While reading and listening my way through Lawr’s post, however, I thought of some songs that I thought fit. Here they are:
With a nice skit (featuring Bruce Dern as the director!).
This was the Clash movie song that I thought of first, maybe because Brooklyn native son Monty Clift is buried just up the street here in Greenwood Cemetery.
Okay, a bit of a stretch. This beautiful song tells the story of an imaginary film, but it’s the language of film that structures the lyrics, just as much as Leslie West’s beautiful guitar makes me want to play it over and over again (as I did in high school). The sound on this clip is pretty bad, but the performance comes through anyway. I chose it because I think this was the same concert, later broadcast on NBC, that I watched for Mountain and Sly and the Family Stone, but which most memorably introduced me to Iggy and the Stooges.
This one, too, is the story of a movie that doesn’t exist. Cut to the baby taking off her clothes, close up of the sign that says we never close. Indeed.
I watched a little bit of the Grammys show tonight, before switching over to the fading Downton Abbey. But fading is way better than faded.
The show opened with Beyonce singing the drunk song about surfing, and it all felt a little like Liza Minelli in Cabaret, except Beyonce is noticeably more curvaceous. And it is only by outrageous analogy that maybe we all become Nazi officers watching her.
Jay Z appeared and it was nice to see them work together and even be a little affectionate, though they live such mediated lives it’s hard to tell what’s real and what’s putting on the show. In any case, I suspect if Turbonegro was watching they got no erection. This was pure entertainment.
Speaking of that. Before the show started there was a commercial for a casino that used a Macklemore and Ryan song, that really inspirational one in which you hold your hands higher, to advertise their $50 free play. WTF? These guys are selling their songs for commercials?
And then, 20 minutes later, they were winning Best New Artist and hyping how they made their elpee independently. No label support at all. That sounds good, but not if you’re selling your hits for cheesy commercials for dubious products. Sure, endorse the Neutral Milk Hotel Mangum condoms. That’s hip. Offer a $50 rebate for casino gambling? Eat bad buffet.
The music I saw was all terrible. The best was a Keith Urban-Gary Clark Jr. collaboration on an insipid song that must have been Urban’s. Clark is an excellent rock guitarist and he got gritty on Urban and smoked him a little in their solo part, but it was more dispiriting because the better songwriter was pushed aside for the more popular country dude.
Which led to the Best Rock Song category. The nominees were an embarrassment of old. The Stones were nominated! Ozzy and his crew, too. The winner was this song, written by Sir Paul McCartney and Nirvana’s Dave Grohl, Krist Novacelic and Pat Smear. In this clip Sir Paul isn’t really sure about their names, other than Grohl’s, which is fair. My grandfather used to have the same problem with my girl friends.
So, the live clip lets you see how Sir Paul interacts with his youngers (guys pushing 50, right?). But the sound sucks. They didn’t win for that. They won for this:
Like everything Grohl is involved with, this works just fine as rock. It sounds like a Wings when they were most rockish, mixed with the breast-pounding vocal of How Do You Sleep and other Lennon tirades. And it’s good to see Sir Paul pounding it a bit.
Obviously, the selection of this tune as Best Rock Song of the year has no bearing on what the actual best rock song of the year was, but what was the best rock song of 2013?
I did not know about DA Pennebaker’s Ziggy Stardust movie until yesterday. Poor me.
It seems that Bowie had plans to retire the The Spiders from Mars as his backing band after these very shows, as well as Ziggy Stardust as his stage persona. He invited Pennebaker to record a couple of songs, for posterity, but the legendary director of music films (Don’t Look Back among others)ghby saw a bigger chance, and recorded the weekend of shows at the Hammersmith Odeon.
With word out that the Spiders were done, many took that to mean that the willful Bowie was retiring from the stage himself. I watched half of this today and it is so fine, a mixture of fab musical performance and just enough verite color to make it all feel immediate and up close.
There is a DVD of the whole show that surely has better pictures and sound, but this clip will give you an indelible taste.
I was looking for a David Johansen solo clip and found this bit of nonsense. I’m charmed because Johnny sounds just like he does on the records. All of them.
I like this song because Malkmus barks more like a punk rocker than a lyricist who has been overexposed by the New Yorker crowd. I think he has a terrific bratty rock sense, a quavery but tuneful (and conversational) voice, and a pretty solid band behind him always.
But I also like the Malkmus tunes (with Pavement, with Jicks, and solo) when he brays like a word-drunk poet with an aversion to following the melody too closely. Again, because the band behind him is always solidly creative. Nobody is phoning it in.
Which isn’t to say that they’re dedicated to tight.
Cambodia may not have a history of rock, but it does have a benefit concert in its past.
This is a pretty good lineup, a mashup of Stiff’s Live and the Concert for Sandy, kind of.
I’m attaching a Youtube of the whole concert, for the record, though I haven’t watched it all yet. But it starts with the Who playing old-style guitar-rock versions of Substitute and I Can’t Explain.
Just came across this story about Cambodia’s nascent hardcore punk scene. According to the article, apart from a surf rock boom in the 60s, Cambodia has never had rock music. The article also calls this a burst of creativity, which I’m not so sure about. I’m not so sure these shirtless guys get the whole idea of slam dancing, but let’s give them a break, they’re beginners.
Here’s another clip, a band called No Forever performing a song called Breathless.
The Valley Girl references, as Nic Cage’s first film, reminded me of this great and funny YouTube of Mr. Cage losing it, which is what he largely does in his movies.
I will admit to being a big fan of the film Adaptation, in which Cage plays twin brothers, but, after watching that film with my niece Lindsay, she turned me onto this hysterical compilation clip of Cage out of control.
Let me start with a ‘Copters tune that I happened to listen to over the holidays (when I head for a CD to drive with it’s always difficult to past up The Hellacopters). It includes one of my favorite all-time rock lyrics:
“I got my radio on,
It’s playing that same old stupid song,
Over and over for much too long.
I gotta turn that damn thing down,
I gotta turn that damn thing down,
Etc., etc.”
A wonderful answer to Peter’s “We Must Respect Current Popular Music” crusade. Bullshit. Dog shit covered with chocolate is still dog shit.
Also a wonderful answer to all the great songs from the past that urged us to turn the radio up (before the radio became dog shit). Perhaps Mr. Costello started it with “Radio Radio” but, of course, The Hellas version is my favorite.
Speaking of Elvis, a couple of buddies and I finally had our Wake for our departed friend DC Hoffman, the last and best drummer for Follow Fashion Monkeys, who shockingly hung (hanged? – I think that’s correct but no one ever says it) himself a couple months ago on a Saturday morning. His wife was in shock and he never had a funeral or even an obituary.
We got together and started slow with some Lucinda Williams, Ruin, Husker Du, etc. We were drinking and talking all the way. The climax was the entire “This Year’s Model” album (knew I had to tie in the “speaking of Elvis” somewhere) which we discussed all the way through. We finished with wild monkey-dancing to “Supershitty To The Max” and then, the greatest full-length album of all-time, the sacred “Apocalypse Dudes.” It was a great send-off to our old friend, who we never knew was suicidal and who never cried out for help even a little bit. Sad. Here are a couple highlights from those last two. DC was at the reformed Hank-less Turbonegro show that I attended in NYC two years ago, by the way. Right up at the front of the stage with me.
Finally, I have a bunch of Amazon gift card money to spend and I’m making a list, mostly back-filling essential stuff I don’t have anymore since I sold my records. I’m buying CDs, of course, clinging to a format I can hold with my hands as it slowly dies. Maybe I’ll buy all of them. Rock ‘n’ roll everybody! Remnants of it still do exist although you wouldn’t know it from what’s mostly on this site anymore. In no particular order (except the first one):
Hellacopters – Strikes Like Lightening – Pretty much the only CD music left that I don’t have from The Only Band That Matters (well, there are a couple others). It’s expensive, but I’m sure it will be worth it.
Uncle Acid And The Deadbeats – Mind Control – The follow-up to Blood Lust isn’t supposed to be as good, but isn’t supposed to be bad either.
Circle Jerks – Group Sex – We played a couple songs at DC’s wake and I realized I need to re-get this punk essential.
Entombed – Wolverine Blues – The main guy from the Hellacopters first band. Yes, it’s death metal, but, according to reviews, this album is very groovy death metal. I truly think I’m missing something with quality death metal (like jazz, but more important), so I’m gonna make myself listen to this at least five times in its entirety and see if I can get used to the Cookie Monster vocals in order to absorb the rest.
Red-Headed Stranger – Willie Nelson – My favorite country album of all-time. I had this on CD, but loaned it to someone who must never have returned it along the way. Hopefully he paid it forward.
Fear – The Record – Another punk classic I never got on CD for some unknown reason.
The Damned – Damned Damned Damned – How I never got their classic debut on CD I’ll never know.
Joe Jackson – Look Sharp – This was about all for Joe Jackson, but I liked this one a lot at the time.
The Stranglers – Old Testament Box Set – I really wanted the first two albums, but may just buy this box set of all the early stuff instead. Surely I’ll find some hidden treasures.
Generation X – Debut – This is good, even though Billy Idol’s later stuff is awful.
The Germs – Complete Anthology – This is another CD I know I had at one point and I don’t have it anymore. Maybe I need new friends.
Bad Brains – Debut – We played a couple of these at DC’s wake as well and I got excited. Anyone who thinks Living Color was a pioneering black rock band knows nothing.
