Leon Redbone C/D?

the stainlifter, thats all

still. fucking good facial hair. (leon redbone, that is, not ... oh, you get the idea.)

http://www.seeing-stars.com/Images/People/MrBelvedere.JPG http://www.seeing-stars.com/Images/People/MrBelvedere.JPG http://www.seeing-stars.com/Images/People/MrBelvedere.JPG http://www.seeing-stars.com/Images/People/MrBelvedere.JPG http://www.seeing-stars.com/Images/People/MrBelvedere.JPG http://www.seeing-stars.com/Images/People/MrBelvedere.JPG

i'd say "on the track" and even "double time" (lps 1 and 2) are classic. although, i like him so much that i'll pick up anything i see by him on lp. i have "champagne charlie" and just picked up "from branch to branch" today. apparently he lives in bucks county, pennsylvania.

the version of "ain't misbehavin'" from "on the track" is my favorite song of his, i think.

Is Man Man my generation's Leon Redbone?

oh plzzzz

Is Tim Fite or Les Claypool my generation's Leon Redbone?

Gotta give another shout out for On The Track. "My Walking Stick" is a stone cold classic.

dude looks like rocky roccoco

http://www.leonredbone.com/images/__onthetrk.GIF
also agree 'walking stick' is unfuckwithable and hyperclassic

Just beginning my Leon Redbone phase, after years of giggling about The Stainlifter/Belvedere connection.

LOVE what I've heard of Champagne Charlie!

And let us not forget:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=syNW5uws0xo

Alas:

https://chicago.suntimes.com/2019/5/30/18645937/musician-leon-redbone-dies-obituary

permalilnked

https://web.archive.org/web/20201107230112/https://chicago.suntimes.com/2019/5/30/18645937/leon-redbone-dies-musician-obituary

in other news this website still going strong

https://www.leonatkinson.com/random/index.php/album.html

I really miss seeing him live. I always felt like he never got enough credit for the way those performances would tip into being deeply weird & avant garde.

He obviously was famous for making a gag out of his blank affect, but I remember later-years shows at the dark basement jazz club in my town where in between songs he would literally hold his guitar in position and sit silent & perfectly motionless like a statue for a minute or more. No banter, no jokes, no thing, just sit there frozen. The audience would be dead silent, then sometimes start nervously chuckling, then go back to silence until you could hear a pin drop. After an excruciating while, maybe he would maybe make the smallest motion, like slightly tug on the cuff of his shirt, or just let out a quiet sigh. Then after a little more time in statue-mode he would suddenly, for no outwardly apparent reason, begin playing another song without warning.

Meanwhile, if he had sidemen at the show, they would also sit motionless, instruments at the ready & only make the bare minimum motions necessary to play them, like Kraftwerk or the automaton band in The Abominable Dr Phibes. Just utterly surreal, true minimalist shit, like how Robert Wilson or Marina Abramovic would stage a "jazz show."

I used to always think about the way people would talk about it if like John Cale or David Byrne or other artists that people actually took seriously started doing that. Like I know he did the Mr Belvedere theme and ha-ha-ha, but think about what other live performers you've seen that can hold an audience dead rapt by literally sitting silent and motionless like that - much less have the guts to even try? Just Alvin Lucier?

I know it sounds ridiculous, but the more I saw him as the years went on and watched his shows subtly get more & more bizarre, the more I started to think of him on a continuum with someone like Alan Vega. Drip by drip, he ever so slowly guided his audience into watching these truly out-there and tbh confrontational performances, but you were kind of tricked into not seeing it that way because instead of "Rocket USA" he would sing something like "Champagne Charlie". Just an insanely strange guy.

he talked to Alf

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NMTwYv9KjSI