New Music from the East Coast
The Band
Pittsburgh is only about 300 miles from Philadelphia but it may as well have been another planet. In Pittsburgh we were behind on almost everything except maybe the Vogues who recorded “Five O’Clock World.” They were from Pittsburgh. I really hope I’m right about this.
Anyway, when I started going with Mark who was from South Jersey I realized how behind Pittsburgh actually was. Here was this boy who told me about Hermann Hesse but also told me about The Band.
It was explained to me that The Band were a back-up band for Bob Dylan. They had recorded Music from Big Pink and Mark showed me the album cover. He was a very big fan and I started listening with him. The words were weird and I couldn’t even pretend to understand them. But that was Mark’s passion, to understand things. He had a strong poetic side to him but he couldn’t just accept song lyrics for what they were.
After Big Pink there were other albums and oh so many songs to discuss and analyze. Too many to remember. Just parts of sentences remain: “I pulled into Nazareth, feeling about half way dead…” “Up On Cripple Creek” and “Stage Fright” are a few.
As Mark moved into madness his mind grew more and more frantic in its attempts to make sense of things, both in music and otherwise. I do remember seeing The Band at the Syria Mosque, with very low prices it seems now, and a nice calm crowd of people. I can’t think about The Band’s music without thinking about this young man who appeared in my life when I needed a friend and comrade more than any other time in my life.
lgmwriting 