Category Archives: video

Night Music: S.F. Seals, “Doc Ellis”

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oneperfectgreenblanketMany of our regular commenters are in Phoenix this week, enjoying the pleasures of Spring Training, the LABR auctions, and the visual stimulation of Old Scottsdale.

No better time to run Barbara Manning’s post solo band up the center field flag pole. I know of no other rocker with cooler baseball bona fides. The art with this post is the cover from her album One Perfect Green Blanket, which is quite perfect.

The song commemorates Doc Ellis’s No Hitter, pitched while on LSD. We’ve posted the cartoon video about this event before, on askrotoman.com. But we’re not stalking. Just marveling. And Barbara’s song is great, too. Direct link to Ellis on LSD.

Night Music: The Ramones, Medley at Arturo Vega’s

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The date is in 1975. The band formed the previous year. The sound is crap. The video is noisy, which is bad. But it’s great nonetheless. Even though it isn’t entirely pleasurable. But who comes here for pleasure?

Arturo Vega was the band’s supporting artist, who created the iconic and immortal Ramones crest.

Others know more than me about this clip, but to me it seems amazing that they had it all together already. This was the sound they pitched for the rest of their lives, there at the beginning, almost whole.

Night Music: Annie Lennox, David Bowie and Queen, “Under Pressure”

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This clip is from the rehearsals for a Queen tribute show. That’s all I know.

What impresses is the intensity and the craft and intensity that Lenox and Bowie bring to singing the song. Which unfortunately mostly reminds me of Vanilla Ice, who as arrested last week in Florida while filming a reality TV show, which is another story entirely.

Being a star/artist/whatever means not dialing it in, is what I think that means.

That’s the main thing that interests me about this clip. These are not everyday people. They’re aware of how hard they worked to get to where they are, and how hard they have to keep working to hang onto even a fraction of it.

Show business is brutal. And I bet, in the best of times, awesome fun.

The Birth of Rock ‘n’ Roll!

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Here’s a fun one. Enter your birthday into this site and they’ll tell you what song was No. 1 the day you were born.

I doubt your song can be much cooler (or classic) than mine.

They’ll also tell you what song was No. 1 the night you were conceived, a real rock ‘n’ roll moment for sure. (I’ve posted about this song twice before, with various versions but not the giant hit that was Tennessee Ernie Ford’s.)

Night Music: Esteban Jordan and Valerio Longorio, “La Hilacha”

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Two accordions in one song. I fear what might happen tonight in Eastern Pennsylvania.

Anyone who has watched Breaking Bad knows the form of the borderlands ballad, a nortena song style that’s usually about criminals plying their trade and escaping the long brazos of the law.

One of the main characteristics of these songs is a metonymical tempo and a steady passionless delivery. This is Mexican music, but one that evolved out of the polka of the German settlers of South Texas. It is a dance music of the wooden soldiers.

Esteban Jordan, known unofficially as the king of the diatonic accordion when he was alive, subverted the rules. His is a music of swing, varying tempos, intemperate ejaculations (like Bob Wills), and a drive to rock the tempo out of it’s implacable groove, into one with just a little bit of surprise. You can see from Velerio Longorio’s reactions in the video, that Jordan’s mild improvs and filigrees are outrageous.

And the eye patch doesn’t hurt.