Wednesday, January 26, 2011

Well, for those of you who have inquired about where they might hear a bit of Peter LaBonne, this one's for you:



23 CDs worth of material. Gigunda! For the curious, I would start with the first disc and then move through the first handful if so inclined. (I think that disc two has some of his best material so you'll hit paydirt right away.) Pete lives way up in the Adirondack Mountains and doesn't have a phone. I found out about this yesterday via a short, cryptic email. Frankly, I think the price is way too high. I'd sell the whole wad for $20 and get people buzzing. But bit by bit, listeners are in for quite a ride. Read the reviews and listen to the samples and you'll get a taste. Keep in mind that after hearing the first five or six discs on this tape, Alex Chilton told me that if he ever recorded an album of Pete's material (he spent some time in the Hodge Podge Lodge where this was recorded), he'd have his first million selling album. But I'm not sure anyone could really play this stuff except for Peter.

Peter plays virtually all the instruments and recorded all this on funky equipment under pretty primitive conditions - we're talking about a dirt floor shack. His standard M.O. was to get an idea over morning coffee, write the song, and then record it that day. He did a bunch of studio work in New Orleans and his cohorts would always try to back him up in the studio on his own material but all the attempts at capturing his sound came up flat. He's sort of like a one-man Magic Band.

I've known Peter since 1966. What's sort of amazing is that there are people like this still out there. Barely on the radar. Making music that sounds like nothing else out.

2 comments:

Anonymous said...

got a 'webpage not found' message. Will try again later tho for sure.

B. E. said...

Should be fixed now. Thanks for the heads-up...