Some time back I spent a day digitizing a lot of vinyl, most of which I hadn’t played in years, it was basically much of what we on the west coast were listening to through the late sixties and into the seventies. Finny, another westcoaster, just posted the Youngbloods on Earworms and and that was enough to send my off to my iTunes file to find some of those vinyl cuts, always loved the Youngbloods. So here’s a short playlist, I suspect that many of them will be familiar, but you, like me might not have heard them for a while.
I think it’s what those square DJ’s call ‘A trip down memory lane’ or ‘A blast from the past’.
The Asafareans (Ancient Mystical order of the Revered Dinosaur – Lahontan Branch) are once again holding their Memorial Day fundraiser concert at the Fillmore. An over zealous member has booked 11 bands with only 10 spots available. Won’t you, our parishioners, would be parishioners or even barely interested pagans please help us by picking one band to headline & one to go on next years list of hopefuls. Be gentle they’re all great folks & just want to help others get their freak in order. Remember – Dinos are fond of a large aural space to frolic in so if you have speakers with a large set of woofers it’ll make them smile. Play thingy on this side to listen to in a blissfully unaware state or play thingy with playlist for those impatient for knowledge on the other side. Click gently so you don’t disturb the dinos.
Forgive a plug but glasshalfempty came down a few years ago and we’re doing it all again. We’re in a new venue this year – All Saints Church in Hove, with a bar running throughout the shows, a new set on Sunday night – The Life Of Brian (Wilson) which is a history of The Beach Boys, and on the Saturday our award-winning concert Pet Sounds/Sgt Pepper for the eighth year running…Friday we’re playing a new improved 1969 Show (best pop of that great year) to support the wonderful thing that is Abbey Road, the last Beatles album (or LP as I prefer to call it). A 16-piece orchestra will bring these timeless albums to life before your very eyes and ears. It’s a thing of wonder and love
magicman
see also https://www.facebook.com/pages/Brighton-Beach-Boys/343338702433070
Winter sun through a window in Pamplona (C)lgconnolly
So with all of the excitement in the world of organised religion this week, I found myself pontificating (how apt) about the strangeness of it all. It was prompted specifically by some comment that I read about “primitive religions” worshiping the Sun – and for some reason that really rankled with me… Continue reading →
I’ve never written a post for The Spill before. Isn’t that shocking? So I thought it was about time I made amends and started chucking the odd thing on over here, as it’s nice to break loose from the RR confines when time permits and do something about what is lighting my fire currently. As I’m still getting used to the vagaries of WordPress, I thought I would just throw something out and use it to work out how to do the techie bits; so hoping to work those out whilst writing this but hopefully still say something interesting…. Continue reading →
It may be a song much used & abused by karaoke maniacs, bedroom youtubers, & egotistical pop stars but let us not forget what a phenomenal tune it really is. Cat may have sold it to PP for £30 back in the day – but which version of the three do you prefer? Or do you know of a better one (I have looked for a noisy indie rock version, and failed, but would love it if there was one in existence)?
‘Spill points are available, and there are bonus ‘Spill points if you can explain why Tom Waits is holding a bunny. caption the Tom Waits & bunny photo.
Last week the Guardian had a story about a naturalist field recordist named Bernie Krause, a name I hadn’t heard in quite a while. He used to be a musician in California, possibly the first to see the potential of the Moog synthesizer, he introduced both George Harrison and George Martin to it’s potential. He and his partner Paul Beaver, also a synthesist and Hammond B3 organist, released a series of three albums for Warner Bros. starting in 1970, I bought them all, still got ‘em. Paul Beaver died in 1975.
Following up on my recent Ben Webster post, here’s another, this time it’s Gerry Mulligan featured on baritone sax and it’s from Beaver and Krause’s 1971 album, Gandharva [the celestial musician] and was recorded in Grace cathedral in San Francisco.The title is ‘By Your Grace’. Also heard are Bud Shank on alto, Gail Laughton plays simultaneously two harps and Howard Roberts is on guitar; Krause is on Moog and Beaver plays the cathedral’s pipe organ.
The second cut, from the same album, was also recorded in the cathedral, it’s ‘Short film for David’, that’s Mike Bloomfield and Howard Roberts on guitars and Bud Shank on alto sax with Mulligan on baritone and Laughton again on the harp, plus B&K.
I’ve long thought of introducing the Spill audience to Beaver and Krause, so here we go, hope you think they’re as great as I do.
“But Sakura ! ! ! Why I do I have to wear the ears?”
She Says:
This week we are moving in a new area for me. We are going to share some tracks from an interesting period in Asian popular music. I think that the Chinese are a maybe a little like the Italians of Asia. They tend to talk a lot, are very funny, and are very romantic and nostalgic and this is reflected in their popular music. The 1940 – 1980 period saw a huge change for Chinese speaking peoples. The war and revolution in China lead to the establishment PRC of course but also Taiwan became an independant country and Hong Kong, as the last colony in Chinese territory grew into a wealthy centre for trade and finance for the whole of Asia. Chinese language music was now developing in three very different environments, but some how there seems to be thread holding it together.
He Says:
China. Still, in some ways, a land of mystery to us in the West. So big, so many people. How on earth can you get your head round somewhere so vast, so different, so ancient ? We’d like to introduce you to some Chinese tunes this week. Many of them heavily “Westernised” and , therefore, somewhat easier on the ear than traditional Chinese music. Hope you enjoy them
I can’t admit to ever being a fan of The Monkees but I used to watch it fairly regularly, nonetheless. Corny and as contrived as f**k, but great fun. I suppose Davy’s accent made it more than just an American show, somehow.
And they did have some good tunes (although I’m not sure that had much to do with Davy). But sad to see another part of (my) musical history disappear. He was only 66.
I came across this curio a while ago. Goes to show, you don’t ever know.
Rahou – Fairuz
Song To Woody – Bob Dylan
Kadia Blues – Orchestre De La Paillote
Fever – La Lupe
Love For Sale – Barney Kessel
My Favorite Things – John Coltrane
Moving along into 1962 the Beach Boys make their debut amid the plethora of dance crazes, from the Mashed Potato to the Twist to the timeless Locomotion.
Sigh. Last year when the Graun said it was TP’s 57th birthday I wrote and pointed out it was actually his 60th. Did they take any notice? Nuh uh. I shall have to write to them again. Happy 61st, TP.
Here’s one of your favourite bands playing one of your favourite songs. Present from me.
I’m A Man by the Yardbirds in 1967, with Jimmy Page playing the guitar with a bow – I was hoping Mike Campbell would be using his e-bow in the TP&TH version but unfortunately he doesn’t.
I’m A Man by Tom Petty and the Heartbreakers in 2006. Bo Diddley wrote the song in 1955.
You most certainly are, Shirley – congratulations!
Hi ‘Spillers: this is an auspicious occasion (I’m having quite a week in fact), as I celebrate my 20th A-lister on RR. I first got drawn in for Illness, in November 2007, made all the usual mistakes that newbies make, and got my first A-lister the following January. Now, I’m sure you don’t want to listen to all 20 in one go (if at all) so I’m going to do two lists of 10. Here’s the first.
1 I’m The Face by the High Numbers, alias the Who. ‘I Am’ songs, Jan 25 2008
2 Nottamun Town by Shirley Collins and Davey Graham. Surreal songs, June 13 2008
3 Remember (Walking In The Sand) by the Shangri-Las. Songs about memory, Oct 10 2008
4 Ghost In This House by Alison Krauss and Union Station. Songs about ghosts, Jan 30 2009
5 Lord Gregory by Shirley Collins. Songs about social class, March 27 2009
6 Marilyn Monroe by the Ian Campbell Folk Group. Songs about actors, April 17, 2009
7 Complainte Pour Ste Catherine by Kate and Anna McGarrigle. Songs in French, June 19 2009
8 The Cruel Mother by Shirley Collins. Cruel songs, July 24 2009
9 However Much I Booze by the Who. Songs about failure, August 7 2009
10 Barroom Girls by Gillian Welch. Songs about hangovers, January 8 2010
Ready for Part 2? OK then:
11 Killing Jar by Richard Thompson. Unsettling songs, January 22 2010
12 The Victory by Steeleye Span. Songs about historical figures, January 29 2010
13 Long Live Rock by the Who. Songs about concerts, May 27 2010
14 The Eyes Of Fate by the Incredible String Band. Songs about fate, September 24 2010
15 The Unquiet Grave by Shirley Collins. Songs about the afterlife, May 26 2011
16 Cherry Red Wine by Luther Allison. Songs about wine, June 9 2011
17 Blue Days, Black Nights by Buddy Holly. Debut songs, June 23 2011
18 The Dark-Eyed Sailor by June Tabor and the Oysterband. Songs about eavesdropping, July 14 2011
19 Barefootin’ by Robert Parker. Songs about dance styles, July 28 2011
20 So Sad (To Watch Good Love Go Bad) by the Everly Brothers. Songs about a change of mind, August 4 2011
A few weeks ago, as her Question 31B, amylee asked for an instrumental song we love. I was thrilled at the clutch of warm responses to my choice of Sonny Criss playing I’ll Catch The Sun. The idea fermented to follow this up with a post celebrating the alto saxophonist, principally to give you a few more examples of his playing. This is what I’m doing here but it occurred to me that I’ve been trying off and on for 23 years to tell the world about Sonny Criss and thus the influence his voice has had on mine is also something I want to consider. As a result, I’m supersizing my blogging by twinning this post with one on my own blog, contemplating the literary issues that unspool from my Sonny Criss fandom.
This is a brief and not at all comprehensive primer, courtesy of YouTube, of my favourite instrumental voice in jazz. That’s an accolade that requires some clarification and contextualisation. There are, if we are to give these terms any meaning, ‘greater’ jazz musicians than Sonny Criss. Quite apart from anything else, Criss was one of the legion alto saxophonists who were turned onto a style of playing by Charlie Parker. There’s a reason we call the likes of Criss, Sonny Stitt, Cannonball Adderley, Jackie McLean, Sahib Shibab and more post-Bird saxophonists – it’s not to their detriment that they stood in the conceptual shadow of someone who, to all intents and purposes, made the music new again. You don’t look to Sonny Criss for game-changing innovation. He wasn’t pulling the blues inside-out: he was playing them straight, sultry, smoky and spine-tingling, as here in Black Coffee:
I bow before Mingus, Monk, Ellington, Carla Bley, Sun Ra and plenty more jazz composers before I think of Sonny Criss. But just as I can hear most songs better when they’re sung by Ella, Sinatra or Sarah Vaughan, Sonny could play a song lyric to the same level of perfection of those vocalists. Here he is on Charlie Chaplin’s Smile and Jimmy Webb’s Up Up And Away (links via text to save screen space).
Nor did he move with the times in the manner of Miles Davis or, more recently, David Murray. Things funked up a little in the seventies but the sound that soared over the top of the groove was still that wondrously fluid, human heart-tugging voice, as here in Cool Struttin’.
Sonny Criss works for me as instantly as the voices of those I love most in the world. I’ll rave about and dance to and revere and be inspired by countless others but Sonny’s notes trigger a thousand awakenings in my brain and across my body. I feel encapsulated by the sense of mortality and intoxicated by the desire for joy that I hear throughout the dozens of his recordings I own. I want to line up loads more for you to enjoy but I’ll leave you with just this, and embed it so it doesn’t get overlooked and by way of a birthday gift to steenbeck, a captivating God Bless The Child:
A gallery of posters for events promoted by The Family Dog back in 1960′s San Francisco has recently appeared on the Grateful Dead’s website. The posters were made by the ‘San Francisco Five’ - Rick Griffin, Alton Kelley, Victor Moscoso, Stanley Mouse and Wes Wilson – and are prime examples of the groovy artwork of the day.
If you click on an image, the whole thing goes fullscreen. Drop a tab and your brain will follow, er, man.
And here’s a little something to listen to while you’re browsing, from a Family Dog event at The Great Highway on 4th February, 1970:
And here, for SpottedRichard in particular, are the Grateful Dead’s sets from the Avalon concert on 12th October, 1968, the poster for which appears in the gallery.
BEATLES ALERT: This post was prepared in a factory that handles Beatles music. If you suffer from Beatles allergy, look away now.
Many of you will remember the contributions of magicman, and he is missed on RR by many of us. Some of you will be aware that he is a renowned film and TV actor, based in Brighton, and that he is also a leading light and prime mover in the Brighton Beach Boys, a tribute band. They have been going for ten years, and for the last five of them, have staged an annual award winning Brighton Festival event, Pet Sounds versus Sgt. Pepper. This involves them playing both albums in their entirety, to a packed church in Kemptown.
Given the studio-complexity of both albums, they enlist the help of the Psychedelic Love Orchestra, to provide string and wind back up.
I love Brighton Festival, and took the opportunity to see magicman in action, and enjoy a brief chat with him about RR/spill, Dorian, African and black American music, and the pleasure he gets from being in the Brighton Beach Boys. In an ensemble 15 strong, he is the only one who is not a professional musician, but you wouldn’t know it from his dexterity on sax, keyboards and vocals. I enjoyed meeting and chatting to him,
I have to admit that this is not normally the sort of thing I go to – I don’t think I’ve ever seen a tribute band before, and I’m not into nostalgia, with so much great music in the here and now. I felt a bit like my gran going to see Vera Lynn do wartime songs when the war was a distant memory. But having said that, I enjoyed the evening immensely in a guilty pleasures sort of way, and the band do a great job. And the audience was drawn from all age groups, not just wrinklies like me!
Here’s a few clips I took at the gig for your delectation (magicman is the one in the hat, and then hatless for ‘Within you, without you’). Given that the venue was a church, we start fittingly with ‘God only knows’. The second youtube is a short vid from LatestTV, with magicman talking about the band.
Stumbled on this rare slice of psychedelic acid garage punk funk rap whatever and still can’t stop listening to it. Released as the B-side to San Franciscan Nights in the UK only. Can’t find any lyrics. Can’t find any other info on it online. No idea what the overlapping vocal track is. What i do know – thanks to this article courtesy of our intrepid Dead expert (thanks, Chris) – is that Eric and the Animals took the stage and did a set with the Dead’s equipment on March 26, 1967, and this song seems to be recorded soon after that show. I can’t imagine why they didn’t give this song a wider release, it’s the best thing i’ve ever heard in my life. Any further info on the song very welcome.
Well, the thing is that I’ve been wanting to do a podcast about TP for ages now, but the problem always was: how do I decide which songs to include? Then one day the answer came to me: during the 30 Days game I’d been keeping a list of my noms so as not to repeat any, and looking down the list at about the two-thirds mark I realised that my TP noms (which were many) in fact covered a good span of his recording career. There were still a few gaps though – and in fact not enough opportunities left to get one song in from each album, not to mention that some albums were already represented twice – but I made a valiant attempt through blatant shoehorning activities and finally arrived at a list which I think is pretty good. I’ve left out the compilation, soundtrack and live albums, and most of the songs in the podcast are different versions from the ones I posted for 30 Days, because they’re studio-recorded. So even if you watched all the videos I posted, you’ll still hear something new in the podcast, as well as my fab commentary of course, and some remarks from the great man himself who was happy to help. [Tell the truth, tfd - Ed.] OK, he didn’t know a thing about it.
Here we go then: Tom Petty, his music, from 1976 to now.
Woo hoo!
Podcast song list
Fooled Again (I Don’t Like It) – Tom Petty and the Heartbreakers 1976
I Need To Know – You’re Gonna Get It! 1978
Shadow Of A Doubt (A Complex Kid) – Damn The Torpedoes 1979
The Waiting – Hard Promises 1981
Insider – Hard Promises 1981
Change Of Heart – Long After Dark 1982
Southern Accents – Southern Accents 1985
Spike - Southern Accents 1985
It’ll All Work Out – Let Me Up (I’ve Had Enough) 1987
………………………………………………………………………………………………………..
End Of The Line – The Traveling Wilburys vol. 1 1988
Runnin’ Down A Dream – Full Moon Fever 1989
Learning To Fly – Into The Great Wide Open 1991
You Don’t Know How It Feels – Wildflowers 1994
Room At The Top – Echo 1999
Dreamville – The Last DJ 2002
Like A Diamond – The Last DJ 2002
Saving Grace – Highway Companion 2006
Shady Grove – Mudcrutch 2008
Lover’s Touch – Mojo 2010
All songs composed by Tom Petty except:
End Of The Line – George Harrison
Runnin’ Down A Dream – Tom Petty, Mike Campbell, Jeff Lynne
Shady Grove – trad.
Well, if you’ve got down this far you’ll certainly be up for the ‘Spill point challenge – I’ve mentioned shoehorning but (for only one point, now that Chris has made it easier by putting the spreadsheet in the box) which of the songs in the podcast did NOT feature in the 30-Day Challenge at all? Clue: it’s about a couple who are maybe about to set up home together but they are the opposite of Wills’n'Kate.
Jerry Garcia (3rd left): Lead Guitar, Acoustic Guitar, Kazoo and Vibraslap Bob Weir (3rd right): Rhythm Guitar, 12 String Guitar, Acoustic Guitar and Kazoo Ron McKernan (far right): Organ and Celesta Claves Phil Lesh (2nd left): Bass, Trumpet, Harpsichord, Guiro Kazoo, Piano and Timpani Mickey Hart (2nd right), Bill Kreutzman (far left): Drums, Orchestra Bells, Gong, Chimes, Crotales, Prepared Piano, Finger Cymbals Tom Constanten (not shown): Prepared Piano, Piano and Electronic Tape
This year, 2011, marks 40 years since the death of Gene Vincent and 30 since the passing of Bill Haley. As most people will know, both are heroes of mine and I had the pleasure of working with both of them.
I therefore thought it appropriate to put up a few of their tracks to mark the occasion.
The Gene Vincent numbers are “B-I-Bickey Bi Bo Bo Go” which is a silly title but one of my personal favourites of his with the first set of Bluecaps. “Over The Rainbow” was made slightly later and I included this to show he didn’t just rock out all the time. The third is “Pistol Packin’ Mama” which attained his highest UK chart placing. Made at Abbey Road, the arrangement was by Eddie Cochran who was due to duet with Gene, but the car crash on the A4 at Chippenham put paid to that. Georgie Fame was in the backing group.
Bill’s tracks begin with “Crazy Man, Crazy” cut in 1953, just after he’d changed the name of his backing group from The Saddlemen to the Comets. It was his first US top 20 hit and resulted in him and the band being booked into a black club in Chicago. They didn’t believe white men could swing like that.
The second track is “Happy Baby” which is perfect for jiving to. It shows off the guitar playing of Franny Beecher who had replaced Danny Cedrone. Danny died from a fall down stairs shortly after cutting “Rock Around The Clock”
The third of Bill’s comes from the 60s and is titled “Train Of Sin”. He was trying to introduce new stuff into his repertoire, but audiences just wanted “Rock Around The Clock” which re-entered the charts in 1964,68 and 1974.
I feel that both men, in their own way, changed music for the better and even if you don’t like the tracks I’ve picked, you will agree with that statement. Without Bill Haley, it’s doubtful that Rock and Roll would have entered the mainstream and maybe there would have been no Elvis, Buddy Holly (both of whom were inspired to record by seeing Haley) or any of the others who followed.
