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Levon Helm, Drummer and Gravel-Throated Singer for the Band, Is Dead at 71

Levon Helm, who helped to forge a deep-rooted American music as the drummer and singer for the Band, died on Thursday in Manhattan. He was 71 and lived in Woodstock, N.Y.

His death, at Memorial Sloan-Kettering Cancer Center, was from complications of cancer, a spokeswoman for Vanguard Records said. He had recorded several albums for the label.

In Mr. Helm’s drumming, muscle, swing, economy and finesse were inseparably merged. His voice held the bluesy, weathered and resilient essence of his Arkansas upbringing in the Mississippi Delta.

Mr. Helm was the American linchpin of the otherwise Canadian group that became Bob Dylan’s backup band and then the Band. Its own songs, largely written by the Band’s guitarist, Jaime Robbie Robertson, and pianist, Richard Manuel, spring from roadhouse, church, backwoods, river and farm; they are rock-ribbed with history and tradition yet hauntingly surreal.

After the Band broke up in 1976, Mr. Helm continued to perform at every opportunity, working with a partly reunited Band and leading his own groups. He also acted in films, notably “Coal Miner’s Daughter” (1980). In the 2000s he became a roots-music patriarch, turning his barn in Woodstock — which had been a recording studio since 1975 — into the home of down-home, eclectic concerts called Midnight Rambles, which led to tours and Grammy-winning albums.

Mr. Helm gave his drums a muffled, bottom-heavy sound that placed them in the foundation of the arrangements, and his tom-toms were tuned so that their pitch would bend downward as the tone faded. Mr. Helm didn’t call attention to himself. Three bass-drum thumps at the start of one of the Band’s anthems, “The Weight,” were all that he needed to establish the song’s gravity.

His playing served the song. In “The Shape I’m In,” he juxtaposed Memphis soul, New Orleans rumba and military tattoo. But while it was tersely responsive to the music, the drumming also had an improvisational feel.

In the Band, lead vocals changed from song to song and sometimes within songs, and harmonies were elaborately communal. But particularly when lyrics turned to myths and tall tales of the American South — like “The Night They Drove Old Dixie Down,” “Ophelia” and “Rag Mama Rag” — the lead went to Mr. Helm, with his Arkansas twang and a voice that could sound desperate, ornery and amused at the same time.

In a 1984 interview with Modern Drummer magazine, Mr. Helm described the “right ingredients” for his work in music and film as “life and breath, heart and soul.”

Mark Lavon Helm was born on May 26, 1940, in Elaine, Ark., the son of a cotton farmer with land near Turkey Scratch, Ark. In his 1993 autobiography, “This Wheel’s on Fire: Levon Helm and the Story of the Band,“ written with Stephen Davis, Mr. Helm said he was part Chickasaw Indian through his paternal grandmother. He grew up hearing live bluegrass, Delta blues, country and the beginnings of rock ’n’ roll; Memphis was just across the river.

His father gave him a guitar when he was 9, and he soon started performing: in a duo with his sister Linda and in a high school rock ‘n’ roll band, the Jungle Bush Beaters. He also played drums in the Marvell High School band.

Mr. Helm was in 11th grade when the Arkansas-born rockabilly singer Ronnie Hawkins hired him as a drummer. He traveled with Mr. Hawkins to Canada, where the shows paid better, and Mr. Hawkins settled there and formed a band. Ronnie Hawkins and the Hawks played six nights a week in Ontario and had a number of hit singles, like “Mary Lou.” They performed on Dick Clark’s TV show “American Bandstand.”

By 1961 Mr. Hawkins had assembled the lineup that would become the Band: Mr. Helm, Mr. Robertson, Mr. Manuel, Rick Danko on bass and Garth Hudson on organ. “He knew what musicians had the fire,” Mr. Helm said of Mr. Hawkins. The others had trouble pronouncing Lavon, so Mr. Helm began calling himself Levon.

In 1963, weary of Mr. Hawkins’s discipline, the five Hawks started their own bar-band career as Levon and the Hawks. The blues singer John Hammond Jr. heard them in Toronto and brought Mr. Robertson, Mr. Hudson and Mr. Helm into the studio in 1964 to back him on the album “So Many Roads.”

Bob Dylan had famously brought an electric band to the 1965 Newport Folk Festival, and after its members had made other commitments, he hired Mr. Robertson and Mr. Helm for a summer tour.

sources: http://www.nytimes.com/2012/04/20/arts/music/levon-helm-drummer-and-singer-dies-at-71.html

The 7 Most Important Environmental Problems We Need To Solve

Every day is Earth Day. We work each and every day to bring the latest news on the many exciting ways to inhabit the Earth in a smarter, greener, more sustainable way. So while Earth Day may have an element of business as usual, it's also a great time to take stock of the persistent threats posed to our Earth. Studies frequently cite the dark future the planet will face if we do not change our our habits and activities on every imaginable level. The Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development referred to the environmental outlook of the planet as, quite simply, "grim." So this Earth Day, we're considering the most important environmental threats to our planet, and a few of the steps we can take to create a healthier future for ourselves, our communities and of course, the Earth.

WATER

Water; we can’t live without it, and thankfully much of the Earth is made up of it. Yet we face major problems where the life-sustaining liquid is concerned. While there is technically enough freshwater available for all 6.8 billion of us, one-fifth of the world’s population live in areas of physical water scarcity. Vast improvements in infrastructure are required in order provide freshwater to areas which remain without, but also to ensure continued access in the face of widespread pollution, wastage and drought.

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DEFORESTATION

Deforestation has long posed a threat to our Earth. Forests cover 30 percent of the planet's land, and provide vital protection from sandstorms and flooding as well as the substantive natural habitat for wildlife. They are one of our greatest resources for offsetting some of our outrageous carbon emissions and without the canopy we leave areas vulnerable to intense heat, further driving climate change. Yet every single year we lose an area the size of Panama.

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FOOD

Food production comes with a hefty carbon footprint, with damage caused by deforestation, the use of fertilizers which pollute our water, and pesticides which kill our bees. And, as we noted, food demand is expected to rise sharply — the Food and Agriculture Organization estimates that by 2050 a population of 8.9 billion will eat, on average, a diet with 340 calories more than the 2000 average of 2790, other studies posit that our food demand will double by that same date. Some of this projected increase is attributed to an expectation that areas which currently have inadequate access to nutrition will see improvements in the coming decades, a huge, important and challenging development.

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ENERGY

In the US alone we've made the Gulf of Mexico toxic with oil, we've caused earthquakes in the midwest while fracking for natural gas, and we've blasted through mountains in Virginia looking for coal. In the course of turning non-renewable resources into energy we're releasing all manner of toxic gases into the atmosphere, driving climate change and creating a hazardous environment for all living beings.

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TRANSPORTATION

While studies show young people to be driving less, many of us still aren't going to be doing without cars any time soon. As long as urban developments are built to be un-walkable (we're looking at you, Apple and your new Cupertino Campus), we're going to have to find a way for everyone to be able to get from a to b and back again without destroying the planet. As it stands, the Environmental Defense Fund estimates that a full 20 percent of US greenhouse gas emissions come directly out of our tailpipes.

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WASTE

As a growing population, we have a lot of stuff. From consumer electronics to clothing to diapers, a worrying proportion of our 'stuff' is made using finite resources, with environmentally destructive practices only to be used for a relatively short amount of time before being tossed into landfill. And if you're reading Inhabitat, chances are you've thought about this at least once or twice in your purchasing practices.

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GLOBAL WARMING

Everything on this list is a contributing factor in global warming, and yet we still have elected officials who argue that it isn't 'real.' A poll recently commissioned by Yale University brought some refreshingly reassuring news, as the majority of participants agreed that global warming was worsening an increasing stream of extreme weather events and natural disasters.

[more]

sources: http://inhabitat.com

Think Like a Man [Opens Friday nationwide]

About the movie

Think Like a Man
* * 1/2 out of four

Stars: Taraji P. Henson, Michael Ealy, Gabrielle Union, Jerry Ferrara, Romany Malco, Meagan Good, Steve Harvey
Director: Tim Story
Distributor: Sony Screen Gems
Rating: PG-13 for sexual content, some crude humor and brief drug use
Running time: 2 hours, 2 minutes
Opens Friday nationwide

Love is a battlefield, or at least a skirmish-prone zone where strategic maneuvers must be deployed, according to Think Like a Man (* * ½ out of four, rated PG-13, opens Friday nationwide).

Based on Steve Harvey's humorous, man-baiting bookAct Like a Lady, Think Like a Man, the film not only plunks men and women on different pages, but essentially has them consulting conflicting instruction manuals.

Intended to empower women, the 2009 book — which is referred to so often it feels like product placement — seeks to enlighten them about how men's minds work.

In a scene that feels forced and oddly dated, women line up to get their copies with unbridled excitement. Montages feature droves of women who are madly eager to learn the secrets of how men think. They are told that to find love, they need to delay sex. No matter that it makes romance seem like a business transaction. The point is clear: Follow these steps, and you'll get the best return on your investment.

While the outcomes of the individual romances portrayed are fairly predictable, the chemistry among the cast members makes this more entertaining than most ensemble rom-coms. A group of women vows to adhere to their sisterly scriptures no matter what temptations they face, and their multiple stories — with each person representing a different type with a capital T — intertwine.

There's Lauren (Taraji P. Henson), the high-powered businesswoman intent on landing someone equally successful. She meets a handsome guy driving a Porsche and takes him for the man of her dreams. He turns out to be sensitive but broke Dominic (Michael Ealy), a struggling chef with big dreams and a day job as a valet.

Mya (Meagan Good) is intent on making suave player Zeke (Romany Malco) wait the Harvey-recommended three months before consummating their relationship.

Kristen (Gabrielle Union) seeks maturity and commitment for her overgrown adolescent of a longtime boyfriend, Jeremy (Jerry Ferrara). She has put up with his fanboy ways for years, and after reading Harvey, she embarks on whipping Jeremy into a grown man.

Single mother Candace (Regina Hall) is thrilled to have met Michael (Terrence Jenkins), a wonderful guy who bonds with her young son. But she's no fan of his slavish devotion to his mother.

When the guys, all buddies, figure out that they're being manipulated, they turn to Harvey's book to outsmart their women. Of course, the table-turning and double-crossing doesn't stop there.

The execution is not always clever, particularly as the stories tie up all too neatly. Gender politics, however, is presented with breezy humor, and the cast is amiable across the board. Director Tim Story draws on the talent he displayed in witty ensemble comedies such as 2002's Barbershop.

Even though Think Like a Man espouses something akin to the philosophy in Beyoncé'sSingle Ladies(Put a Ring on It), it makes manipulation more fun than it ought to be.

source: http://www.usatoday.com/life/movies/reviews/story/2012-04-20/think-like-a-man-steve-harvey/54419826/1