Posted by Whenever someone asks me if I’ve heard of This New Band or That New Band my answer is always the same*: “Give me a break, there are still Rolling Stones records that I haven’t heard yet!”
Which is true, astoundingly. And there are still a few Beatles songs out there that I have yet to hear too. If that sounds hard to believe, try humming a few bars of The Beatles’ Little Child or maybe Tell Me What You See. See?
Heck, there are entire bands out there that I’ve not had the time to sit down and familiarize myself with, and I’m talking longstanding, established bands that a music-lover like me has no business not knowing about. Band like The Smiths, King Crimson, Captain Beefheart, Leonard Cohen, and oh how embarrassingly long does the list go on! And like I’m going to take the time to sit down and listen to the new Captain Flash & the Pans record? Like I say: give me a break.
All of this preamble is a way of softening the blow when I admit that when I went to see Little Feat on July 5th, 1997 I was wholly unfamiliar with the band with the exception of Dixie Chicken, which is a song so ingrained in, well, everyone and everything that I thought it was as old as I’m a Yankee Doodle Dandy or at least This Land is Your Land and I had to be told (or at least reminded) that it was actually a Little Feat song.
The show was at the Ottawa Bluesfest, and it was so long ago that it was the only show I saw at the Bluesfest that year** (which only ran for four days). How I missed Johnny Winter and Dr. John – who also played that day – is beyond me, but I distinctly remember standing in Confederation Park watching Little Feat, beer in hand.
One thing I did know even back then was that Little Feat had lost their founding member and driving force Lowell George long, long before, and that the impact his death had had on the reformed band landed somewhere between what Duane Allman’s death did to The Allman Brothers Band and what Freddie Mercury’s death did to Queen. Perhaps this is one of the reasons why the band had never been on my radar.
Not to mention the lack of listening time, of course***. Remember, there are still those Rolling Stones records I have yet to hear.
And the show was good I suppose, but not good enough for me to run around screaming stuff like “How could I not know this band?!?!” or anything. I mean, everyone was having a great time and the music was fun, but again, I was so unfamiliar with the material that it would have taken a knock-out what-the-heck-was-that? kind of show to truly engage me.
I wonder if they played Willin’’? I guess they must have…since learning it for a gig some time ago I’ve had many people request it around the campfire, so I guess it’s one of Little Feat’s bigger songs. It’s a great, subtle song and a heck of a lot of fun to sing and play but I can see my old self not really noticing it at this show.
Unfortunately, this concert did little to elevate my knowledge of Little Feat and I must admit that as I sit here writing this I couldn’t name you a third song of theirs, which is pretty shameful I suppose. But like I say, there’s still those Stones records…
Maybe I should just wrap this up and take a walk down to the record store. Maybe I’ll see if they have December’s Children, or maybe Sailin’ Shoes.
(For a perfect example, just two days after writing this I finally got around to listening to Bob Dylan’s first record, which I bought at a garage sale for $1. I really, really can’t believe that I’ve never heard that album before. Now I can’t stop listening to it.)
*Except of course in cases where I have indeed heard of the band in query, which isn’t completely rare; I’m not a sonic dinosaur or anything. I love me some King Gizzard and the Lizard Wizard or Kamasi Washington, for a couple of 21st Century examples.
**Long after I wrote this I noticed that this was actually my first ever time attending Bluesfest, kicking off a relationship that would last for over two decades. I tell you, I saw a lot of good concerts at Bluesfest. Met m’lady there even.
***To be fair, I got a really, really late start. I didn’t gain any decent exposure to the true greats of music (aside from Elvis Presley and Red Sovine) until I was in my twenties.
Todd Man Out 