Elvis is on the Edge of Reality (1968)

Just wanted to share this bizarre clip from one of Elvis Presley's least remembered movies, Live a Little, Love a Little. It's the last movie directed by Norm Taurog who made a number of movies with The King including It Happened at the World's Fair, Girls! Girls! Girls!, Blue Hawaii and G.I. Blues.

The song is written by the same team that wrote a lot of Elvis schlock during his movie era. And yes, that's Dick Sargent of Bewitched fame in this druggy dream sequence.

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#12 The Merseys "Sorrow" 1966

One Half of Led Zep + One Half The Merseybeats = Sorrow

When the Merseybeats broke up, two members ,Tony Crane and Billy Kinsely, carried on as The Merseys. They scored a #4 hit in the UK charts with "Sorrow", originally a B Side by Rick Derringer's band, The McCoys ( of "Hang on Sloopy" fame).
  The McCoys version has a folk rock feel. Billy has said that it sounded like a Neil Young tune but was far too country and western for him.So he reworked the harmonies and added the lagging second vocal line.



The line "with your long blonde hair and your eyes of blue" reappears on the George Harrison penned "It's All Too Much" on The Beatles' Yellow Submarine.
David Bowie cut the song for his Pin Ups album in 1973 and hit #3 in the UK chart.

Future Led Zep bandmates Jimmy Page and John Paul Jones are  playing on the Merseys cut which was recorded live at CBS Studios in New Bond Street, London.

Dig the horn break, pure Carnaby Street grooviness.

The Merseys Sorrow

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#11 Bill Anderson 3AM (1964)

There's an old saying: If you want somebody's attention, whisper. Whispering Bill Anderson earned his nickname with his soft breathy vocals and he earned his reputation as 6 time Country Music Songwriter of the Year with his knack of hitting listeners right where they live. "3 AM" is not one of his best known songs but it's got to be his most depressing. The singer lost his girl. The bars are closed. He's taking a lonely walk and his destination ends in his own demise.

Look at me walking the streets at 3 a.m.
And you're saying what a crazy fool I am
But the one I love is out tonight with him
Somewhere making love at 3 a.m.
I need a drink but all the bars are locked up tight
A lonely man gets mighty thirsty late at night
I won't ever kiss her sweet, sweet lips again
This old world's an awful place at 3 a.m.
--- Instrumental ---
There's the river here's the bridge it's too late now
I've got nothing left to live for anyhow
In the news they'll say he couldn't even swim
And he gave his love for love at 3 a.m.
Yes, he gave his life for love at 3 a.m...


I'm not the only one who thinks this song is great. Robert Forster of The Go-Betweens covered this tune on his album I Had A New York Girlfriend.
Bill Anderson 3 AM

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Peter Buck's 5 Catchiest Guitar Hooks

Compiled to celebrate R.E.M.'s apparent return to form with their new album:
 
                                          

   #5: R.E.M. "Talk About the Passion" from Murmer



Every mid-80's college student with a guitar tried to figure out this lick. On revisiting these albums it surprises me how many of the memorable riffs actually came from Mike Mills on bass.

 #4 The Replacements "I Will Dare" from Let It Be



The R.E.M connection helped sell the Mats to college radio stations who were still taking their cues from MTV. It's a great song but can you imagine "I Will Dare" without Buck's searching lead lines?

#3 R.E.M."Wolves, Lower" from the Chronic Town EP



Here's where we first heard the jangle and arpeggios ( as well as the mumbled lyrics) that inspired a hundred really sincere bands to form.

#2 Full Time Men "I Got Wheels" from Fast is My Name EP

Had to throw a curve. This is from Buck's 1985 EP with Keith Streng of the Fleshtones.Honestly the whole thing is one great guitar hook. Can't find it anymore so here's an mp3.


Full Time Men I Got Wheels

#1 R.E.M. "The One I Love" from Document



Buck used every trick in his arsenal, added a touch of distortion, and helped make "The One I Love" R.E. M.'s first major hit. Inescapable on Friday nights driving to football games in South Carolina's Low Country in 1987.


HONORABLE MENTION:
R.E.M. "Driver 8", "Shiny Happy People" ( hate the song but this is about "catchiest" riffs) and "Losing My Religion"
Decemberists "Down By the Water"

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Well That's One Way To Get The Kids Excited About Greek Mythology

The kids at Watville Primary School sing Iron Maiden's Flight of Icarus.
Hang around at least to the two minute mark. You WON'T be disappointed

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On Mardi Gras Day In N'Awlins, Da Best show Ain't On Da Floats

Every Year for Carnival Time, We make a new suit,

Red yellow green, purple or blue, We make a new suit,

We all try to make ours, as best as we could,

So when we out at Carnival, We be looking good,

Every Year for Carnival Time, We make a new suit,

Red yellow green, purple or blue, We make a new suit,

We got rhinestones on our suit, that shines like diamonds and stars,

Got to be sure that we 're together, cause we're sold on Mardi Gras, oh yall!

Every Year for Carnival Time, We make a new suit,

Red yellow green, purple or blue, We make a new suit,

Every Year for Carnival Time, We make a new suit,

Red yellow green, purple or blue, We make a new suit,

We got feathers, on our crowns, that stand a'bout eight feet high,

In every color, of the rainbow, We're beautiful , I ain't lying, oh yall!

Every Year for Carnival Time, We make a new suit,

We make a new suit

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Cyndi Lauper Just Wants to Have Fun

Stuck at Buenos Aires' Jorge Newbery Airport last Friday, Cyndi Lauper grabs the public-address microphone and sings her 1983 2-million selling platinum hit "Girls Just Want to Have Fun," as nearby travelers and airport workers sing along.



The song was originally written from a misogynistic man's point of view. Cyndi rewrote it and it remains one of the great feminist anthems of our time

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#10 Merrilee Rush "Angel of the Morning" 1968

It is June 1968.
An assassin guns down another Kennedy.
Police arrest Martin Luther King Jr's killer.
War rages in Vietnam.
And racing up the pop charts is a steamy million-selling love song about a one night stand, "Angel of the Morning", by Seattle singer Merrilee Rush.

"The lyric was revolutionary for its time." Merrilee says, "Because this hasn't been said this way before. It was an overnight stand but it was said beautifully."

And sung beautifully by Rush, a dazzling brunette Johnny Cash called "the prettiest, sweetest apple the state of Washington ever produced."


"I was the Marlo Thomas of Rock n Roll," She laughs.

More than 40 years after that Grammy nominated performance, Merrilee has still got it. The voice. The stage presence. The mile wide smile. But she spends most of her time, these days, with her first true loves: her English sheepdogs. She bought her first sheepdog with babysitting money.

"I don't breed a lot, " she says. " but I've been breeding for 25 years and handling in the show room for 23 years and I love it. When you have a great moving dog that's really put together
and flows with you it's just my happy place!"

Her other happy place is an old dairy farm where her grandparents once lived. The cows are gone and so is the barn.

"And the outhouse," She points out. "I used to go in the outhouse .I was a mere child and I'd have to get up in the middle of the night, go out in the dark and I'd have to go to the outhouse."

A shy girl growing up, Merrilee had to be coaxed to front the bands she played in. Those were the days of bold patterned dresses and not one but two sets of false eyelashes.

"I was groovy." she laughs.

How groovy? Check out this 1969 clip from The Johnny Cash show.



Merrilee says looking back it all seems so foreign. Of course there were supposed to be other hits but that meant playing a game Merrilee wasn't interested in.

"I hated Vegas." she said."I hated the whole 'do the same thing three times a night every night'. There's no creativity. There's no room to move."

Now , with the farm she shares with musician husband Billy Mac and all those shaggy angels by her side, Merrilee has plenty of room.

Every so often she gets up on stage and sings her old hit, written incidentally by Jon Voight's brother Chip Taylor ( who also wrote "Wild Thing" for the Troggs).

The fans she considers most special? That's easy.

"The Vietnam vets that were over there at the time," She says."There was one fellow who said 'Yeah we played that before we'd fly out in the morning and some of them would tear up just talking about that period and that song so that means a lot."

By the way Merrilee is no angel of the morning. She's more of a night owl and prefers to sleep in.

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#9 Ron Wood "Act Together" 1974

It is a tribute to Ron Wood and his good nature that when he recorded his first solo album, I've Got My Own Album To Do, he managed to enlist the help of an all-star cast of British Rock stars: Mick Jagger, Keith Richards, Rod Stewart, Paul McCartney, George Harrison and even an uncredited David Bowie.
They all came to his house in Richmond to help their buddy out and they all left their egos inside the sports cars and limosines parked outside.

Writing credits for "Act Together" belong to Mick and Keith, but in his autobiography, Life, I could swear Keith said he wrote it either by himself or with Ronnie.  I've lent out my copy of Life so maybe someone can fill me in. In any case the two were best mates and with Mick Taylor's departure, The Stones brought Woody on board in 1975 for the album Black and Blue and when The Faces finally broke up...well,  the rest, as they say, is history.

                                                          Ron Wood at home      

You can argue an entire night about what makes the best cut on this album . Hell, you can even argue whether this is the last great Stones album. ( I'd say Some Girls and Keef's Talk is Cheap qualify) I love the boozy feel of "Act Together". Is this another song Keith wrote to Mick or Anita Pallenberg? Does it even matter? The lyrics work for both of those stormy relationships:

 " We should try get our love together.
Once in a while,
 put ourselves together
 It's looking good.
 Let's get our shit together.
Sure won't hurt you now."


Act Together

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#8 The Electric Prunes "The Great Banana Hoax", 1967

"Noise can be musical and beautiful. Once you commit to tape or disc format you've changed the presentation; why not take it as far as you can. Vibrating a bunch of guitar strings is an effect, after all. Layering various textures puts a kind of depth to the record...I dig that." -- James Lowe, lead singer, the Electric Prunes

"The Great Banana Hoax" is the lead off cut to one of the great albums from one of the greatest years in rock, 1967's Underground.. What is the hoax? Back in '67 word got around ( with the help of Donovan's "Mellow Yellow") that people could get high by smoking banana peels. Even Time & Newsweek wrote about it. The FDA put their best scientists on the case.

They discovered there are chemicals in the banana peels called serotonin and norepinephrine that are related to hallucinogens such as LSD, but not enough to get you high. All the people who have smoked banana peels say it doesn't get them high, only headaches

Though their roots were pure garage, The LA based Prunes experimented like mad scientists in the studio. That motorcycle revving up that you hear at the beginning of the song is actually a slowed down growl, meant to evoke the sound of moving furniture. The percussive effects at the end are done with an African kalimba.

This week bassist Mark Tulin, who also worked briefly with Smashing Pumpkins, died at the age of 62.

Billy Corgan paid tribute to Tulin via a blog post on Glittercop.blogspot.com, stating : “Mark was part of a movement of suburban kids in the mid to late 60s that changed the world with their dark musical dreaming, and of course their Anglophile obsessions. From their imaginations sprang so many technicolor daydreams and all manner of wishing; wishing that we were often what we are not,” before concluding, “God Bless you Mark, you will always be a star”.

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#7 Jacques Dutronc "Le Responsible" 1966

With a blast of feedback and no apologies to The Out of Our Heads era Rolling Stones, french rocker Jacques Dutronc is a misanthrope...but a responsible one.

I am worried I'm in trouble
I have trouble I torment
I have not the moral I've no money
I have no luck I have no friends
I am a responsible man



In the mid 60's Dutronc was a huge rock star. My stepmother, growing up in Switzerland, said all the schoolgirls had the biggest crush on Jacques. He kept his eyes and ears focused on what was happening in England at the time and, whether it was garage rock, Kinks-like pop or psychedelia he could translate it into a French hit. But he wasn't the only one borrowing riffs and ideas.

Mungo Jerry took Dutronc's "Et Moi, Et Moi, Et Moi" and scored a No 3 UK hit with its cover, called "Alright, Alright, Alright."




Finally, Dutronc gets name-checked in one of the best songs of the entire 90's, Cornershop's "Brimful of Asha":

Jacques Dutronc and the Bolan Boogie/
The Heavy Hitters and the Chichi music.

Dutronc married french singer Francoise Hardy in 1981. He's an actor of note, having won the French Academy Award, the Cesar for his role in the 1991 film Van Gogh.

Clearly an artist who deserves more than a cult following.

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Esperanza Spalding Interview

In February of 2011, I had the privilege of sitting down with Esperanza Spalding, the first jazz musician to ever win the Grammy Award for Best New Artist. Weeks later, Justin Bieber fans were still upset. They'd been retweeting this mock dialogue :

Justin: Knock Knock.
Esperanza: Who's There?
Justin: Esperanza Spalding.
Esperanza: Esperanza Spalding who?
Justin: Exactly.




Esperanza has shown nothing but grace in light of the onslaught by Bieber fans. At a one day master class she gave jazz majors at Portland State University, she drew a standing room only crowd. She made a point about supporting solos rather than stepping over them by asking one of the musicians how his day was and then interrupting him incessantly. The audience laughed.

Born in Portland, Esperanza says her life changed course at age 5...thanks to an episode of Mr. Rogers Neighborhood.

He played one of the Bach cello suites and I had never heard someone play an instrument.
I just never heard music like that and I was...I dunno. Sold.
I was captivated and I went "Mama, I wanna do that .
Wah!"

For years she played classical violin. Then Esperanza found a double bass in her high school music room.

I was just trying first of all to play a note which was impossible.
Cuz if you've played violin for 11 years
and you try to play bass it's like your body rejects.
It's like no.

At 16 she enrolled at Portland State University to study jazz with Professor Darrell Grant.

(Darrell Grant)
She had a really good pulse
A really good sense of rhythm
She had a good sound in the bass even from the beginning
She could pull the strings.




A year later, Esperanza won a full scholarship to the prestigious Berklee College of Music.
At 20, she became the youngest faculty member in school history.
Her focus has always been on her art.
It's taken her a long way from Portland:
around the world, to the top of the jazz charts, even to The White House.
But she is still a Rose City girl at heart.


(Esperanza)
I love this city.
I'm always raving about it.
And then people come here and they see what I mean and
I'm like "Yeah!"
I'm proud.

And of course Portland is proud of Esperanza,
The night she won her Emmy a roar could be heard throughout the city,

(Darrell Grant)
I mean, we just screamed.
I was like "She won! She won!"
I went out on my front porch like yelling "She won! She won!"

Wherever life takes Esperanza she won't be travelling light.
After all she is in a committed relationship with that double bass.

I just like the damn thing you know
It doesn't have to get too deep
I just love the instrument &
It's fun to play
...so I keep going.

Because this blog is about music I just want to let Esperanza talk more at length about that last point: her love affair with the double bass.




I don't know why it's the bass.
When I picked up the bass something just felt more open
It was like "Oh I speak this language".
I don't know what that means.
I certainly couldn't play.
Like anyone who just picked up the bass I had no physical ability on the instrument, but I guess I felt like I could do it.
It just seemed accessible to me.
That was the beginning.




Then as I learned more about the bass's role in music and arrangement, I really started to love being a bass player.
I really loved playing with harmony like that.
I loved the exploration of expressing textures with lines.
Expressing whole palettes of color with one line.
I love that.
It's like playing drums and piano kind of together and those are two of my favorite instruments.
And so I love translating rhythmic ideas and grooves and patterns to this melodic instrument.
I just love everything about it.
I love the tone.
I love where it lies in the sonic spectrum--in a song.
And for singing, it's such a nice accompaniment for me anyway.
I love counterpoint.
I'm a fan of counterpoint.
I'm addicted to counterpoint.
For me , that's the way I get to express it.
With the voice and the bass and I got hooked on that right away ( laughs).
And of course there are reasons you can't explain:
I just love the damn thing, you know?
It doesn't have to be too deep.
I love the instrument and it's fun to play,
And it's fun to play improvise music with people that you enjoy communicating with so ...I keep going.

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The Beatles "This Boy", 1963

This is an amazing clip of George Harrison watching The Beatles perform "This Boy" 1in 1963.
"This Boy" was the B side to "I Want to Hold Your Hand".
Lennon said he was trying to capture the Smokey Robinson sound at Motown.
The chords are straight out of doo wop ( as were "Yes It Is")
The song is most associated with the one member of the band that did not contribute harmonies to the track: Ringo Starr.
George Martin cut an instrumental version of the tune for Ringo's silly solo scenes in "Hard Day's Night".
Nowhere near one of the great Beatle cuts but this moment is too good to pass up.
Especially as George talks about John's poor eyesight.

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#6 The Fall "Fit and Working Again" 1981

I'm fit and working again
And I feel like Alan Minter
I just ate eight sheets of blotting paper
And I tripped out on the Alka Seltzer

Alan Minter was the Middleweight title champ until he met Marvin Hagler at Wembley Arena in London. After the fight was stopped in three rounds, Minter's supporters caused a riot, throwing beer cans and glass into the ring and both boxers had to be ushered away by the police.

Prior to the fight, Minter made the blatantly racist statement on the BBC that "no black man is going to take my title away". He later retracted this statement and said he meant "no man" is going to take my title away. Previously, Hagler refused to shake Minter's hand, claiming "I don't touch white flesh."

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