Thursday, April 20, 2006

And The Winner Is...

David Chamness
Portland, Oregon

David swooped in from Kill Ugly Radio earlier this week and in a mere half hour unravelled the mystery of the backstage photo pictured above. He identified Lowell George, Mo Ostin and Lowell's son. To be truthful, I don't know which son he is but since David named all three of his sons - Jeb, Luke and Forrest - I have to give it to him. And he not only identified the venue as the L.A. Lakers locker room at the Forum, he also came up with the date of the show - December 19, 1975. He then went on to identify the great John Sebastian as the other person in the extra clue photo.
When I asked him how he got the answers, he wrote:
"Well, there's no mistaking Lowell, he was always cool and charismatic. And, being a huge fan of the Lowell-era Little Feat, as well as other artists in the Warner Bros. family (Jackson Browne, Bonnie Raitt, Linda Ronstadt, J. D. Souther, etc.), I've seen a lot of pictures of Mo Ostin. His love of music, and his signing and nurturing of talented artists are what made Warner Bros. so great back then, and (more importantly) allowed the artists to produce such wonderful music. I was glad to see him get inducted to the R&R HoF...(now, if we could only get Lowell inducted :-) ). The only problem I had with the kid in the middle was which one of Lowell's sons it was. I know Inara was only an infant when Lowell died, so she might not even have been born yet, so it had to be one of the boys. I remembered seeing their names in an obituary for Lowell (sigh...) that I had come across and saved quite a while ago. So, out of the three, I remembered Forrest's name coming up a few times in either Bill Payne's or Fred Tackett's touring emails to a Little Feat listserver I was subscribed to. If Forrest was correct, it was just a lucky guess. Now, the location was difficult in the first picture. It was obviously in a sports dressing room, but I couldn't make out the names on the lockers. The second picture made it too easy. Kareem Abdul-Jabbar is right there in big bold letters, so it had to be the Forum. Next, a quick trip to FeatBase.net, and a quick search for shows in the 74-76 timeframe (an educated guess by Lowell's appearance) showed that Little Feat played the Forum on 12-19-75, (exactly one week after I saw them live for the first time, at SIU in Carbondale, IL, BTW). All in all, it took me about 1/2 hour, including setting up the blogger account so i could leave my email addy."

I'm happy the prizes are going to a truly dedicated fan. In addition to a signed book (when it's published), and his name in the thank you section (because he's so cool), I will be sending David one of my photographs of Lowell George in concert. Since he's letting me pick, it will be a shot that has not been seen before (well, of course I've seen it, oh and Lowell George saw it too) that I am planning to put in the book. So, David, keep it under wraps and don't let me see it on ebay.

For all of you who missed out on this one, you still have a chance to win in the Robin Gibb Caption contest. It requires no research, no special abilities - you just have to post a caption in the comments section of my "Classic" post. Check it out.

5 comments:

Anonymous said...

I have long held an interest in the life stories of the various rock music artists from decades past, which explains why I was delighted to find everybodyishotisdead.blogspot.com. Previously I have enjoyed viewing the photography online of Michael Ochs, a distinguished chronicler of the lives of various rock musicians, and Deborah Chesher is another photographer of note who has presented some very interesting material. The blog is well constructed. I plan to come back often to this intrigueing web address and look forward to the publication of Everybody I Shot Is Dead.

-- Tom Simon

RollUmEasy said...

Deborah,
Thanks for saying I was cool, my teenage daughters really got a kick out of that. :-) They (and I) think you're cool, too...

BTW, if you haven't seen this Lowell George tribute web page before, you should check it out sometime: http://dmci.com/lowell/lowell.html

Unknown said...

Hi Deborah,
I was a tech for Little Feat and Lowell in 75, 77, 78, and sad old 79. Yeah we were called roadies then. So, we probably crossed paths, i might have been obnoxious- either wanting you out of the way, or hitting on you- sorry. I thought i was on a misson. We all did around Feat.
Anyway, i came across this contest a bit late but the little boy in the picture is Jed Levy, Elizabeth George's son from her other marriage. Jed is co-writer on Lowell's 20 Million Things, and is the Jedadiah named in the song. not sure how this google blog thing works, have to keep signing in. i am not "stuckinaloop". you can reach me at treehause@earthlink.net. cheers, David Reilly

Forrest George said...

I thank you for the pics. Most of the above information seems accurate.

Forrest George said...

The kid in the photo is Jed Levy. He is Lowell's stepson, my stepbrother.