Song of the Day: "Baby, Don't You Do It"

Greg Mitchell is the author of a dozen books and now writer/director of award-winning films. He was also a longtime editor of the legendary Crawdaddy.

For some of us, The Last Waltz peaks at the very beginning, over the opening credits, as the boys deliver a fervid, Levon-driven, rendition of the early Marvin Gaye hit (not his biggest by any means) “Baby, Don’t You Do It.” It some ways that’s not so strange. Most of you may forget that the song, in fact, was the final number that night in San Francisco and the climax of the epic concert and the original group’s suddenly concluded concert career.

It had been a staple of the group’s live shows since some time in 1970 (just a little after I saw them in Buffalo in 1969). It appeared in its entirety—The Last Waltz version was edited a good bit—in the classic Rock of Ages live album that captured their gigs at the seedy Academy of Music in NYC, where I had caught one of the shows. Both there, and in the Waltz rendition, the typically genius Allen Toussaint horn arrangements shone.

So below we have the Marvin original, the Last Waltz opener and then the little- seen Scorcese B & W from the audience at that show, plus covers by The Who and Tedeschi-Trucks. Then a tribute to Tom Verlaine, R.I.P., and Cartoon of the Day. Please subscribe, it’s still free.

Only decades later did we learn that Marty Scorcese had a camera in the audience shooting it all on B&W. Here’s “Don’t Do It.”

The Who recorded an 8-minute version with Mountain man Leslie West on lead guitar, not released until later.

Tedeschi Trucks

Television Man

Tom Verlaine died yesterday at the age of 73. I’m old enough to have seen his group Television at CBGBs in mid-70s, though I was more of a Heads and Patti Smith guy. Anyway, below is his enormously influential title track (with his guitar stylings) from debut lp, which I still have on vinyl.

Plus: Was happy to see an article referring to a 1976 article on Tom that I edited at Crawdaddy as “infamous,” re: Verlaine claimed many of Television’s ideas for the own debut album, particularly for dynamics, ended up on Roxy Music’s Siren album of 1975. In an infamous interview with Crawdaddy magazine in 1976, Verlaine railed: “It happens a lot, especially with the English… I mean they ripped off a whole fucking artform from Americans.”

Our writer, George Elliott, posted part of transcript online awhile back, here is more on that subject:

I mean I like Eno, I like his records... The bad thing about it is there was a very uncool A&R guy who took the tapes back to London and played 'em for every fucking artist on Island Records, so-& like I tell that to people but they don't believe it, it happens a lot, especially with the English... I mean they ripped off a whole fucking artform from Americans. And their whole esthetic is like if they hear something that's good it just sorta comes in their ear and goes out their mouth y'know-and most of 'em have the means to like set something on vinyl really quickly, crank out the stuff, so yeah, so there's a lot of lines that are on our record (MM) that might strike some people as familiar even though the songs are like 4 years old...specifically, a lot of the lines turned up on Roxy Music's SIREN record-at least a dozen! Some I got so distressed about I said 'Well FUCK! -if he's gonna take THESE lines! I mean how can I prove it, I can't prove it, right? But you know.…

and then we had, the song 'Venus de Milo' the whole subject of it is Love is a drug, I mean there's even a line in it "It's all just like a new kind of drug" --and then there's this Roxy song (chuckling) on SIREN 'Love is the Drug'! ... Bryan Ferry's known as a thief y'know, everybody sort of knows it...

Cartoon of the Day