Drum Lessons With Levon Helm: Sangin’ Is Youseyulie A Full-Tahm Jahb, ‘n Drummin’ Is Youseyulie A Full-Tahm Jahb

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.

Unorganized Onions

Unorganized Hancock is back, with their rendition of Green Onions.

Green Onions could lay claim to be the greatest single ever released.  You might disagree, but few would laugh at the suggestion. It’s sort of universal and ubiquitous. How many times, in how many places have you heard that song?

The Heir got it in his head to play the keyboard a few weeks ago, and Green Onions naturally suggests itself as the first thing you might learn how to play. That’s universality. It beats the hell out of Frère Jacques or Chop Sticks, that’s fer sure.

Booker T. and the MGs did the original, of course. They were essentially the house band for Stax and Volt records.

I always preferred Stax records to Motown. I like the roadhouse better than the supper club. Besides Booker T, Stax featured Rufus and Carla Thomas, Albert King, Otis Redding, Sam and Dave, Eddie Floyd,  Wilson Pickett, Isaac Hayes, The Bar-Kays, The Staple Singers, and many others.

Our neighbor helped host a classic car show over in Mexico, Maine the other night. We attended and I took a bunch of pictures of cars you see in the slideshow. You’re officially old when classic car shows start featuring models that you drove to high school. Or, more specifically, you drove to wherever it was you went to when you were supposed to be in high school.

If you’d like to help us buy equipment and instruction for our two boys, there’s a PayPal tip jar in the right hand column. Many thanks!

[Update: Kathleen M. is the nicest person in Connecticut. Many thanks!]

Month: June 2013

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