Jeff Beck and ZZ Top are on tour, and last week’s encore in LA was recorded. The song 16 Tons is one of the enduring country chestnuts first recorded by Merle Travis in 1946 which became a hit for Tennessee Ernie Ford in 1955. It’s one of those songs I bang out on the guitar, singing along, in my living room, and that’s the approach the boys took last week. Until the guitar solos.
Here’s the original Merle Travis version. A lighter touch, for sure, and he explains how the whole company store thing worked.
Which led me to this version, with Billy Gibbons singing in front of Jeff Beck’s band. Much better sound and way more engaged vocals than the Beck with ZZ Top.
I loved this song. Bought the UK single for beaucoup dollars, and played the crap out of it. For me, this was Dexy’s. Enjoy the video:
The notable aspect, of course, apart from the poetic intonations, are the cheesy horn parts. The English loved these cheesy horn parts, which were more beacons than swing items, which I attribute to the popular preference for disco beats above all others.
In any case, Dexy’s made much more pandering music later. Read more Brendan Behan and all is good.
Emily Stein has taken pictures of teens on the floor at concerts, using some sort of uberlight and a fast shutter speed, these are the cleanest mosh pit images I’ve ever seen.
Mosh pit pics are a venerable genre, but they usually look like some variation of this:
Since neither of us seems content to give the other the last word in posting today, the Challenge will be to either do another post or dump a litter box full of cat shit on your head in a youtube video.
In real life Ethan Hawke made a mixtape of his favorite songs by the Beatles during their solo career to give to his daughter, apparently after he and Uma divorced.
At the same time, over the last 12 years or so, he was making a move with Richard Linklater called Boyhood, which is the story of a boy from the age of five to 17. The trick of the movie is that it was shot with the same actors over a 12 year period. Ethan Hawke plays the boy’s father, and he presents him with the Black Album after the fictional couple, the boy’s parents divorce.
This article at Buzzfeed publishes the song list for three disc worth of tunes (too many), and the liner notes that Hawke gave his daughter and rewrote for the movie’s purposes. Beatles experts may have something to say about its interpretation of history, but I would say the whole thing is kind of lovely. Much nicer than How Do You Sleep?
There’s a new Taylor Swift single out called Shake It Off. The song will be a hit, it has the insistent beat of Pharrell’s Happy and the marketing might of Taylor Swift herself and all that’s at stake stoking her machine (her record label is called Big Machine), but the song it reminds me of most is Elvis Costello’s most unhitish soul foray on his 1983 album Punch the Clock, Let Them All Talk. The obvious tie in is the insistent soul horns, which would fit in well on a Dexy’s Midnight Runner’s song, but in typical Costello fashion they’re played for pure signifying noise rather than simple if numbing pleasure.
This clip is from an extended dance mix, which I’m not sure adds a lot of danceability to the track, but does open it up sonically.
Taylor Swift’s new album is called 1989 and I have no idea if that is a reference to the music of the 80s, but this video captured me from the git go. The mix of dancing and subtle jokes is totally winning. And while we can be certain Taylor wasn’t channeling Let Them All Talk, it is curious that her tune hits those same bleating horns hard, and is similarly self referential (though she never talks about the soul cliches).
Some will enjoy this, some will slit their wrists or puncture their eardrums, but I offer it up for its curious echoes…
By the way, on some plays the video is preceded by a clip of Taylor selling style for JC Penny’s, and watching her shill I don’t like her at all. But this video is really great. It elevates the song beyond beyond. I’m not going to stop watching, and probably won’t be able to, at least for a while.
The question about what makes a great song is complicated by all sorts of contingencies.
But what makes the Ur songs of rock Ur are their, um, Ur-ness.
There is no rock song that rings all the bells as much as Chuck Berry’s Johnny B. Goode.
I can argue that he wrote better songs (how about Carol? Back in the USA? Maybelline?), but Johnny B. Goode has a great beat, a good hook, and is about inventing the music. It’s big, it’s bold, and it’s catchy.
