Category Archives: best

Night Music: Lou Reed, “Street Hassle”

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We watched Noah Baumbach’s The Squid and the Whale tonight, which ends with the first of the three parts of this rather incredible song. I posted this same clip last October after Lou died.

The video, by the way, is made up of Andy Warhol screen tests, as well as other clips of Warhol’s. Notably, Dean Wareham and Britta Phillips, who wrote the original music for The Squid and the Whale, later went on to make an album of songs to accompany the screen tests. I haven’t heard that album.

Also notable, the start of a section three features spoken word by Bruce Springsteen, whose three year recording exile in the mid-seventies was coming to an end with the recording of Darkness at the Edge of Town, at about the time Street Hassle was recorded.

Night Music: Flamin’ Groovies, “Shake Some Action”

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I’ve resisted posting this one, mostly because it is way bigger than a Night Music posting, and yet perfect for a casual, hey, you gotta hear this one note.

My old buddy Peter turned me onto the Groovies (and the Beau Brummels and, for that matter, the Searchers, too, thank you Peter), which is one reason (or three or many more) he’s a big character in my life.

What I can say for sure is that this album, on Sire, in the middle of punk, was a clean and compelling call to hew the clean line between rock and pop. Not that the Groovies had historically respected such formal niceties.

But that doesn’t matter. This recording or this song does. Whoever the players were, whoever wrote it, whoever produced it, whoever mastered it, none of them would ever be a part of a recording so perfect again.

Despite those cartoon characters in the video (whose idea was that?). You gotta hear this one.

Night Music: Rolling Stones, “Monkey Man”

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The Stones were at the top of their game in the midst (at the start almost) of an incredible run of great music. I have to admit I haven’t listened much to Let It Bleed in recent years because it seemed so familiar, spoiled by overplaying on classic rock radio and my own turntable decades ago, but having a listen today I was struck by how fresh and awfully good the lesser known songs are.

I’m talking Country Honk, and You’ve Got the Silver, and this one. They defy genre and characterization. They rock, but they’re blues and country, and just plain Stones, all at once. It’s surprising what you end up with when you go back to the familiar.

Night Music: Toots and the Maytals, “Funky Kingston”

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It wasn’t an accident that I was holding Toots and the Maytal’s Funky Kingston in my modeling debut. It’s an amazing album and an amazing song, and totally in line with the Mono Brothers ethos to intimidate the winky Meeks into moving on from whatever weak stuff he liked to the good stuff. He would have thanked us, but it was only an ad, and we were only models.

In any case, maybe you haven’t heard Funky Kingston. Please do:

Lunch Break: Graham Gouldman, “Bus Stop”

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So, the story goes, I found this website, a blog really, and, um, where did today go, anyway?

Powerpop.blogspot.com doesn’t immediately catch my attention, I’m not that interested in a power pop blog, but a little more browsing unearthed this version of one of my favorite songs.

Graham Goulding was a writer of Dreadlock Holiday, featured in this space last week, and all of 10 C.C.’s songs. Before that he wrote For Your Love and Heart Full of Soul for the Yardbirds, No Milk Today for Herman’s Hermits, and Look Through any Window and the classic Bus Stop for the Hollies. Two of the Hollies best.

The original Bus Stop is a fantastic but brittle pop tune, maybe a little over produced (how many singers are there?), but classic. I’m not complaining about it. Goulding’s own version, which was apparently recorded for a 10 C.C. greatest hits collection, is mellower and at least for the first half is a more agreeable version. A true love song, a true pop song, and both elevated together.

Take it to lunch!

h/t to Powerpop.blogpost.com.

Editing Football: Debaser Edition

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Football is a debased game. But I’m up late editing the Fantasy Football Guide (available on newsstands and online at the end of June), and all I can hear is the Pixies. In other words, I’m glad to have Hanley Ramirez tonight in the two leagues in which I can own National Leaguers. Sweet, but, not enough.

And I’m glad I don’t have a kid who wants to play football. That would be debasing. Hmm, that is enough. Thanks.