There's no way to relate how good Burdon was. He did with his voice what van Gogh did with paint and Kenneth Patchen did with words, him and an old gray fox on keyboards, a fox of a different kind with long red hair on bass, a totally kick-ass drummer, and someone on lead guitar who seemed a tad too plaintive for what was going down. But what the hell, Burdon carried him, he carried them all with his driving vocals and an occasional cow bell or shaker.
He played new songs and packed dynamite into Animal hits from the Sixties, songs like "Don't Let Me Be Misunderstood," "House of the Rising Sun," "Bring It on Home, "Gonna Send You Back to Walker" and more; he made them more germane to these times than the times they were written in, but more than that he was still standing, more than just standing, he was blowing the corporate war machine to smithereens, not by protest but by b*tch slapping it and throwing the core of life in its face like a glass of cold water, by savagely just being (without apology or explanation or negotiation) precisely what the machine is geared to wipe out.
And the crowd reacted. With one powerful voice the throng that was being passed off as an audience sang full verses of old Animal songs, not on cue from Burdon but spontaneously. "Watch my daddy in bed a-dyin', watched his hair been turnin' gray, he's been workin' and slavin' his life away...now my girl you're so young and pretty, and one thing I know is true, you'll be dead before your time is due..."
"I hope you know music's about all there is left," Burdon threw out at one point, almost as an aside as he launched into a driving version of "Boom Boom."
I skipped the Saturday-night beer garden jam and all of Sunday's performances, got up early and drove back to Ellensburg--there was no place higher to go after Burdon.
Eric Burdon, I salute you.
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