Helm’s huge influence as a singer, drummer and all-around musician is widely and rightfully hailed, not least by Jon Pareles in his New York Times obit. The man’s wonderful acting turns in a handful of movies is (perhaps understandably) getting somewhat less play.

What mention there is of his acting usually highlights his first movie appearance, playing the titular father of Loretta Lynn (Sissy Spacek) in the 1980 biopic Coal Miner’s Daughter. Of my few memories of that film, one of the clearest is Helm sitting inside the family’s house after returning from work. He stares blankly ahead, motionless, the exposed skin of his hands, neck and face blackened by coal dust, with a single rivulet of blood running from one nostril over his mouth and down his chin.

More recently, Helm appeared in a brief but unforgettable role in The Three Burials of Melquiades Estrada (2005). The film’s star and director, Tommy Lee Jones, presumably had known Helm since working with him in Coal Miner’s Daughter a quarter-century earlier. By then, the ravages of the throat cancer that would eventually kill him were quite evident (although he would apparently regenerate somewhat in subsequent years). Skeletal and raspy, he played a blind hermit encountered by Jones and his captive, Barry Pepper, as they flee from the law toward the Mexican border. When the good-ol’-boy lawmen eventually ask Helm’s character if he’s “seen anybody come through here lately,” he hollers, “I ain’t seen anybody in over thirty years!”

Levon Helm acted the way he sang: plainly, direct from the unvarnished root of himself. He wasn’t a trained actor, he was the kind of actor who played people who themselves were untrained. Despite the artifice of cameras and crew around him, Helm was one of those face-value who didn’t “act” per se, he’d just be. He was simply not capable of being inauthentic.

He would always be primarily a musician, of course — indeed, would need music to stay afloat. As fate would have it, the United States’s absurdly expensive health care system threatened to bankrupt even the famous Levon Helm after a few rounds of cancer treatment in the late 1990′s and early 2000′s. He opened the barn of his country house in upstate New York for “Midnight Rambles” where he and musician friends would play into the evening. Locals would attend, chipping in a few bucks to take in the music and do some dancing.

Helm referred to these periodic events as a variation on the old Rent Parties that country folk used to organize to avoid losing their lodgings, just as he was in danger of losing his house to pay medical bills. But hey — like the Republicans and Tea Partiers say, hands off our health care! Obamacare and its insurance mandates are an unconstitutional government takeover of the health care system! Even as mild as it is, with no public option, and if people (or even famous musicians) are losing their houses because of medical bills, they should be glad they’re losing their houses in America, the land of the free, motherfuckers! …But I digress.

Let’s get back to remembering a great artist. It was the raw, elemental authenticity I described earlier which imbued songs like “The Night They Drove Old Dixie Down” and “Up On Cripple Creek” with the folkloric essence that captivated countless music lovers. For my example of choice, it made him one of what must be a mere handful of people not named Bruce Springsteen who could sing “Atlantic City” as if he’d written it, and it had been his all along.

So here is the late, great Levon Helm singing that very song in 2008, accompanied by Midnight Ramble regulars including his daughter, Amy.

Farewell, Levon.

“Whole Foods Parking Lot” was the splashy debut of Fog and Smog, described on their web site as “a collective of creative culture vultures from The SF Bay Area and Los Angeles… directors, writers, producers, editors, composers, musicians, designers, deejays, and generally enthusiastic creative folks.” The principal performer in the video is DJDave, a.k.a. David Wittman, a Berkeley-bred, LA-based commercial and film composer. Wittman’s main cohorts in the video (and on its production)¹ include Jake “J Pusha” Pushinsky, DJ Spider and George Woolley.

WFPL went viral enough to prompt mainstream media coverage from outlets like The Hollywood Reporter and the Wall Street Journal. Fog and Smog were even hired to make a couple of TV ads for Hyundai. However, Wittman has expressed trepidation about F&S becoming a commercial venture; the group formed as a bunch of extended friends making something for fun, apart from their pre-existing careers in media and entertainment.

They have continued doing so, and have quite successfully produced more fun. If I had known before today about their second music video, “Yoga Girl,” it would probably have had its own spot in this top ten list… but I didn’t, so I’m including it here as a bonus feature. Enjoy!

I dig this lyric so much I wanna see it in text format:

We could hit up Rawvolution or the Urth Caffe,
Have a vegan cookie and talk about your day
Or we could take a walk down by the ocean,
I heard those hip openers release a lot of emotion
It’s all good though, you know, like either way…
You feel like going with me???
(Na, am-a-ste)

At fogandsmog.com or their YouTube channel, you’ll also find their third and fourth music videos. The third, “Berkeley Enough,” also came out in 2011 — but I gotta end this post sometime, and the fourth has gone into the hopper for 2012 list consideration.

Speaking of which, the number 11 video on my top ten is one that surfaced only days ago. It is the work of Alex Karigan and Zac Hammer of the Amy Marshall Dance Company, none of whom I’d heard of before… but oh, I have now. I’m not sure how to preface this video other than to say that it caught me off-guard.

What can I say? I find it both cheese-tacular and totally irresistible. Right down to the goofy socks, raspberry leotards with the little rosettes at the neck, and the no-holds-barred lip-synching to a Mariah Carey holiday jingle that I had previously thought was annoying.

On the dancers’ YouTube channel, TheYahsInitiative, I read several well-meaning comments advising them to procure a Steadicam. I actually think the slightly-shaky-but-I’m-doing-my-best handheld camera technique is part of the video’s charm. Especially when the camera itself pirouettes, seemingly caught up in the terpsichorean reverie of it all.

So bravo, Alex and Zac. Don’t go changing to try and please me.

I’m not entirely sure what the correct term for this musical arrangement would be… A self-cover? A partial cover duet?

Then, of course, there is the question of how to describe the musical arrangement. Sheet music publishers would probably oversimplify it to “piano and vocal,” which is entirely insufficient in light of Rocky’s distinctive vocal instrument. The one other musical opus I know of that makes use of a canine vocalist is P.D.Q. Bach‘s half-act opera The Stoned Guest, in which the role of “Dog” is scored for a houndentenor. The 1970 recording of the work (pictured at left) features a St. Bernard named Bernice in the role. However, a quick listen to the highlights from album reveals that the houndentenor voice is really a percussion instrument — nothing more than a simple bark.

All this leads me to conclude that it has fallen to me to name Rocky Armstrong’s vocal range. I’ve given it a good deal of thought… and I’m stuck. All I’ve come up with are “howlentenor” and “contrahowlto,” neither of which I like that much because they don’t feel dog-specific (I’ve heard many human singers who could well have been described as one or the other).

Help me out, readers: leave a comment with your idea(s) of musical descriptors for Rocky’s voice. Then we can have a vote for the top nominees. Sing out, people!

Those craving more can download the MP3 (and check out plenty more of his stuff) at the Richard Thompson store on Amazon, or at eMusic. His home page is called BeesWeb and is located at www.richardthompson-music.com. Like any responsible recording artist today, he also has fan pages on Facebook and MySpace.³