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David Lightbourne (1942-2010)
I just received an e-mail from Joe Carducci:
I wrote about Dave Lightbourne last year ("The Little Sandy Review") when he contributed his article "The Little Sandy Review and the Birth of Rock Criticism" to Carducci's The New Vulgate. I had first interviewed Lightbourne, a Wyoming-based musician, in January of 2007. We spoke several times after that. Whenever he'd journey to New York for a gig, he always gave me a call.
In 1999, during one of those trips to NYC, Lightbourne had paid a visit to Evergreen Video and introduced himself to Paul Nelson. A long-time fan of The Little Sandy Review, he knew Paul not only through his work but through his heritage: "He reminded me of all my Norwegian and Swedish relatives in Minnesota who grew up in a town of 2,500 people. He was a very recognizable character to me." He fondly remembered rummaging through the movies that Evergreen had to offer: "We looked at some of these strange reissues on DVD that were in a dump bin on one of the tables in the middle of the store, and it was obscure popular culture of the Forties.... I said, 'Jesus, Paul, look what you guys've got in here.'"
The latest issue of The New Vulgate features a tribute to Dave Lightbourne. There you will find Lightbourne's take on Paul Nelson's appearance in the Dylan documentary No Direction Home:
Copyright 2010 by Kevin Avery. All rights reserved.
Musician, critic, polymath, holy smoker David Lightbourne passed in his sleep early last Friday. He wrote important pieces for TNV (Elvis' first concert up north, 1957; the birth of the rock press at Little Sandy Review, 1960), and he was a friend of mine since 1977. The boomer bohemia had become mass culture, and as the punk underground recharged itself I saw in Dave some kind of eternal bohemia that pre-dated the Summer of Love, the British Invasion, and Elvis, and would outlast them. I didn't follow everywhere David went but he shaped alot of my approach thereafter. He and we are lucky he lived to age 67.
In 1999, during one of those trips to NYC, Lightbourne had paid a visit to Evergreen Video and introduced himself to Paul Nelson. A long-time fan of The Little Sandy Review, he knew Paul not only through his work but through his heritage: "He reminded me of all my Norwegian and Swedish relatives in Minnesota who grew up in a town of 2,500 people. He was a very recognizable character to me." He fondly remembered rummaging through the movies that Evergreen had to offer: "We looked at some of these strange reissues on DVD that were in a dump bin on one of the tables in the middle of the store, and it was obscure popular culture of the Forties.... I said, 'Jesus, Paul, look what you guys've got in here.'"
The latest issue of The New Vulgate features a tribute to Dave Lightbourne. There you will find Lightbourne's take on Paul Nelson's appearance in the Dylan documentary No Direction Home:
My immediate reaction was, “Well, that’s just the nicest little gift anybody could give anybody. Scorsese has now made it possible to feel like you are sitting across the room from Paul Nelson.” Because that was exactly what it was like being in the room with him. I could have been the camera in those scenes. That’s exactly what he looked like, that’s exactly how he talked, that’s exactly what he talked about.
Copyright 2010 by Kevin Avery. All rights reserved.
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