Category Archives: video

Happy 100th Birthday, Sun Ra!

by

sunra-headThe bandleader Sun Ra would have been 100 years old yesterday. His Arkestra was a touring powerhouse and Sun Ra a huge composer and personality in the world of modern jazz. Of course, Sun Ra was his own person and had his own way of looking at things, so the idea of this or that may have had no currency to him. He did things his way, with a devotion and concentration and no thought of compromise.  Which is what makes him a legend to this day.

His attitude, his belief that he came from a place beyond Earth, and that the music he made had no limits, made him a favorite of progressive rock fans back in his day, as well as jazz fans, and the Arkestra’s live shows around the world were historic and popular beyond jazz’s usual audiences. These were musical shows, but also spiritual, celebrating the passing from the leaden quotidian to the exultant and rapturous.

“Play with some fire on it,” Sun Ra would tell his musicians. “If you’re not mad at the world, you don’t have what it takes.”

 

 

 

 

Night Music: Eric Clapton and Robert Cray, “Old Love”

by

Slowhand and Cray apparently wrote this tune together. It’s okay, but what wins here is Clapton’s look. He had so many, most of which weren’t as weird as this one.

Clapton also has a dueling guitars moment in this clip, during which he shreds Cray the way he did Robbie Robertson in The Last Waltz. Nevermind. Clapton is god, but he clearly knows that he stands on the shoulders of others. Whether that makes him a good guy or an asshole is up in the air.

What I know is I’m always glad to hear him play.

 

Lunch Break: Dead Boys, “I Need Lunch”

by

Screenshot 2014-04-22 12.09.31Pat Ivers and Emily Armstrong happened to have the excellent idea to shoot video of many performances at CBGB in the late 70s and early 80s, one of which is this performance of the Dead Boys.

Pat and Emily have been preserving their material, which is being archived at NYU, and through May and July will be showing the videos at the Museum of Arts and Design in New York.

They also maintained a blog for a while, with clips and good stories about the bands, which you can find here.

Many clips are hosted on Vimeo, under the name go nightclubbing.

Plus there are more clips and info at the gonightclubbing.com site.

See you in about year.

Lunch Break: Roxy Music, “Virginia Plain”

by

Like late 19th-century English literature, I know far more about Roxy Music from those they’ve become or those they’ve influenced than their actual elpees. That’s because I’ve never owned a Roxy Music album (but I own plenty of Eno), and I’ve never read a Jane Austen novel (though I’ve seen plenty of the stories on a movie or television screen).

The last couple of days I’ve been playing the Essential greatest hits el=pee, which starts with the fantastic Re-Make/Re-Model and ends with a live and somewhat lachrymose version of Jealous Guy. In between is their first single, from 1972, the rollicking Virginia Plain, which seems to mash just about every style of rock under a Velvets’ kind of chug.

Night Music: Leonard Cohen, “Save The Last Dance for Me”

by

Doc Pomus and Mort Schuman wrote this classic in 1960. It was originally recorded by Ben E. King and the Drifters in 1960.

Pomus had polio as a child and used crutches to get around until later in life, when he used a wheelchair. The irony of a man who can’t dance writing a song about watching his lover dance with another is powerful stuff, and Lou Reed has told the story that the lyric was inspired by Pomus’s wedding day, when he married a Broadway star and dancer, but could not dance his own wedding dance.

All of which would be way too much, except it’s true. And the song is not comfortably romantic. There is angst, lots of angst in there, too.

Which is what helps make Leonard Cohen’s closing time singalong with 14,000 Irish so touching. Oh, that and Leonard’s age. We’re all too freakin’ human.

Breakfast Blend: More Steve Gibbons Band

by

So, appalling sexual politics aren’t all Steve Gibbons delivers.

These two tunes are full of stylistic and rhetorical contradictions, none more clear than Gibbons reacting to the English punks and their obvious rock appeal, while maintaining his own solid rock fundamentals. Eddie Vortex is a straight ahead rockabilly ride, full of style signifiers that Gibbons says are okay, though at that point he’s not having much of it. Eddie Vortex ain’t too bad.

No Spitting comes a year later, and Steve is dressing more like a modern rocker while playing a Bo Diddley-White Reggae hybrid. This is the music of uprising, both of the 50s and Kingston, but in the voice of a man for whom a part of the job is maintaining public order and getting people to work.