As a lot of you probably know, this blog is named after an Arthur Lee/Love song. Lee is an amazing musician and he's from Los Angeles (although he lives in Memphis now), so it made total sense. Last year when I posted my top 50 albums of all time, Forever Changes (the album that contains the song "You Set the Scene") ranked sixth. Recently Lee was diagnosed with leukemia. Like a lot of musicians in this country, he doesn't have any health insurance. Benefits were organized in New York and LA. Yesterday, Billboard.com posted an update on the New York benefit:
6/23 @ Beacon Theatre (tix on sale 5/12)
Performers: Robert Plant, David Johansen, Ian Hunter Band, Love guitarist Johnny Echols, Yo La Tengo and Alec Ounsworth (from Clap Your Hands Say Yeah)
Are you kidding? That's an impressive f'ing lineup. The lead singers of Led Zeppelin, the New York Dolls and Mott the Hoople with Yo La Tengo (one of my favorite artists of the 90s) and the lead singer of CYHSY (one of my favorite records last year). I'd pay really good money to see that.
Today Pitchfork posted an update on the LA show and it didn't quite have the same prestige (no offense to Baby Lemonade or Johnny Echols of course). Hopefully some other people will step up. Has anybody heard anything? How pathetic will it be if the New York benefit attracts that level of talent and Lee's hometown can't? Come on LA.
You can donate money at http://www.thelovesociety.com/
2 comments:
Pathetic but not surprising...though I'm a little surprised the surviving Doors aren't playing....Love and the kinks were apparently Jim's favorite bands. To think, Love might very well be the best LA band of all time and all we get is Baby Lemonade (though Mike Randall is one of the best guitarists I've ever seen).
I asked Mitchell Frank about the L.A. benefit last night and he said that both he and Liz(Echo booker) were very sad and frustrated about the lack of interest by many L.A. artists. He did tell me that Cake was playing but he got solid NOs from some very influential and famous L.A. "rock stars". He promised that they would not rest until they got some bad-ass rockers to contribute.
Perhaps we should start a letter/email campaign pressuring guys like Beck until they give in.
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