If these guys weren’t from Maryland, and this video wasn’t from a show in Philadelphia, I’m not sure I’d be posting it, but some small part of the fun was trying to find our buddy Steve in the crowd at this show.
It’s quite a show. I love the hurtling, twisting, spastic bodies of the stage divers, the oculus of mosh out in the middle of the floor, the way the bass player puts down his guitar and dives into the crowd, then returns to stage and joins back in with the band.
I love the vocalist saying he’s not much with words, and the way he shares the mic at every opportunity.
I love that there are straight edge kids.
I compare this stuff to the Bad Brains clip Steve posted last week and I have to say that it surprises me that this is a style that endures. But the vocalist loves hardcore, it gives him a voice, and you can see it in every angular strut by the stage divers that it means a whole lot to all of them. That’s a great feeling, one I’m happy to share.
Van and Bob sitting on a hill with the Parthenon in the background, singing a Van Morrison song (that isn’t One Irish Rover) with acoustic guitar (Van) and harmonica (Bob).
Followed by One Irish Rover, both playing guitars, singing harmonies. Simple, but excellent nonetheless. With Van playing guitar quite nicely and hypnotically, kind of perfect. You probably don’t want less, and you certainly don’t want more.
There’s more after that, excellent Van, but the songs on the hillside are what got me here. Icons, maybe showing off, but simply.
Ron Howard is a master cinematic storyteller, for sure, but not someone with much interest in complexity or ambiguity. Which can be good for storytelling, but for me usually comes up wanting. I like the messy, the complicated, the things that make you say oh.
I was curious about this picture, but would have let it slide, or ride, but friends invited me and my daughter wanted to go. So we went to Greenwich Village for some fine wood-fired brick oven Neapolitan pizza and Ron Howard’s joint, plus the promise of the whole Beatles at Shea Stadium film, remastered visually and auditorily using all the modern tricks.
The movie is a gas. The camera is up close on the Beatles and their fans through the 28 Days Later rush of Beatlemania, during the charge of concerts around the globe, and headlong up to the show at Shea Stadium. These guys, when they were young, ambitious and full of energy, were terrific cutups. And then it stays up close through the despair that followed the exhaustion that came after, when cutups transformed into turnoffs.
As I had expected, I felt as if I’d seen most of this footage before, but all of it was delightful, looked fantastic, and there are some revelations (for me anyway):
Early footage of some English shows in 1963 are fantastic and transforming. This wasn’t just a group of clever songwriters and melody makers, with winning personalities, but a hard rocking band. Ringo pounds on his kit, and the Beatles deliver with equal and transformative energy. Great songs, but also tight and terrific arrangements and wickedly and aggressively good playing.
McCartney, mostly, and Lennon, too, from old interviews, talk about their songwriting, and the need to hew to a schedule to put out a new single every three months, and an album every six months. The studio footage and tales, plus the clips from all the live shows they’re doing, and movies they’re making, really dial up the grueling nature of it all.
At one point Lennon talks about how silly the lyrics are in those early albums, really just placeholders while they worked on the music. Which seems like a throwaway, since so many are so clever and perfect to the form, until, later, he and McCartney talk about the personal content that John weaves into the lyrics of Help!, a song that to me has always seemed a novelty tied to the movie of the same name. But of course not!
I always forget what a cutup George was, even when I consider the hilarity of his film producing career. I mean, Withnail and I? This movie confirms he’s funny and serious, too.
I assume there will be a follow up, a sequel. Maybe Blue Jay Way: The Studio Years, but more likely Strawberry Fields Forever: The Studio Years, which will go further into the making of the last five elpees. That will no doubt be an equal treat. But the takeaway here is that the Beatles were really great, in a way that has no match, and we would be fools to forget about even a part of that greatness.
Ron Howard’s movie is a crowd pleaser, and lives up to that not modest ambition. Go and enjoy.
In anyMy Facebook friend Darren Viola posted this clip today of Boston’s Lyre’s playing somewhere haughty. My guess is Newport, but they rock as anyone would hope they would.
In any case, no matter what this is, it is a pretty sweet documentary look at people dancing. Go!
Live at Daryl’s House is this oddball show. The idea. Musicians go to Daryl Hall’s house and record songs with Daryl Hall.
When it started Daryl Hall seemed to be bankrolling these video casts, which were available on his website, and it was hard to see how this was a sustainable program. But the quality was always exemplary, the pairings interesting, the musicians great.
I came upon this O’Jays show tonight. Here’s For the Love of Money at Daryl’s House:
It’s not my favorite O’Jays song, it’s kind of a Temps’ rip, but there’s lots to like in that live version. Including Daryl Hall’s vocals . Here’s the much-more restrained original:
Those solo records he made in the mid 70s are notebooks of sounds that he gave to Talking Heads, Devo and U2, but they also stand up on their own. This one from Before and After Science comes with a neat video, and like Eno’s other elpees of the period has Phil Collins playing drums, which was probably cool at the time but in retrospect is just a little paradigm shifting.
My daughter is writing a research paper about the Dust Bowl. She was looking for a title, and I glibly suggested Dust In The Wind. She liked it. I hope she gets an A.
But that moment was a reason to listen to the tune, which I probably haven’t done in a really long time. But in all these years, I could sing the song, and certainly have.
Checking out the video tonight. It is cheesy, but the melody and starkness of the tune are unforgettable. Is abjectness a vibe? Apparently.
Does that make it a great song? The video tells me this is some sort of midwestern crazy fundamental evangelical nonsense. All these pictures are like those on the internet that promise me pictures that changed weddings, history, Woodstock.
But the tune is straightforward, and was a hit everywhere. Maybe it’s the great melody, with an idea that everyone finds inevitable. Hell yeah!
What I don’t hear is careerism. I hear Remnants who went big and hit one out. Cool!
