1. Yes. When it comes to the music of The Band getting inside me and moving me and when it comes to understanding their impact on the amorphous world of rock and roll, I am about forty-five or so years late to this party. I'm sure glad, though, that the invitation to this party never expires. As a follow up to having watched The Last Waltz, today I learned a ton about Bob Dylan and The Band by watching the documentary, Down in the Flood: Bob Dylan, The Band, and The Basement Tapes. By turns, the movie informed, inspired, unnerved, saddened, and stimulated me. Most of all, it broadened and deepened my understanding not only of Bob Dylan and The Band, but of the broader cultural and musical history of rock and roll itself.
2. The Deke and I volunteered to watch Olivia, David, and Ana and offered Molly and Hiram a night out to do what they pleased. Beforehand, the Deke and I went to Quench for a beer or two and split an order of quesadillas and split a Reuben sandwich. The food and beer were very satisfying and the kids were easy -- Ana, especially, went to sleep very shortly after the Deke took her to bed. This doesn't always happen. Molly and Hiram returned home after a fun night on New Hampshire Ave. in the Colesville area and we shot the breeze for a while and the Deke and I headed back to our apartment home.
3. So, after watching the two movies about The Band, I decided to watch the Levon Helm documentary again, Ain't in It for My Health and I enjoyed it even more the second time around. It's a sad and joyous movie at the same time. Levon Helm is both buoyant and bitter, alive to the blessings of his life and the music he made living out his years in Woodstock, NY, but bitter about the way things turned out for The Band and the loss of his two mates Richard Manuel and Rick Danko. If you are curious about the tensions between Robbie Robertson and Levon Helm, punch their names into any search engine and you'll find plenty written about it. I won't get into it here.
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