional. And don’t tell me to respect the bench, that would assume that no one lies in court and just because you were appointed you’ve got gravitas, when nothing could be further from the truth.

We could pay whac-a-mole here, delineate all of Trump’s offenses, but that’s what the right wants us to do. To get caught up in the minutiae, to debate facts and credibility when those are out the window completely. No, what we need to do is get out of the trenches and focus on the big picture, November 3rd and thereafter, how do Democrats counter Trump’s narrative?

Trump has been telling his acolytes for months that the vote is untrustworthy unless he wins it. Meanwhile, the left keeps talking about the sanctity of the vote, like the election process is inviolate and we’ve just got to let the system work. Yeah, right. No, what the Democrats need is to get their base riled-up for the fight. And they need to do this with sunshine, a slogan. Enough with the hosannas for Michele Obama, when they go low…WE DON’T IGNORE IT!

LEGITIMIZE THE VOTE! Maybe that should be the bumper-sticker. Or MAIL-IN COUNTS! Or, NOVEMBER 3RD IS JUST THE BEGINNING! Yes, everyone agrees that the odds of having a final count on election day are essentially zero. But those in the trenches say Trump will declare victory on November 3rd and then declare all resulting ballots illegal.

Not to mention the problem with mail-in ballots. A lot aren’t counted for numerous reasons. Not mailed in time, not properly signed. Double digit percentages are thrown out, how are the Democrats preparing people for this? Where is the line as to whether a mail-in ballot is valid or not? If the secretary of state in question is a Republican are they going to decide in favor of Democratic mail-in ballots or play the role of a record company, counting royalties in their favor? And yes, you can audit the label, but even if they’re wrong you never ever get a hundred cents on the dollar. You try to solve the problem via the initial contract. But in the case of voting, all these issues are not going to be addressed until the votes come in, and that’s too late.

WE NEED PUSHBACK!

As for the talking heads on TV…forget them, they’ve never experienced this. And they’re so wary of appearing one-sided that they’ll cite the other side’s opinion no matter how inane. But not on Fox! If you’re in the right wing media silo you live in an alternative universe where all Democrats are insane and if Biden wins life in America as we know it will end. There’s no concomitant left wing outlet. Forget the right excoriating MSNBC and CNN, it’s no contest, Fox is way off the rails. But the right keeps working the refs, undermining whatever credibility MSNBC and CNN have, so people won’t pay attention to them.

This is the battle of our lifetimes. This is the battle of the century. This is the ultimate battle for democracy. You’d think the Democrats would play a little harder. But no, they put up an old candidate who can’t even get traction in the news, who barely ever tweets, and close their eyes and hope that it will all work out. Oh, there’s another thing, you can’t say anything bad about Biden or you’re being disloyal. I’d buy that if the DNC and Biden campaign were employing a scorched-earth policy like the Republicans, but instead they’re holed up inside with their polls with their fingers crossed, like a kid praying he got an A on the test. That doesn’t work, but preparation does. And if you ever went to high school you know that the elite were often grade-grubbers, if they did not get the mark they wanted, the one they thought they deserved, they marched right up to the teacher’s desk and implored he or she to change it, to the point where the teacher got wary of giving bad grades to these “achievers.” As for business…it’s all about blurring the lines, if not outright fraud. But somehow, when it comes to the election process everything will be hunky-dory.

This is the message the Democrats must disseminate. That there’s a war on the election process itself and they are going to fight hard and not back down. The Democrats have to alert their voters that voting is just the beginning, and it’s not enough. Sure, vote. But that’s kind of like showing up at the stadium, it’s after you vote that the game begins, truly.

This is unprecedented. So it calls for unprecedented measures. Do you see any from the Democrats with less than two months to go?

This is the narrative that should be established. After all, the Republicans are literally telling their rank and file to take to the street if things don’t go their way. What’s the Democrats’ plan? Hope and prayer? The Republicans are planning a strike in plain sight. It’d be like Japan telegraphing FDR that they were going to bomb Pearl Harbor and Roosevelt doing nothing about it, sitting on his hands and being surprised when the bombs dropped. This isn’t even a sneak attack by the Republicans, they keep telling us if Trump doesn’t win the contest is illegitimate, and if the big bad, i.e. weak, Democrats don’t accept this be ready to fight it out in the streets.

Bite-sized. Hammered over and over again. That’s what the Democrats need. A slogan that everybody in America knows. To prepare them for what’s to come. Oh, don’t talk to me about dividing the country, it’s already divided. As for the Trumpers up in arms…are you gonna always play by their rules, always concede? Rush Limbaugh and his minions get it wrong about Covid-19 but somehow they’re right when it comes to climate change? The Republicans have their voters hoodwinked. They’re all-in. The truth is irrelevant. And their truth is that the Democrats are untrustworthy and Biden is bad for the nation and there’s only one true savior, Donald Trump. Yes, that’s the message, repeated over and over and over again, multiple times each day. And all the Democrats do is drop their jaws open in amazement. As if by pointing at the train-wreck you can prevent it from happening. No, you gain control of the train. It’s too late to rebuild the track or the locomotive. You prepare the passengers. You tell them you’re going to do your best to prevent an incident, but if it comes be prepared, and blame it on the lack of investment in infrastructure. Owning your faults only works if you’re a celebrity going to rehab. You circle the wagons and push back. That’s the nation we’re living in. The fight is not over the vote, but the count. Get that message hammered into people’s heads, and only then will you have a chance of victory.