Happy Birthday to Me!

Today is my birthday (I'm in my EXTREMELY late forties---as in 54), and I'm going to put one of my favorite Little Feat songs here: "Rock 'N' Roll Doctor".

This is the real little Feat, with Lowell George burning up the slide guitar. It's hard to believe this was in 1977. So much of the popular music then was utter crap, but there was a lot of stuff like this just under the radar that saved my life in those days. If you're only familiar with the more recent little Feat stuff, you don't know Little Feat.

I saw them at least 8 or 9 times, and their live shows were mostly superb. At one show in Constitution Hall in DC, the energy was just awful, and Lowell seemed to be sleepwalking through it, as the rest of the group carried him along. Of course, he was doing battle with the demons of addictions. He died of a heart attack in 1979. Little Feat was never the same, but this clip gives you a little taste of the funky greatness that was Little Feat when Lowell was still with them.

Oh, and I think it's great that Lowell's slide was a Sears & Roebuck 11/16ths spark-plug socket wrench. Talk about "working man's blues"!

Double-oh, by the way, this blog turned one year old on October 17. Happy "Bird"-day!