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Bob Dylan & The Band, Isle Of Wight 1969. At BigO, Singapore:

...Bob Dylan and The Band fired off Music From Big Pink and signalled a return to the "invisible republic" of the past when everything was simpler. This album more than any reportedly energised and inspired English musicians like Eric Clapton and George Harrison to look Westward and backwards.

Instead of rocking out like they did in 1966, Dylan and The Band slowed things into a country square dance. No exhortations to "play ****in' loud" instead, steel guitars, accordians and a crooning, bleating Dylan took to the stage and, by all accounts, only a selected enlightened few were mesmerised. Mostly, the show was considered under-rehearsed.

Incredibly, this performance was the first time Dylan stepped on stage after the motorcycle accident. Some were expecting the Second Coming as his appearance boosted attendence. On hand for this show was rock's royalty, The Beatles, two Stones, The Who, Free, Eric Clapton and, in the audience, a young Elton John...

17 tunes. The provenance is there, too.

Stockzilla! The surreal and cerebral Tom Matrullo also does pithy:

This bit of anxiety copyright MSNBC

End of a culture: Eyak language dies with its last speaker. Chief Marie Smith Jones, 89, the last full-blooded Eyak Indian, died Monday in Anchorage. With her passing, the Eyak language becomes the first of 20 native Alaskan languages to go extinct.

Anchorage Daily News republished a long 1993 profile of her yesterday, The Fighting Eyak. In later years she became an ardent environmentalist, but early on,

"I was considered kind of wild," she says. "I had all the women in Cordova hating me because I got along with men. It was just the idea I felt more free with Dad than I did with Mom. I guess I just figured all women were the same. They were all strict."

You can hear what Eyak sounded like in this video: Chief Marie Smith Jones delivers a prayer in Eyak in 1994.

The photo is by Marc Lester of Anchorage Daily News: In 2001 Eyak elder Marie Smith Jones was honored at the Chickaloon powwow.

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