Altamont Diary | ||||
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Studio album by | ||||
Released | 2004 | |||
Genre | Indie rock | |||
Length | 38:20 | |||
Label | Interstate 40 Music | |||
Producer | Woody Annison | |||
Black Cab chronology | ||||
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Review scores | |
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Source | Rating |
The Age | [1] |
The Sunday Age | [2] |
Sydney Morning Herald | [3] |
Altamont Diary is the debut album by Melbourne electronica band Black Cab. Released in 2004, it is a concept album based on the ill-fated 1969 free concert at Altamont Speedway in California headlined by the Rolling Stones. [4]
David Fricke wrote in US Rolling Stone magazine: “With bloodied-fuzz guitars, hellish electronics and sound bites from Gimme Shelter, the Australian duo Black Cab has created a riveting, album-length memorial to the fatal folly of the Rolling Stones' free concert at Altamont Speedway.” [4]
Band programmer Andrew Coates said he came up with the idea while living in San Francisco. "In a collectors' shop I found the issue of Rolling Stone magazine that came out after Altamont with a 20-page special. The album grew from there, loosely inspired by the events of a day which ended so badly, the end of the summer of love." [5] He said San Francisco "had already got a bit shitty—the Grateful Dead had moved out of their squat and into the hills, and the Haight-Ashbury was full of street kids and harder drugs. Altamont was like putting all of them into a shitty field and beating them." [6]
Cutler, who only learned of the album in 2006—and subsequently contributed a spoken-word section to the band's follow-up, Jesus East —said: "It was such a bizarre idea that someone would make an album based about a disaster. It's like making an album about famine—not an album of pop songs designed to raise money to alleviate famine, more like an album about what it feels like to starve to death. But I loved it, especially the slightly psycho fearfulness of it. Bits of it made me feel afraid." [7]
(all songs by Andrew Coates, James Lee except where noted)
Jefferson Airplane was an American rock band based in San Francisco, California, that became one of the pioneering bands of psychedelic rock. Formed in 1965, the group defined the San Francisco Sound and was the first from the Bay Area to achieve international commercial success. They were headliners at the Monterey Pop Festival (1967), Woodstock (1969), Altamont Free Concert (1969), and the first Isle of Wight Festival (1968) in England. Their 1967 break-out album Surrealistic Pillow ranks on the short list of the most significant recordings of the Summer of Love. Two songs from that album, "Somebody to Love" and "White Rabbit", are among Rolling Stone's "500 Greatest Songs of All Time".
Jerome John Garcia was an American singer-songwriter and guitarist, best known for being a principal songwriter, the lead guitarist and a vocalist with the rock band the Grateful Dead, of which he was a founding member and which came to prominence during the counterculture of the 1960s. Although he disavowed the role, Garcia was viewed by many as the leader or "spokesman" of the group.
Lewis Brian Hopkin Jones was an English musician and composer, best known as the founder and original leader of the Rolling Stones. Initially a slide guitarist, Jones went on to play a wide variety of instruments on Rolling Stones recordings and in concerts, including rhythm guitar, lead guitar, sitar, dulcimer, various keyboard instruments such as piano and mellotron, marimba, wind instruments such as harmonica, recorder, saxophone, as well as drums, vocals and numerous others.
Donovan Phillips Leitch is a Scottish singer, songwriter and guitarist. He developed an eclectic and distinctive style that blended folk, jazz, pop, psychedelic rock, and world music. He has lived in Scotland, Hertfordshire (England), London, California, and since at least 2008 in County Cork, Ireland, with his family. Emerging from the British folk scene, Donovan reached fame in the United Kingdom in early 1965 with live performances on the pop TV series Ready Steady Go!.
Keith Richards, often referred to during the 1960s and 1970s as Keith Richard, is an English musician, singer, and songwriter. He is best known as the co-founder, guitarist, secondary vocalist, and co-principal songwriter of the Rolling Stones. Rolling Stone magazine called Richards the creator of "rock's greatest single body of riffs" on guitar and ranked him fourth on its list of 100 best guitarists in 2011. The magazine lists fourteen songs that Richards wrote with the Rolling Stones' lead vocalist Mick Jagger on its "Rolling Stone's 500 Greatest Songs of All Time" list.
The Altamont Speedway Free Festival was a counterculture rock concert held on Saturday, December 6, 1969, at the Altamont Speedway, northern California, United States. Approximately 300,000 attended the concert, and some anticipated that it would be a "Woodstock West". Woodstock was held in Bethel, New York, in mid-August, less than four months earlier. The event is best known for considerable violence, including the stabbing death of Meredith Hunter and three accidental deaths: two caused by a hit-and-run car accident, and one by LSD-induced drowning in an irrigation canal. Scores were injured, numerous cars were stolen and then abandoned, and there was extensive property damage.
Ian Andrew Robert Stewart was a Scottish keyboardist and co-founder of the Rolling Stones. He was removed from the line-up in May 1963 at the request of manager Andrew Loog Oldham who felt he did not fit the band's image. He remained as road manager and pianist for over two decades and was posthumously inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame along with the rest of the band in 1989.
Workingman's Dead is the fourth Grateful Dead studio album. It was recorded in February 1970 and originally released on June 14, 1970. The album and its studio follow-up, American Beauty, were recorded back-to-back using a similar style, eschewing the psychedelic experimentation of previous albums in favor of Jerry Garcia and Robert Hunter's Americana-styled songcraft.
Blue Öyster Cult is the eponymous debut studio album by the American hard rock band Blue Öyster Cult, released on January 16, 1972 by Columbia Records. The album featured songs such as "Cities on Flame with Rock and Roll", "Stairway to the Stars", and "Then Came the Last Days of May", all of which the band still plays regularly during its concerts. Despite positive reviews, the album failed to chart for some time before finally cracking the Billboard 200 chart on May 20, 1972, peaking at No. 172. Blue Öyster Cult toured with artists such as The Byrds, Alice Cooper and the Mahavishnu Orchestra to support the album.
Flowers is the second compilation album by the Rolling Stones, released in the summer of 1967. The group recorded the songs at various studios dating back to 1965. Three of the songs had never been released: "My Girl", "Ride On, Baby" and "Sittin' on a Fence", the first of which was recorded in May 1965 during the sessions for "Satisfaction", and the other two of which were recorded in December 1965 during the first lot of Aftermath sessions. The rest of the album tracks either appeared as singles or had been omitted from the American versions of Aftermath and Between the Buttons.
Gimme Shelter is a 1970 British-American documentary film directed by Albert and David Maysles and Charlotte Zwerin chronicling the last weeks of The Rolling Stones' 1969 US tour which culminated in the disastrous Altamont Free Concert. The film is named after "Gimme Shelter", the lead track from the group's 1969 album Let It Bleed. Gimme Shelter was screened out of competition as the opening film of the 1971 Cannes Film Festival.
"Aren't You Glad" is a song written by Brian Wilson and Mike Love for American rock band the Beach Boys. The two also share lead vocal. It was released in 1967 as the second track on their studio album Wild Honey.
On Tour with Eric Clapton is a 1970 album by Delaney & Bonnie with Eric Clapton, recorded live at the Fairfield Halls, England. Released on Atco Records, it peaked at No. 29 on the Billboard 200 in April 1970, at #39 on the British album chart, and was certified a gold record by the RIAA.
The Rolling Stones' 1969 Tour of the United States took place in November 1969. Rock critic Robert Christgau called it "history's first mythic rock and roll tour", while rock critic Dave Marsh would write that the tour was "part of rock and roll legend" and one of the "benchmarks of an era."
B.B. King in London is the nineteenth studio album by B.B. King, recorded in London in 1971. He is accompanied by US session musicians and various British rock- and R&B musicians, including Ringo Starr, Alexis Korner and Gary Wright, as well as members of Spooky Tooth and Humble Pie, Greg Ridley, Steve Marriott, and Jerry Shirley.
Black Cab is a Melbourne based drone and electronica group. The band has released five studio albums.
Sam Cutler is best known as the former tour manager for The Rolling Stones, Grateful Dead, and numerous other major acts.
Listening Booth: 1970 is the fifth studio album by American singer-songwriter Marc Cohn, released in 2010.
Games of the XXI Olympiad is the fourth album by Melbourne electronica band Black Cab. It was released in 2014.
Jesus East is the second album by Melbourne electronica band Black Cab, released in 2006. The album was described as "sitar-drenched, blending Indian instruments with driving rock’n’roll and country guitar stylings".