Thursday, December 23, 2010

Dixie Dregs - 1977-10-08 - Marcy, NY

To be completely honest, I'd never heard of these chaps before receiving these recordings. But, a quick search yielded this which tells us that the Dixie Dregs is a band started (in part) by Steve Morse (of Deep Purple fame). I just got a film of Deep Purple playing on the "Playboy After Dark" television show. Massive, massive weirdness there.

Give these guys a few minutes of your time. They're starting to grow on me. B-)

Here

1 comment:

Dr. Forrester said...

The Dixie Dregs
Steve Morse- guitar
Allen Sloan- violin
Mark Parrish- keyboards
Andy West- bass
Rod Morgenstein- drums
Four Acres
Marcy, N.Y. U.S.A.
october 8, 1977
performance quality: B+
recording quality: B+
source: FM broadcast tape (unknown generation/lineage)
runtime: 72:28
setlist:
1: warmup song (broad street strut)
2: radio announcer talk
3: radio introduction > freefall
4: moedown
5: refried funky chicken
6: leprechaun promenade
7: country house shuffle
8: night meets light
9: the wabash (a/k/a the bash)
10: what if
11: wages of weirdness
12: cruise control
13: Gina Lola breakdown
14: disco dregs > Dixie
comments:
This is the earliest Dixie Dregs show I've heard yet. the only one
earlier than this one listed in etree is a 4 piece gig (no keyboards)
dated as Sept. 13, 1975 at University of Miami, Fla. and includes some
Mahavishnu Orchestra songs (cosmic strut and celestial). T. Lavitz was
in this group at some point too but I don't know when that was.
if anyone has that 9/13/75 Dixie Dregs show please post it.
This is one of the first DD shows I ever heard, many years ago. I got
it from Jed in N.Y. who I'd like to thank for first turning me on to
this band, and Chris, (then from Mass. who knows where now). sounds
pretty close to a master source, and since I didn't listen to this tape
very often, it hasn't had much chance to get worn out (except by aging).
Some cool early tunes long before they were well known, they were already
good, this was the tour of Freefall, "their album". Probably their only
album at this time.
this is a rebroadcast but I think it is the whole show, and I didn't
find any interruptions of songs. It even includes a live warm up
"practice" song before the concert starts. I'd guess a 2nd or 3rd
generation tape, recorded off WOUR-FM in Utica, N.Y. There may be a
cleaner source for this out there, but this is quite listenable, just
not recorded on a "high- end" deck. The reception is clear, no static,
only a little bit of tape hiss. If anyone has an upgraded source of this
or another better recording of this show and posts it, I will have this
one pulled in favor of an upgrade, but I wouldn't hold my breath on that
since I've been on dime close to 2 years and seen maybe 4 Dixie Dregs shows
posted (3 from me). That's a shame, since they're rather popular in the
Southern U.S. where they come from, although the My Father's Place N.Y. 79
is a prize quality davmar77 upload that says download me all over it...
last I heard they had one live CD release (Phila. 79 on Night of the Living
Dregs tour, which is recorded at Sigma Sound Studios, a live gig and a
good one but not quite the same thing as a theater or even a club gig), a
live DVD release from Montreux, Switz. in a July 23, 1978 concert, and
several very good studio releases. Almost any music titled as "Dixie Dregs"
is gonna sound nice, especially on a hot day, and especially from the 70's
and (very) early 80's (before they became just "the Dregs" in 82, that was
a pretty good tour too) their 77-79 stuff is all very good (including 3
officially released studio albums.)
as for category, file under country rock fusion, and very early Steve Morse,
Roots Dregs.
category not found... category does not compute.... does not compute...
(neither could the "Lost in Space" robot.)