Levon’s battle is over. You can still get drum lessons from him, though.
My children get all sorts of information from YouTube. They teach themselves, mostly. It’s an astonishingly effective teaching resource if you learn to wade through the dross and pick out the gems. I’m not surprised that public schools hand out laptops, but then try various schemes to block YouTube. Careful. you might learn something. Why not just update your Facebook page all day, kids?
All social media and communication devices are double-edged swords. They’re just enormous time-wasters for the majority of the population, and the rest see their possibilities and use them to add activity to their days by subtracting the friction that used to be endemic in finding information and getting a hold of people and purchasing things. If you’re as old as I am, you’ve seen an enormous transformation of what’s possible. You’re reading this, ain’tchoo? Maybe on a phone.
If you’re like me, you’ve also scratched your head as the gains in what’s possible are squandered by many, if not most, people. But the medium has no opinion. YouTube probably wouldn’t care if everyone watched Levon Helm instructional videos instead of Kardashian shimmy updates. You’ve got to save yourself, brothers and sisters. Can I get an #Amen?
I defy you to find anyone that can sing along with their own drumming, with no other accompaniment, and sound like that. Life is a carnival, and Levon Helm was a one-man circus. And you can join the circus if you can get YouTube.
5 Responses
Geez. That wasn't just instructive, it was edifying.
The wonderful thing was when he broke into the song – then he wasn't just teaching, he was performing. He meant it.
Amen.
Time wasting is not new. I can remember doing library research over the years for my various undertakings, and marveling at the people who seemed to have nothing better to do than spend hours in front of the stereoscopes looking at pictures of Niagara Falls and such.
He could really do it, all right.
But surely somebody from New England isn't making fun of the way people talk….
What a guy. Sure do miss him. Living just south of where the Danville train ran I have a soft spot for The Night They Drove Old Dixie Down, but that's just me.
As for an accent, I didn't hear one. Ayuh, shuah didn't.