Rolling Stones, Connection

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They were showing Shine A Light in the park tonight on one of those big blow up screens, and, it turned out to be a fantastic sound system. Nothing better in the middle of a heatwave to see the Stones outside in somewhat cooler air.

I thought I’d seen the movie before but I was wrong. The nexus of Stones and Scorcese had someone how slipped past me.

Here’s the review. If you like the Stones, you will like this show. The songs are arranged a little differently, but the rearrangements are astute and advantage all the supporting players, so the front guys can play their rote parts, hit their marks with passion, and even if the ravages of age a little apparent, make us forget that this is 50 years later. It’s a great performance.

In the middle of the show Mick hands off to Keith for You’ve Got The Silver, which is a terrific tune that advantages Keith’s game but less than full voice. And then, surprisingly, the show move on to Connection, one of the oldest songs they played, one of my favorites from Between the Buttons. This is a pop hit that has a more insidious pop hook than the overt grabbers of Satisfaction or Get Off My Cloud or Paint It Black, and was never released as a single, so was never a hit.

But it lives on. Scorcese obviously understands the limits of a non-pop historical song from an audience perspective and uses that to glide into Keith interviews when he was young and when he was old. Good stuff, all, but it diverts our attention away from the performance, which is remarkably winning in spite of its limitations.

I particularly like that dynamic, so I wanted more of the performance, but what I can share is this Italian version of the song and intercuts. I hope it suffices. By that I mean, I think this is fun.

Renewed Hope. . .

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in the youth of America.

Go Henry

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This is old and we all know Henry Rollins is kind of a blowhard and, as some of the comments point out, it’s not like every piece of music he’s ever done shines with brilliance. However, some of this sounds so sweet to me – especially the U2 – I can’t let it go.

Song of the Week – California Soul, Marvin Gaye & Tammi Terrell

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IGNORED OBSCURED RESTORED

One of the greatest and most tragic musical collaborations was the series of duets recorded by Marvin Gaye and Tammi Terrell. Their glorious list of hits include “Ain’t No Mountain High Enough,” “Your Precious Love” (my favorite), “If I Could Build My Whole World Around You,” “Ain’t Nothing Like the Real Thing,” and “You’re All I Need to Get By.”

But as you well know by now, the SotW is all about providing exposure to the overlooked gems, so today’s feature is “California Soul.”

“California Soul” was written by Ashford & Simpson and recorded by numerous (mostly Motown) acts before Gaye and Terrell took a crack at it. They managed to take it to #56 as the B-side to “The Onion Song.” It was the last single released by the duo (March 1970) and was included on the album Easy.

On October 14, 1967, Terrell collapsed into Gaye’s arms onstage at a concert in Virginia. She was soon diagnosed with brain cancer and was unable to fully continue her career. She received treatments and operations through early 1970 when she finally succumbed to her disease and died about 6 weeks before her 25th birthday.

Controversy has surrounded whether Terrell truly sang on Easy or if her parts were actually sung by Simpson. But I choose to believe Terrell sang, especially since Simpson has continually denied that it was her. (She claims to have provided guide vocals for the weakened Terrell who had to sing while seated in a wheelchair.)

We can only imagine what more great music Gaye and Terrell were destined to make together.

Enjoy… until next week.

Fanboy

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Hey, here’s that pic of me and the Marty Stuart gang I talked about a couple weeks ago. It was buried on my phone and I stumbled into it today.

Print up a poster and be the hit of your 4th of July shindig!

The Biters Forge Ahead

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Things to know:

1) I feel guilty for liking this Bolan forgery so much.

2) It’s the “soco, soco, soco. . .” part.

3) They’re not even from Sweden! Atlanta, actually.

4) The singer is prettier and probably half as masculine as Joan Jett, whose look he forged. (Joan Jett did plenty of Bolan forging herself so it all comes full circle.)

The Beatles Get Worst to First Treatment

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Note first, Bill Wyman wrote this.

He’s a rock critic, not the Rolling Stones bassist. But does that matter?

I immediately check out the end and find Good Morning in last place. Geez. I like that tune, not in a rock sense, but in a music and attitude sense, it’s pretty powerful. So, I disagree.

And then it gets worse and better and worse, and there’s not reason to think about the ranking. This is an internet click bait thing, Wyman is a pretty decent critic, and does a good job of navigating through the ranks.

Which are totally wrong. Discuss.

http://www.vulture.com/2017/06/all-213-beatles-songs-ranked-from-worst-to-best.html

The Dahmers

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Discovered two new-to-me bands recently and I’ll give you these guys first.

Cool song. Excellent cinematography.

I’ll give you one guess as to where they’re from?

Of course, the mecca of consistently great music. Sweden is like musical heaven these days.

Hank III: Dick in Dixie

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Hank III and his Damn Band are great. No doubt about it. But not perfect.

You have to decide where to draw the line. Have fun.

Song-Ending Solo

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Here’s my nominee.

Anyone not completely blown away the first time you heard this as a kid? Made me wanna jump out of my pants.

It’s a really odd rock song (if this copies something else I’m not aware of, please do tell) and one of the oddities is there’s no solo until the very end. The guitar is all riff and thump up to that point.

And what a solo it is – herky-jerky as hell and packed full of what has become cliche Page solo material. Not that there’s anything wrong with that.