2009
Live
at the Folklore Center NYC – March 6, 1967
by
Luke Torn
From
the day it opened in 1957, Izzy Youngs Folklore Center
fast became a Greenwich Village landmark. Part music store,
part community nexus, and wholly devoted to the developing
folk scene, the venue boosted countless careers during its
16-year run not least Bob Dylans; Izzy Young
himself promoted Dylans first concert proper. Izzy
was a switchboard, wrote the late Dave Van Ronk in his
entertaining memoir, The Mayor Of MacDougal Street. When
he opened that little hole, there was suddenly a place where
everyone went, and it became a catalyst for all sorts of things.
By
1967, though, acoustic guitars were out, and even Van Ronk
hardly a latent rocknroller had
gone electric with his band, The Hudson Dusters. Despite the
struggle, though, Young continued to shepherd an astonishing
array of new artists into public consciousness Joni
Mitchell, Emmylou Harris, Patti Smith. And a 20-year-old Californian
kid called Tim Buckley.
Here
was a cant-miss prospect, loaded with charisma and angelic
good looks, the songs of a poet, and a spellbinding five-octave
voice. Intense, mysterious, mercurial, Tim Buckley arrived
at precisely the right moment, 1966 Dylan having gone
electric, the first stirrings of psychedelia to help
ring in pops radical new direction.
Turns
out, Buckley, with later forays into jazz fusion, improvisation,
and other harmonic experimentation, was among his generations
most radical artists. In time, that was a recipe for a protracted
downward commercial spiral, and, when mixed with his predilection
for hard drugs, an inglorious death in 1975 at age 28. Given
the luxury and distance of time, though, Buckley, like Gram
Parsons, Nick Drake, et al, emerges as a romantic figure,
an idealist who embodied some of the eras highest ideals:
staunch resistance to compromise; a constant, innate need
to push artistic boundaries; a determination to put art before
careerism.
All
of which makes this recording a virtual Buckley ground zero,
such a breathtaking document. Recorded before a tiny, polite
audience, it presents a fleeting vision: Buckley as wet-behind-the-ears
folksinger, stripped down to just voice and guitar, pouring
out 16 subtly complex, inner musings of the soul.
In
early 1967 Tim Buckley was still raw, a bit formless. His
voice, an impossibly powerful, graceful tenor, could move
listeners through a kaleidoscope of emotions, but also had
a tendency to lapse into melodrama or histrionics. Buckley
was just beginning to get his sea-legs as a songwriter, and
while dry-run folk-rock set Tim Buckley his late-66
debut for Elektra had shown flashes, in the big picture
Buckley was little more than yet another world-weary troubadour
in a post-Dylan world.
Folklore
Center is the first tape to catch Buckley solo, and stands
in stark contrast to the studio ornamentation and overdub-happy
creations found on his studio recordings. His repertoire is
in transition, moving from derivative folk/blues into the
atmospheric, drifting balladry that would soon mark his best
work. Theres precious cargo here, too. Reputedly many
original Buckley songs have been lost to time, but this tape
contains six previously unknown or unrecorded songs.
From
the opener, Song For Jainie the songs tumble out
in a rush of adrenalin and ringing/droning guitar, images
of inner turmoil piling up in eloquent verse. Buckleys
tone is regal, reverent, serious this is not light
listening. His voice, ethereal, precious, operatic, commands
the material, and he consistently zeroes in on the jagged
emotion of the songs, pulling hurt and anger to the surface
in I Never Asked To Be Your Mountain, or capturing
loves first dizzying rush on I Cant See
You.
Though
influenced by Dylan, Buckley was more enthralled by another
Village legend Fred Neil. A buoyant adaptation of Neils
Country Boy is the penultimate song, Buckley leaning
into its rather uncharacteristic aw-shucks sentiment with
urgent vocal runs and rapid-fire strumming. Buckleys
Neil fixation is more overt on the cadenced phrasing of Just
Please Leave Me, a trademark kiss-off song, and one
that has gone unheard on record until now. Cool as Buckleys
blues workouts are, though, they represented stasis.
A
cover of Neils then-new Dolphins
poignant, pensive, conveying a seen-it-all-before ennui
- cuts deeper, opens up more room to stretch, and thats
where Buckley was going. The madrigal drone of Phantasmagoria
In Two strikes a similar brooding tone, reflecting an
introspective take on the chaos of the times. And when Buckley
(with co-writer Larry Beckett) tackles the overtly topical
No Man Can Find The War- brilliantly turning the
subject of Vietnam outside in (Is the war inside your
mind? he sings), the songs sombre vibe hits a
nerve.
Those
superb unreleased songs, especially Cripples Cry
and If The Rain Comes, with their old-world melodies
(the mind boggles at potential Sandy Denny interpretations),
provide a glimpse at what was lost as Buckley raced to defy
expectations time and again. But its all fascinating;
a fly-on-the-wall glimpse of the development of folk-into-rock
and Buckleys ephemeral odyssey of a career.
©
2009 Torn/UNCUT
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