Wednesday, April 04, 2007

It's Days Like This...

...that really bum me out.

When I do a layout for a musician in my book, the first thing I do is print out all the photos I have of them. Four to a page and then I cut them up so I can sort through them, look at them all at once and pick the pictures I want for the book.

I just finished all the Lowell George photos. I have 39 to pick from...but I'm really bummed because I am missing all of the live color shots. I know I took them. One of them is on the inside of the Waiting For Columbus album. See? It's right there:

I'm trying to get a copy of that shot through the record company. I really want to put it in the book, since Lowell said it was his favorite picture of himself.

Why the fuck didn't I take better care of my stuff?

6 comments:

Harry Funk said...

I was just reading about Lowell George's attempts at producing the Grateful Dead's "Shakedown Street." That should have been a collaboration of musical geniuses, but ... well, I haven't listened to that album in many years. Apparently, Lowell's involvement in the project had more to do with the activities that brought him to a premature end than any musical contributions. A sad tale of what might have been.

Has anyone else worked with both the Mothers of Invention and the Grateful Dead?

Chesher Cat said...

I didn't know he 'worked' with the Dead.

I have been mulling over the idea of including a 0 degrees of separation list at the end of the book as many of the artists are intertwined in one way or another. But it might take me too long to figure it all out plus I'm running out of space.

RollUmEasy said...

Boy, do I have a treat for you guys. A few years ago, some "Shakedown Street" recording session outtakes turned up. There's a version of "Good Lovin'" with Lowell singing lead vocal. He also sings backing vocal on "Miracle" and the other version of "Good Lovin'", and plays slide on some others. You can find them here. They're worth a listen.

I've also heard some good stories about Lowell's attempt at producing Bonnie Raitt's "Takin' My Time" album (which is underrated, IMO), and some pretty wild stories about the "Thanks I'll Eat It Here" recording sessions, too.

Chesher Cat said...

How do I open those files?

I'm technically challenged. Plus some of those things don't work for Mac people.

Can you email me an MP3 that I can put in itunes?

RollUmEasy said...

Shorten (.shn) is a lossless audio compression scheme that GD, LF, etc. live-recording traders use (see etree.org). It's much better quality that mp3. There are .shn plugins for most media players (winamp, etc).

Even though it's generally frowned upon by digital audio purists ;-), I'll make an exception here and convert them to mp3 for you.

Harry Funk said...

Did you get those Lowell/Dead recordings? I think I have them on a disc somewhere, from downloading them a few years ago. I think ...