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Leon Redbone, R.I.P.
Sunday, July 1, 2007
I make it a hard and fast rule never to comment on my non-writing personal life here in my ongoing commentary but it was never really that hard and fast. I have to mention what happened last night. I went to see Leon Redbone with two of my favorite people, Abby and Nic. Leon Redbone has been around for a while; I first saw him in concert when I was in high school, which was some time ago, and that concert was amazing in about a thousand ways. At one point the entire audience, instead of clapping, was snapping fingers. Hundreds of snapping fingers sound pretty cool. When I used to play guitar I played as much like Leon Redbone as I could. I sang like him. I even look like him, but that's the way I came out of the box.
He is one of those artists who occupied a unique place in my, maybe the cultural world: there could never be another Leon Redbone.
So we were looking forward to last night. He was late coming on stage, which is fine because Leon Redbone is the kind of guy who would be late coming on stage. But when he finally did get out there he was apprently pretty drunk. Through the course of an hour he played four songs; the rest of the time he rambled on and on about one pointless thing after another, including Don Ho and Where's my drink? That's what he wanted to know more than anything. He seemed to have no idea the responsibility he had as a revered artist to perform to the best of his ability, to give it everything, because everything is all an artist has to give. A huge disappointment. We walked out long before he'd finished, because it was over for us.
So no, Leon Redbone isn't really dead. But it feels like he is.
posted by Daniel Wallace at 7:29 AM
2 Comments:
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Oh, I am so sorry to hear about Leon Redbone being drunk. I absolutely adored him when I was in high school. He'd play Madison, WI about twice year. I still love music of the 20s and 30s. But, given how his career never really went beyond the heights it reached in the late 70s and early 80s, no surprise he's tippling now. He did write/sing a couple snappy sit-com themes and commercials (shudder).
FYI--I found your site as a result of the blurb in the July 2007 issue of Oprah. Yes, I Googled your book!
Having seen a few Redbone shows in the past few years, I share your sentiments exactly.
It's really with a sense of sadness and disappointment that I see Redbone apparently coasting badly and seeming to have lost all desire to actually give the audience something unique and special.
It almost seems as if he thinks that all he has to do is simply appear and let people see him, as his stage performance, while still including a few, and I mean few, moments of Redbone moments, can't help but leave fans wondering what happened.