Music to cook your turkey to...

November 24, 2009 8:36 PM

Thanksgiving. you know what that means. But this year, Arlo's got some competition from The Band. Scorsese's film 'The Last Waltz' chronicled their final show at the Winterland (1976-11-25). We've discussed the movie, and the album before, but that wasn't the half of it! The whole show was more than 4 hours, and thanks once again to wonderful guys at Wolfgang's Vault we can now listen to the whole damn show!
posted by mikelieman (28 comments total)

thank you. my only complaint is that Neil Diamond still gets only one song.
posted by philip-random at 8:48 PM on November 24, 2009

I would be much happier if this kind of stuff was in the trading community rather than doled out in low quality, proprietary streaming format by the squatters at WV.
posted by anazgnos at 8:53 PM on November 24, 2009 [1 favorite]

it's just not quite the same without the airbrushing of Neil Young's M&M-sized disco dust
posted by porn in the woods at 8:54 PM on November 24, 2009 [2 favorites]

Oh, man... and I'm fairly certain they filmed the whole thing, too. THAT is a concert film I'd go see! I already love the anniversary extended version of the film...

Thanks for posting. I'll be listening to this tomorrow!
posted by hippybear at 8:58 PM on November 24, 2009

I would be much happier if this kind of stuff was in the trading community rather than doled out in low quality, proprietary streaming format by the squatters at WV.

With the exception of Jerry Weekend every year, where we setup a PA system to listen to tapes, ( and even then we're moving more and more to just selecting shows off the A/V server -- Terabytes is cheap these days... ) I'm within arms reach of a computer pretty much all the time, so this is fine for me. ( Although I wouldn't mind spending money for flacs.) I don't get the squatters reference though, can you elaborate?
posted by mikelieman at 9:08 PM on November 24, 2009

Unfortunately, I have "Alice's Restaurant" on vinyl, and my asshole neo-con ex-father-in-law insists on listening to it every Thanksgiving. (He doesn't have any other friends/family that will deal with him on turkey day.) He insists on listening to it over, and over. He quotes from it the whole visit. He loves that Arlo got out of the draft, just like he did during Vietnam. I just want to smash that record over his head and waterboard him with the gravy. He's ruined the whole song for me. He's coming tomorrow. Perhaps I should just trash the vinyl now. Anyone want it?
posted by Balisong at 9:22 PM on November 24, 2009 [1 favorite]

I don't get the squatters reference though, can you elaborate?

When they first started out, it was not at all evident that they had any real rights to the material they were streaming, and though they appear to have settled their issues, they were being sued at one point by the artists. It's like, I have a lot of bootlegs, but I don't have the right to sell them. They basically bought Bill Graham's bootleg collection, and they're trying like hell to monetize it within the letter of the law.

Probably just sour grapes on my part that they don't make it available in my preferred format; perhaps I should just be grateful it's available at all. But they've always just seemed skeevy to me. Plenty of similar types of material have ended up in the hands of fans, and fans tend to be much better stewards than the corporate types who run WV.
posted by anazgnos at 9:37 PM on November 24, 2009 [1 favorite]

I don't get the squatters reference though, can you elaborate?

I had precisely the same thought that anazgnos did -- the tape trading community has always been about sharing boots and ROIOs widely and freely, in as high a quality as possible. Deliberately turning these shared resources into low-quality, stream-only revenue tokens spits on all the people who taped these shows and then carried the recordings down through the years.

If you want great CD quality shows for free, visit Dime or etree, or Google for "[band name] FLAC"... and don't forget to seed!
posted by vorfeed at 9:49 PM on November 24, 2009 [2 favorites]

thank you. my only complaint is that Neil Diamond still gets only one song.

His mysterious nose gets 3 more, though. So that's nice.
posted by inigo2 at 9:51 PM on November 24, 2009

FWIW, the mp3 downloads at the "means" link in the FPP no longer work. All kinds of RealPlayer "joy", but no mp3s.
posted by hippybear at 9:55 PM on November 24, 2009

C'mon, RealPlayer? Is this 1997? Am I on AOL? Wolfgang's got to be joking. I thought that huckster Rob Glaser gave up on developing their "premiere" streaming software and became patent trolls, meanwhile trying to push their fanciful, legally-doomed RealDVD turd.
posted by porn in the woods at 10:28 PM on November 24, 2009

porninthewoods: um... I think you weren't paying attention or clicking through on the links. I'm referring to a page at Arlo Guthrie's website, linked under the word "means" in the FPP, where he offers up a "thanksgiving concert" for streaming or download in a couple of formats.

Wolfgang seems to be using exclusively Flash interface for the concert they are offering, probably masking actual mp3 files, but I can't reverse engineer the links the way they have their player structured.

Or what were YOU talking about?
posted by hippybear at 10:36 PM on November 24, 2009

I wanna kill
posted by fusinski at 10:37 PM on November 24, 2009

Huh, I've never head of Alice's Restaurant, and I certainly don't know it as something related to Thanksgiving. However, I've heard the Last Waltz record/tape/CD about a million times growing up.

I'm 29 years old, am I too young to know this as a Thanksgiving tradition?
posted by sideshow at 10:42 PM on November 24, 2009

I always find myself listening to Mathowie's Community Blog every year after Alice's Restaurant. It's become a new tradition.
posted by ktrey at 10:43 PM on November 24, 2009 [3 favorites]

sideshow: You need to know Alice's Restaurant Massacree. It's all about Thanksgiving and such. It's only 20 minutes long, but it's a lifetime of lessons. I heartily recommend you make it into an annual tradition to listen to it ONCE on thanksgiving. Don't become Balisong's father, or he'll have to kill you.
posted by hippybear at 10:44 PM on November 24, 2009 [1 favorite]

So the Last Waltz tracks are the un-edited bootlegs? I'll have to listen to them to hear how different they are. From what Levon Helm says in his auto-biography, the tracks heard in the movie and soundtrack album had to be almost totally re-dubbed in the studio in post-production because the members of The Band and Friends were so wasted during the performance.
posted by octothorpe at 4:25 AM on November 25, 2009

@octothorpe

Except for Levon's part, because he didn't participate in the post-production effort. Talk about an MVP performance on stage...
posted by GamblingBlues at 5:39 AM on November 25, 2009

True, but then Levon had to ruin all of that amassed goodwill by writing the 300-page whinefest called This Wheel's On Fire.
posted by Optamystic at 6:21 AM on November 25, 2009

Whinefest? It's a damned good book!
posted by stenseng at 8:30 AM on November 25, 2009

Live in Austin?
KOOP's starting a new tradition.
Rush - 2112

Join Rock'N'Roll Pest Control for a new Thanksgiving radio tradition: "2112" by Rush! Miss Novak will air this brilliant rock suite in its entirety as a much needed alternative to "Alice's Restaurant." This 1976 epic piece of work, influenced by Ayn Rand's Anthem, has been called "definitive Rush" and takes us to a dystopian world in the year 2112 where every facet of life is dictated by the Priests of the Temples of Syrinx. (If you love "Alice's Restaurant" you can hear it on millions of other radio shows!) Wednesday, 11/25, 3:30 p.m. - 4:30 p.m.


Not sure why you'd want to.
I may listen just to piss off the in-laws.
But then . . . I'm an obnoxious drunk.
posted by Seamus at 8:31 AM on November 25, 2009

> From what Levon Helm says in his auto-biography, the tracks heard in the movie and soundtrack album had to be almost totally re-dubbed in the studio in post-production because the members of The Band and Friends were so wasted during the performance.

Ah, dammit...that's sad, but I suppose not all that surprising. Danko in particular looks higher than Sputnik throughout TLW. I'd imagine Garth was sober, though.
posted by The Card Cheat at 8:45 AM on November 25, 2009

NOW, kid.
posted by shakespeherian at 8:56 AM on November 25, 2009

(hanging out on the Group W bench)
posted by Balisong at 9:34 AM on November 25, 2009

FATHERRAPERS!! FATHERRAPERS SITTIN RIGHT THERE ON THE BENCH AND THEY WAS MEAN AN NASTY N UGLY N HARRIBLE!!!
posted by tspae at 10:29 AM on November 25, 2009

stenseng: "Whinefest? It's a damned good book!"

It's a fun book, he's a great storyteller but it's a big long "fuck you" to Robertson. The man has clearly not moved on.
posted by octothorpe at 12:37 PM on November 25, 2009 [1 favorite]

But to be fair, Robertson does seem to be a bit of a shitfuck. I've always thought the film "The Last Waltz" was a fun view if you look at it as Robbie Robertson's Hollywood audition. Best line, all overwrought and dramatic: "It's a goddamned impossible way of life."
I love that movie on every level.
posted by ghastlyfop at 11:08 AM on November 26, 2009 [1 favorite]

Did you ever see Robertson's one staring role in Carny? He's actually not bad in it but the movie's kind of a mess.
posted by octothorpe at 10:05 AM on November 29, 2009