The Music Plays the Band

Jeffery Pepper Rodgers interviews Bob Weir in a revealing article "The Music Plays the Band" in the August 2008 Acoustic Guitar (Vol.19, No. 2,p.52-59.) Bob talks about the guitar, singing, playing, writing, and the dynamics of a band. "I've always viewed writing and playing as being a storyteller."

Fillmore: The Last Days Revived

When the neighborhood around the original Fillmore Auditorium became too rough, Bill Graham took over the lease of the Carousel Ballroom in downtown San Francisco, which had been run for the previous eight months by the Dead, along with a couple of other prominent San Francisco partners (like the Airplane). Renamed the Fillmore West, the beautiful second-floor ballroom served as the counterpart to Graham's famed Fillmore East in New York City, closing on July 4th, 1971. Before it closed that summer Bill Graham put on a five-day concert send-off that was filmed and released the next year as the documentary Fillmore: The Last Days. Memorable too was the 3 LP box set with concert highlights (Grateful Dead's Casey Jones and Johnny B. Goode, and contributions from Quicksilver, Santana, Hot Tuna...) and the special packaging that included the closing week's poster, a used ticket, and a booklet with a listing of all Fillmore West shows.

The 1972 documentary (105 mins) is now coming out on DVD in November, but if you want to see it sooner it will be shown at the Mill Valley Film Festival, Throckmorton Theatre on October 3rd.

Sound to the image of fire, the birth of a volcano

Mickey Hart and frequent collaborator and classical tabla virtuoso Zakir Hussain have created the soundtrack for the new blast of the famous Las Vegas Mirage 's volcano. Video and photos of the creation and performance are available at: http://www.prnewswire.com/mnr/mgm/34865/

Grateful Dead 365

The availability of Holly George-Warren's Grateful Dead 365 has just been announced by publisher Abrams. In 744 pages George-Warren covers five decades of "intimate portraits, candid backstage shots, and colorful performance images." Holly George-Warren was an editor at Rolling Stone from 1993-2001. She co-edited The Rolling Stone Encyclopedia of Rock and Roll, and she received a Grammy nomination for Best Historical Recording in 2001 for co-producing Rhino's 5 box CD set R-E-S-P-E-C-T: A Century of Women in Music.

Hip hip for hip hop

Congratulations go out to Cornell University's Division of Rare and Manuscript Collections for its new acquisition of a major archive on the history of hip hop and rap music. You can read a lot more about this great gift of Americana music at:
http://communications.library.cornell.edu/com/news/spotlight/Hip-Hop-Collection.cfm

It's only rock and roll but the V&A likes it

Here's another auction high for a rock and roll artifact. London's Victoria and Albert Museum has just purchased John Pasche's tongue and lips original art work used on the Rolling Stone's Sticky Fingers album. Read more about a pop culture logo making it into a big league museum in Sunday's Sept. 2nd, 2008 New York Times article by Julie Bloom. (Or if you subscribe online to the Times here's the reference:
http://www.nytimes.com/2008/09/02/arts/music/02arts-VICTORIAANDA_BRF.html

Of Lucifer's tail and Fender stratocasters

Yes, Jimi's guitar just went for 280,000 (pounds sterling) at auction. Here's a fun article on it and more "Pop Memorabilla Are The Holy Relics Of Our Time" by Craig Brown:
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/opinion/main.jhtml?xml=/opinion/2008/09/06/do0606.xml