This shouldn’t be on YouTube. Prince doesn’t like that. I think it must be slowed down a little, to fool the piracy software.
It was scheduled to go up on the 25th, last in my Seven songs from the 80s set, but dangit, I just read that Prince died last night.
This was a pop hit, but did a song better catch the feeling of nuclear risk from that time? And why do we feel that risk no longer exists today?
This weekend at Coachella the legendary Cleveland guitarist Glenn Schwartz performed with legendary Eagles savior Joe Walsh (who introduced Schwartz as the guy who taught him to play guitar), and Dan Auerbach, who is producing a boogie rock album by a band called the Arcs that contains (but certainly not restrains) all three.
I don’t think any of us anticipated seeing the Arc in our imaginary Coachella.
Legendary Clevelander and two-time Tout Wars winner John Coleman turned us on to Schwartz a couple of years ago. He has a great story and obviously great chops.
There is a short clip on YouTube here:
The much better clip is on Facebook, but you have to go to the Rock Remnants page on Facebook for us to help you find it. You should go there. This is excellent boogie rock at its best.
Can I say that Facebook is stupid about these outside links? Yes I can. Please let us link freely.
That said, it’s great to see Glenn Schwartz out and playing. Joe Walsh, too.
My partner Diane, of all people, turned me onto an aspect of our Spotify subscription that is dynamite.
Based upon the listeners likes, the system picks out other like artists the brainchild of the system thinks will fall in line with said taste. I know all the music streams, like Slacker and Pandora, have variations of this, but what Spotify does is simply assemble a weekly list of 30 songs that might pique the listener.
If is funny that Diane found this, since she was skeptical about Spotify, and has very specific musical taste, which means she likes what she likes and there is no explaining it or rationale and that means she likes “I Want to be a Millionaire,” “Thrift Shop,” “Purple Rain,” and “It’s a Long Way to the Top (if You Wanna Rock’n’Roll).” So, don’t ask me to try to connect the dots.
Diane found Weekly Playlist while looking for one to stream while she was at the gym, and said it was really fun. so I plugged in three weeks ago and it knocked me out.
As in I am not sure how they profile us, but they got me nailed based upon my favorite artists listed of The Kinks, Richard Thompson, Mick Ronson, The Who, Yo La Tengo, Bill Frisell, Joe Jackson, Pink Floyd, and Wilco.
So, here is the list of 30 songs for this week (Spotify seems to change the list every Monday) I streamed on my way to and from the links the past couple of days, some of which I know and love, others which are new and I dig, all of which are great.
Perfect, huh? All over the map, and totally satisfying. And, give Heaps of Sheeps a listen!
14.
Blondie landed on WBLS with this soulful one. Nothing more surprising nor right.
This is a Facebook thing. Silly but true.
No. 1:
Look at the 2016 Coachella lineup and tell me who you’d be interested in seeing. Feel free to tell others about bands they should be interested in seeing.
Here’s my list:
1) Guns ‘N’ Roses – I’m slightly curious.
2) The Damned – Not sure what The Damned is anymore, what kind of music they’re playing or what they represent.
There you have it. I’d happily pay $20 to see GnR in a Philly club if a friend asked me to go along. $15 for the same scenario with The Damned.
P.S. – I didn’t post any links or a nice Coachella picture because I don’t give a shit.
There is a somewhat long piece by Brent L. Smith on Medium, linked here. It starts from a quote from Dylan in that interview he did last year in the AARP magazine, in which he says that payola was a force that caused rock ‘n’ roll in the 50s to split into rock (white) and soul (black) music in the 60s.
Smith covers a lot of ground in support of this idea, including the rise of DJs, doo wop’s role in the cleaving, the historical role of the tavern in the American multiracial democracy (and the elite’s disdain for the tavern and the multiracial democracy), Norman Mailer’s essay about the rise of the white Negro, a nod to Chuck Berry as poet and guitar master, and, of course, Jimi Hendrix. Which leads Smith to some talk about the fourth wave of garage rock he says is going on now, linking to the LA magazine, Janky Smooth, at which he works.
One of the highlights are competing quotes from Frank Sinatra and Dr. Martin Luther King decrying rock ‘n’ roll, which make that music of the 50s sound really dangerous.
Smith’s writing is loose limbed, I couldn’t always figure out where the quotes came from, and some word choices are, um, interesting. Smith is a graduate of the Jack Kerouac School of Disembodied Poetics, which perhaps literally explains some of that, but the ambition and breadth of his ideas and their connections with each other are nothing if not provocative. You will miss having a genuine soundtrack to listen along to while reading. Here it is.
IGNORED OBSCURED RESTORED
Canadian Dan Bejar exercises his craft through two bands, The New Pornographers and Destroyer. I’ve long been a fan of The New Pornographers – their “Myriad Harbor” was the SotW on March 1, 2008 – but I’ve have had very little exposure to Destroyer’s 10 albums. So when their latest record, Poison Season, was released last September I decided to give it a thorough test drive. I’ve been on the road with it ever since.
The album has the same type of cinematic quality as Springsteen’s Born to Run album. (I’m thinking of songs like “Meeting Across the River” and “Jungleland.”) A fine example is “Time Square” in the first and last of the three versions of on the disc. But today’s SotW is the middle, more pop version of the song.
The lyrics merge biblical references with modern day New York City references to create some interesting and thought provoking imagery.
Jesus is beside himself
Jacob’s in a state of decimation
The writing on the wall wasn’t writing at all
Just forces of nature in love with a weather station
Artists and repertoire
Hand in hand through the grey doorway at dawn
The writing on the wall said, “Jesus saves”
The writing on the wall mentions Honey playing a game with the waves
You can follow a rose wherever it grows
Yeah, you can fall in love with Times Square
Times Square
The words capture something intrinsic to NYC in much the same way as many of Lou Reed’s lyrics. They’re vague enough to avoid any obvious interpretation, yet strikingly beautiful nonetheless.
This is all sung in Bejar’s fragile voice to a romping groove of acoustic guitars, piano, drums, congas and horns. The instrumental break after the first chorus is simply joyous.
Now I’ve got some work to do digging into Destroyer’s back catalog of those other 10 albums.
Enjoy… until next week.
BTW – Today is Record Store Day. Drop the digitized music for a couple of hours and go put your hands on some physical product today. It’s good for the soul.
Richard Linklater made a movie called Dazed and Confused, after the Led Zeppelin song, about high school kids partying on the last day of school. His new movie is called Everybody Wants Some!!, after the Van Halen song, about college kids partying on the first day of school.
Like most Linklater films there is lots of chatter. In this case the bros in the movie are members of the best collegiate baseball team in Texas, and they talk about sex, drugs, and rock ‘n’ roll, as well as much else, as they compete in everything they do.
I haven’t seen Dazed and Confused in a long time, so I won’t compare the two movies. What I can say for sure is that Everybody Wants Some!! is warm and funny and exuberant, brilliant and surprisingly deep in an offhanded and precise way (with beer and a bong). Highly recommended.
Plus, it got me to hear My Sharona with fresh ears. Not bad.
