BILL WITHERS LIVE AT CARNEGIE HALL
pickwick33
8,946 Posts
This is an underrated soul classic that may as well be Curtis/Live! with a larger audience, to me. Both albums captured a giant of black progressive music at the peak of their powers (and they both recorded for Buddah subsidiaries!). Curtis' album has been dealt with in detail elsewhere, but Bill Withers Live At Carnegie Hall deserves the same lookback...the audience is with him from the gitgo, singing along on the hits and applauding like mad at the new songs. And just likeCurtis/Live! seemingly peaked with "Stone Junkie," Bill's big showstopper is the Vietnam ballad "I Can't Write Left Handed." And his spoken intro to "Grandma's Hands" has to be heard to be believed...the church he went to as a kid was straight-up sanctified, with everything moving, not "one of them churches where they make you wanna die & get it over with."This LP is every bit as good as the hits, and needs a little more light. Still Bill...Just As He Was.
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Definitley underrated. Grandma's Hands and Better Off Dead always get me.
This album destroys me every time.
two threads on two of my favorite albums in one day...
i love this place.
I saw a live performance from the Soul TV show that was pretty damn good. James Gadsen on drum, homie dstill808 had the DVD. Hook it up homie! A couple of the Soul performances as well as a pretty cool interview were also on the Just As I Am DVD on the CD/DVD release that came out last year.
especially when he holds that high note and the crowd eggs him on
for a man who claimed to be really shy coming up, he was as comfortable at carnegie hall as he would have been in his own living room
oh shit, in that interview bill wasnt hiding anything from anybody! "Man, I grew up with the blues! I don't need to read about it in some book by John Hammond! Oh, 'scuse me, I just got excited..." Or words to that effect.
In the last few weeks, in fact, I've started to post about this record a few times, only to deleted it (does anyone else do this?). I hesitate, for the most part, I suppose, because I don't want to ask a sincere question about something I feel so strongly about only to check back and see a pile of graemlins and some titty jpgs. It's maddening. And Bill deserves more.
So, before I slang my salvo, let me offer a gift and throw down the gauntlet:
First: Unjade yourself, motherfuckers, and listen to "Harlem / Cold Baloney" in it's entirty. My gift to you.
Second: If you can't get with this, then please, shut the fuck up. Go somewhere else with your bullshit, because if you fuck this thread up I have no interest with you, ever again. Seriously, must I holler? Must I shake 'em down?
With that... Live At Canrgegie Hall is a perfect album. I am a cynical motherfucker, and for the most part, live albums make me sleepy. Hearing some dude rah! rah! the crowd, excessive roars, long "jam" versions of studio songs with adlib vocals? Spare me! But somehow, all of those things appear on Live at Carnegie Hall and they all floor me. Floor me! It's genius.
Most of it is the appeal of Withers. He is my favorite kind of man. Humble, every day, straight-talking. Lunch box on my album cover kinda man! (See Jim Croce.) I agree with everything about this album posted in this thread. And I'd like to make a few points on the obvious best song on the album.
"Harlem / Cold Baloney"[/b]
This is the 13-minute opus that takes up damn near the entirty of Side 4, and ends the album. The best song on the record, by far. Pure genius. "Harlem," as everyone knows, is a sit-the-fuck-down-while-you're-trying-to-clean-the-house type of affair. No question there. And the segue from "Harlem" into "Cold Baloney" (more on this later) and the 8-minute conclusion, which Bill hollers as "This is the Sho 'Nuff Shake 'Em On Down" is tops. Tops!
For such a humble man, Bill could handle a crowd. He first gets them out of their seats and singing, then puts them in their fucking place, then gets their asses off the cushions again on some sing me outta here y'all. There's a part at about the 9-minute marker where Bill says, "I'm always leaving folks when I get through singing... I'd like to leave y'all singing." This is where the crowd stands on the verge of getting it on. And as they get progressively louder in the call-and-response, Bill chastises them:
Hold it, y'all... hold it. We realize this is New York, and you all are sophisticated, but it's not [white voice]"Must I holler"[/white voice], this is the "Sho 'nuff shake 'em on down...' It's "Muss I holla."
The he gets it the fuck on with the crowd and walks off as they are singing, just as he proposed. Genius. You know when he walks off, too, because the crowd goes apeshit. And that announcer dude who grabs the mic, "One more time, a very beautiful person, Mr. Bill Withers," and Bill comes out to kill it... AGAIN!
Encore, motherfucker! That's how that shit is done. So beautiful.
The formula is just like the end of any other live concert recording, but the difference is Bill was sincere. He came to shake 'em down. Obviously. It's hard to believe one man can hold that much inside him.
The song is halfway over before you realize your life is no longer the same.
And now, a few thoughts on "Cold Baloney." As I said, the obvious title track of this record, and I would argue, the best song in the Bill Withers oeuvre. In many respects, certainly subject matter, it's just an extension of the fabric of "Harlem." But more, "Cold Baloney" takes the loose ends of "Harlem" and weaves a tale so sad and so beautiful that you forget completely that "Harlem" is even on the album.
This song is so beatiful, that everyone in this thread should sit quietly and digest the 12 short lines like a prayer. Repeat if necessary.
Cold Baloney[/b]
[I wanna tell you about...]
Cold Baloney, and I'm home by myself
Well I'm five years old, and it sure is cold
Mama's out cookin' steak for someone else
Sure am sleepy, but I'm gonna wait til Momma comes
If the rich folks don't eat up all that good meat
I believe she gonna bring me some
Cold Baloney, mayonnaise and bread
If it weren't for cold baloney, don't you know
By now, I would have been dead
Poor momma, she sure is tired, she said, "What you eating son?"
"I believe that baloney sandwich sure looks good...
Would you please fix your momma one?"
The genius of Bill Withers in 12 lines. Really? The ability to explain an entire childhood, upbringing, dire straits, hope and despair all with one sandwich?
The image he paints of a little boy--lying in bed, hungry, waiting for his mother to return from an undignified post, thinking only of table scraps--is sad enough, but to end it without the boon is what can wrenches me. With the last three lines (his mother asking for her own sandwich), he manages to take all the hope that he ripped out of me and put it back, reinforced with wisdom. So fucking genius. Genius!
"A very beautiful person... Mr. Bill Withers, everybody."
My acute attachment to this song has a strong footing, no doubt, in my own childhood. I spent most of my junior- and my entire senior year of high school without a refridgerator or telephone. My mother, a single woman working in a factory making minimum wage, raising my sister and I, was barely getting by. The non-essentials were slowly dropped. I remember when she announced to my sister and I that we wouldn't be celebrating Thanksgiving, Christmas, or our birthdays that year. It was hard having to explain to friends (or girls you were trying to hump in your room) that you didn't have a phone, or the only thing to eat in the house was stuff best served at room temperature. It was extremely embarrasing.
As I've grown older, and made a life for myself, I've been able to look back on my mother and consider the gravity of her situation. Pawning her wedding ring, selling her car, sacraficing damn near everything in her personal life so that my sister and I could be comfortable. The only acknowledgement I ever gave my mom was to bitch about how embarrasing it was to live the way we did. Of course, the embarrassment of yesterday has been replaced with shame today. I'm ashamed to have been so callous, so self-centered, not to see how my mom struggled.
[There. It took me four times the words to say the same thing Bill said in 12 lines. And not nearly as eloquent.]
There's much discussion here about soul music, and the "sweet soul" sub-genre specifically. I've said it before, and I'll say it again now. I am all about the "street soul." Those gritty, hard-bitten songs that take the hope out of your heart and chew it in your face before spitting it at your feet, leaving you to reclaim it like a bum eating scraps out of a garbage can. (See "Home is Where the Hatred Is," "Get Out if You Can," "Livin for the City," "Hercules," etc.)
I have created my own soul sub-genre, filled entirely with struggle-related songs, and I affectionately refer to it as SONGS FOR THE SUPPER CLASS[/b].
Holla.
[color:#666666]post-script: If you're with me (then I'm not against you), can anyone confirm that "Cold Baloney" only appears on this LP? I don't think I own every Withers album, but I got a lot of 'em, and I can't find another release (studio or otherwise) of this song. Back story, anyone? [/color]
havent listened to that live joint in yeeears, i gotta soulseek that 2nite and ipod it tomorrow fa sho
This song ONLY appears on this particular live album.
That's another thing uniting Curtis/Live! and Bill Withers Live At Carnegie Hall...both songs had a grip of new songs that were previously unrecorded, giving you an extra bonus besides familiar songs recorded in concert.
Although I will say this...the Isley Brothers recorded "Cold Baloney" (as "Cold BOLOGNA") first, in 1971, on their Givin' It Back album.
Bill Withers played guitar on the Isleys' version.
Damn, I'll bet the hallways of Buddah Records must have been a happening place back in the early seventies...
I hate avatars. but
yeah this sums up a lot of Withers' steez in my opinion. I also haven't listened to this record in ages, definitely gonna pull it out again real soon. great thread!!
Please don't hold back. I always enjoy reading posts from you and guys like Pickwick33. The personal angle and insight/knowledge dropping is appreciated. I'm sure there are plenty others who would agree with me.
To be honest, I haven't put the Carnegie album on in several years. Shame on me. I love Bill Withers, he's just been out of my mind for a while. Just how it goes sometimes. Thanks for bringing him back again.