Saturday, September 29, 2007

Singing To The Siren


A couple of weeks ago I was fooling around in Netflix and adding a Bert Jansch concert video to my queue. The "recommendations" screen popped up and I immediately noticed one title: "Tim Buckley - My Fleeting House". I not only added that one. I immediately put it at the top of my queue. Tim Buckley is one of my all time musical heroes. I got into him with the song "Pleasant Street" and the Happy/Sad album and followed his work all the way through from baroque folk to out there improvisation and finally macho rock and roll. This DVD collects all his rare filmed performances from TV and films and it is marvelous. You see him performing the then-newly written "Song To The Siren" at the close of the last episode of "The Monkees", see him on various TV shows doing stream-of-conciousness improv with his band from the Starsailor period and rocking out on "Sally Go Round The Roses" and "The Dolphins" from his last years.
There's also running commentary from two very important collaborators, his long-time lead guitarist, Lee Underwood and his songwriting partner, Larry Beckett. They also have different opinions about some of Buckley's work. Underwood loves the entire canon but Beckett outright calls Lorca a failure and finds nothing good to say about the first real "rock" album, Greetings From L.A. which I find odd. How can you not dig "Sweet Surrender"? Anyway this DVD was a real treat to watch.

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