Category Archives: video

The Current Earworm is Grandaddy’s “Watercooler”

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I was parking the car when this came on WFUV, a college station with professional DJs that is currently playing a mix of album-friendly tunes from across eras and genres. Grandaddy, it turns out, got their start 30 years ago in Modesto CA and have dabbled in various indy grunge psychedelic styles ever since.

I’ve played a bunch of their music and it has a mostly muted energy but pops with clever ideas, lyrically and musically. I suspect as I listen more I’ll like some of it more, but Watercooler is immediately classic.

Interview with Robert Fripp

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We’ve featured Fripp’s YouTube videos with his wife Toyah, which they started putting out each Sunday during lockdown.

We loved In the Hall of the Crimson King when it came out, and we love his production of the first Roche’s album, which was so gorgeously perfect it’s hard to imagine better.

So, now he’s on the road with his manager, speaking and giving Guitar Craft lessons, and he just seems like a heck of a guy. Read the interview here.

The Times screws up credit for Frippertronics, so here’s a demonstration:

Link: The White House Record Collection

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In 1973 Johnny Mercer selected 1,800 pieces of vinyl for the White House with as much Pat Boone as the Beatles. Six years later John Hammond with John Lewis, Kit Rachlis, and Bob Blumenthal created a second set that included the Ramones and Parliament Funkadelic among others.

Jimmy Carter’s grandson became a little obsessed about what happened to all these disks, and tracked them down, eventually having a bit of a listening party in a White House conference room, playing I’m So Bored with the USA while President Obama governed upstairs.

This story is that story and it’s kind of neat. Read it here.

The Beatles, Get Back

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Carl Wilson, the rock writer, does a great job here explaining Peter Jackson’s epic (when it comes to the Beatles in January 1969, not civilization) TV show about the Beatles, called Get Back. I finished it last night and it is delightful, insightful, and well worth watching. Read his story here.

Erik Holcomb is Dead. Hans Condor bassist and, it turns out, a lot more.

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I didn’t know Erik, I think I emailed him once, but maybe it was someone else in Hans Condor. They were a Nashville band that gloriously went on a Japan tour, and leave behind a great album and at least one terrific video.

So this isn’t a personal reminiscence.

But a lot of Nashville loved Erik. Reading the remarks would be emotional (a young person dies) but his generosity is legend.

Rock on Erik!

https://www.nashvillescene.com/music/nashville-cream/article/20999684/nashville-punk-and-metal-standardbearer-erik-holcombe-dies-at-37

Chuck Berry and John Lennon on Mike Douglas

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This clip is another example of Mike Douglas’s magic. John Lennon meets Chuck Berry for the first time and they do a kind of weak Memphis Tennessee because Lennon seems to be insisting on sharing vocals.

On Johnny B. Goode balance is restored.

I’m a fan of Yoko’s, but her mike seems to be cut in the Johnny B. Goode mix. It’s just weird during Memphis Tennessee.