Certain Songs

The Lemonheads = Youth

And they always will to me. I will forever associate albums like 'It's A Shame About Ray' and 'Come On Feel The Lemonheads' with my coming of age years. The last couple of years of high school, and my first couple of years in college. In hindsight, I may not have been to wise to have Evan Dando pen the soundtrack to my formative years, but I think everything turned out ok :-)

Evan and the band have a brand new album of covers coming out on June 23rd called Varshons. The Boston band covers some of my all time favorite songwriters on here...Gram Parsons, Townes Van Zandt, Christina Aguilera - kidding! But there is a lovely version of her hit 'Beautiful' on the album.

Here is their take on a Leonard Cohen classic, with a little help from Liv Tyler.

* 'Hey, That's No Way To Say Goodbye' MP3

Ah...last night's Lemonheads show was like the mid 90's all over again! And I mean that in the best possible sense.

Evan Dando stumbled and mumbled(literally) his way through a non stop set of sing along favorites! I know almost every song they played by heart, and I am not sure I understood a lyric all night. This isn't a complaint mind you, just a fact. That is the beautiful thing about rock n' roll, its not meant to be perfect. Since I spent most of the mid 90's in college, and many times in some altered state or another, that is how I most fondly remember the Lemonheads anyway!


Dando only stopped to attempt to speak to the crowd once that I remember...taking a second to blast the new Dylan bio-pic 'I'm Not There'...he didn't like it, not at all. But I wouldn't put TOO much stock into a film review by a guy who spent like 5 minutes trying to get his jacket sleeve untangled from his guitar's tuning knobs...yeah, Mr. Dando was HAMMERED! And I loved every sloppy second of it...good times, good times.

The boys played all the hits, 'Shame About Ray', 'Down About It', 'Confetti', 'My Drug Buddy'. The end of the show was my own personal favorite moment...when Dando graced the stage alone then played three acoustic tunes, including one of my favorites, his cover of Vic Chestnutt's 'Frying Pan.' Then he slammed down his acoustic guitar(not in a Pete Townsend 'FUCK THE MAN' kind of a way, but more like a 'Oh man, I forgot...there are more drugs upstairs' kind of way) and literally RAN up the steps at the side of the Troubadour stage. Looking confused he and the band came back for an impromptu version of 'Freebird' as requested by some heckler(a very original heckler at that) and a couple of more songs and just like that it was 2007 again.

Thanks for the time warp though fellas, it was a wonderful night of rock and nostalgia.

This one is off what is probably my favorite tribute album,'Return Of The Grievous Angel: A Tribute To Gram Parsons'...with songs by Wilco,Gillian Welch, Chrissy Hynde, Whiskeytown, Elvis Costello, Beck, David Crosby and more, it is an incredible testament to all of the great songs Gram wrote and all of the artists he influenced.

Here is Evan Dando with Julianna Hatfield and their beautiful rendition of '$1000 Wedding'