Cute homage to the great illustrator Robert Crumb and recent Hall of Fame inductees, Genesis.

http://www.villagevoice.com/slideshow/the-band-genesis-illustrated-by-r-...

I had long assumed that there was no American equivalent of the Old Grey, that most promotional spots for music on television were to be found on Saturday Night Live or Letterman. Then I came across a wonderful Mary Margaret O'Hara performance (posted on the long-awaited albums thread) which unearthed this show that David Sanborn hosted in the late eighties, Night Music. A YouTube search under Night Music reveals a treasure trove of delights, a few of which I offer here:

John Cale, Richard Thompson & Shawn Colvin doing Heartbreak Hotel:

More follow in the comments...

One of the most impressive ‘perfect storms’ of marketing activity - the inauguration, the Golden Globe, The Super Bowl, a WalMart exclusive Greatest Hits, Rolling Stone profile and a whole raft of mostly very pleasant reviews - cannot disguise the fact that Waiting On A Dream is a shoddy and insubstantial product from a major artist, its production and sound quality so poor that any chance the one or two strong melodies or lyrics at hand could sound halfway decent is lost. Despite Bruce’s claims to his juices keeping flowing, the overall lack of quality control smacks of contractual obligation. The hugely lucrative deal that Landau struck with Sony Music, timed just as the bottom fell out of the CD business has compromised an artist and us as his listeners and the man who wrote “I have seen rock ‘n’ roll future and its name is Bruce Springsteen” has most certainly denied his client any hope of creative space in the immediate future by tieing him to an endless cycle of rushed records and touring in support. Has any manager been so inept with a major artist’s career since Tom Parker allowed Elvis Presley’s career to decline into hideous pastiche and an eventual squalid, bloated death for The King?

With the arrival of a new record timed to 'drop' a week after the inauguration and just before his performance at the Superbowl, are we wrong to suspect that Jon Landau and Sony's eye on the bottom line is what motivates Bruce more than his muse? Scuttlebutt has much of the material as rejects from Magic sessions.

http://artsbeat.blogs.nytimes.com/2008/11/17/bruce-springsteen-announces...

Moved to post this by the flurry of activity around Alan Vega's 70th(!) birthday, including a vinyl release of Bruce's version from the Diamonds and Dust tour.

Has a weedy electronic keyboard sound ever married heart and soul with such divine results? One of the bravest performances I ever saw was by Suicide supporting the Clash at Aberdeen Music Hall braving a tsunami of phlegm and saliva from a crowd newly hip to the vile concept of gobbing.

Am I alone among Word bloggers in my excitement over the prospects of the next ZZ Top record, to be produced by Rick Rubin and reportedly involving the Black Keys? http://www.billboard.com/bbcom/news/article_display.jsp?vnu_content_id=1...
I have long held them dear but as something of a guilty pleasure. None of my so-called expert pals have any time for them or the hope that they may recover some of their glory, but I have always thought that in the hands of a producer with an ego, their particular blues stylings could once again charm a sizable audience. I am all a twitter at the prospect. The apogee of their career commercially, where they rocked charts all over the world was also a high water mark for tasteful video-making, don't ya think?

There have been numerous strings on the greatness or awfulness of band names but I was watching current darlings Fleet Foxes playing at a raucous Seattle event last Saturday and wondered what inspired them to choose their name. I think it works for a group of intense folk-tinged harmonists but at some point one of them must have turned to the others and said “I’ve got it, how about...?” It feels like some thought went into it. Perhaps not as much as Gnidrolog (an anagram of the brothers Goldring I always thought, but that doesn’t explain the extra ‘O’) I wonder how Craig Finn and company came up with The Hold Steady which I think is a fine name or what absence of imagination or extreme haste caused the Britpop bands to land on bland one-words that convey nothing very much. Oasis, Blur, Cast et al. There is perhaps a wonderful series of anecdotes to be had if someone were prepared to gather the trivia

April 17th was indeed a sad day for American music. Not only did we lose Danny Federici of the E Street Band but another accordionist and significant figure in Southern Californian roots music, Chris Gaffney, also died of cancer. You might know him for his association with Lucinda Williams or Dave Alvin but in recent years he had fronted with Dave Gonzalez, formerly of The Paladins, a terrific band called The Hacienda Brothers. Their two studio releases are both worth checking out, but perhaps best is their live album which contains a huge, bluesy, accordion-soaked Since I Met You Baby on which Chris wails.

More here: http://www.haciendabrothers.com/home/index.html

Sifting through the new Randomizer submissions I saw The Velvets' The Gift on PaulHThompson's list. He wondered why anyone would want to hear it again. I adore that track. I don't play it every week but at least once a year to hear the great story of Waldo Jeffries.

Dylan, obviously, includes real life and fictional characters in some of his best songs. Three of my favorite non-Dylan songs are narratives involving fictional characters.

1. Virgil Caine
2. August West
3. Guitar George

None should be a mystery to Word bloggers of a certain age. Any other characters that you keep coming back to in the great songs?

Trying in vain to whittle down a top thirty to five to contribute to Retropath2's tempting entry, I found that many of my most-memorable shows were helped or hindered by a guest turn. There are many Springsteen shows on my list but high up there was the June 1981 NEC show when Pete Townsend came on and added a few windmills to Born To Run. It may not have enhanced an already brilliant musical performance by the E Street Band but it cranked up the energy another notch. I remember being doubly impressed by Dire Straits at the Mandela show when they wheeled on Eric Clapton to play second (!) guitar. And back in the early days of my concert-going I recall Chas Hodges, then bass player for support Heads, Hands & Feet, filling in for an ailing Roger Glover in the incredibly loud and impressive Deep Purple Mk.II. The bearded and overalled pub-rocker acquitted himself quite well alongside the youthful loon-panted swagger of the gawdlike Ian and Ritchie. And during a wonderful series of shows in New York when Dylan and Van took turns to headline, each would tend to amble on to the other's stage at various times. These were exciting but gruesome moments when the uber-legends unsmilingly checked each other out and attempted to sing along. Far from a musical highlight but unmissable all the same.

Do you have any fond or odd memories of a ‘guest' contributing to a show?

The rock extremist of a certain age has as many bad days as the next person and although ice cream or SRI's can be helpful, I've always found my spirits raised organically when my iPod shuffles on to one of my Five Greatest Tunes Of All Time. These are the solid gold standards of rockular culture, songs so preternaturally wholesome and flawless that they can be covered by almost anyone with a result which is uplifting regardless of musical dexterity or emotional involvement. They are as tablets handed down by the gods that can turn a mediocre gig into a riot or swiftly erase the memory of some woefully indulgent self-composed nonsense.

1. Louie, Louie. There is little point in gilding its lily, whole books have been written about this keystone composition by Richard Berry. A riff of moronic simplicity and in most versions an indecipherable grunted attempt at the lyric, it has found its way onto record and performance by artists from Black Flag to Frank Zappa. Personal favorites include Iggy Pop's and The Kinks' and there is also something special about the author's own take wherein one can hear clearly that it is a song of love lost and nothing too depraved.

2. (Get Your Kicks On) Route 66. Bobby Troup's lyrical odyssey along the now deceased but immortal-in-song highway between Chicago and L.A. first appeared in 1946 and was a hit for the King Cole Trio. It was covered by all the big stars of the fifties before ending up at the core of many self-respecting blues boom era bands' repertoire. The Stones' and Van's version with Them probably were nods to Chuck Berry's but are textbook examples. Year in, year out there is a new version which never fails to bring a smile. Jason & The Scorchers take, enhanced by one of the greatest cigarette-smoking guitarists of all time, Warner Hodges, is a gem from the eighties and I can readily listen to any of Asleep At The Wheel's more-authentic sounding western swing takes. The song even converted me, a fearsome worrier when a band has no guitars, to the previously execrable Depeche Mode, the Beatmasters mix being the one to plump for on iTunes if you've a mind to.

3. Who Do You Love (with or without a question mark.) Ellis 'Bo Diddley' McDaniel's intent was more rhetorical, surely. The opening lines,

"I walked 47 miles of barbed wire,
Used a cobra snake for a neck tie.
Got a brand new house on the roadside,
Made out of rattlesnake hide.
I got a brand new chimney made on top,
Made out of human skulls"

always delivered with threat above the thunderous signature Diddley beat, comprise the most unapologetically macho introduction to any love song. Very little has shaken my belief in the now obscure 1969 version by Brit proto-Americana band, Juicy Lucy. Seeing Ray Owen sing and Glen 'Fernando' Campbell rocking out over his electric table on Top Of The Pops when the single graced the lower half of the twenty was one of my mightiest pubescent memories. But anybody half good has taken a stab. Quicksilver Messenger Service devoted half of their Happy Trails record to a live version. Jim Morrison is at his most threatening, almost demonic on the Doors' Absolutely Live using it to open the show. The Band bowed to it in celebrating their early mentor Ronnie Hawkins on The Last Waltz and the great Townes Van Zandt does a cheeky folksy version worth seeking out.

4. Goin' Down (sometimes Going Down.) Perhaps the most obscure here, like Louie this is not much more than a riff and garbled lyric but it is the trustiest warhorse in the blues-rock canon. Who knows much about Don Nix, its composer, other than that he fronted an outfit called the Alabama State Troopers or how the tune found its way into the hands of the Brits who dominated this genre in the early seventies. My first memory of it was the Pink Fairies playing it at the College of Education in Aberdeen in about 1971 but it turned up all the time in sets by bands like Chicken Shack, Savoy Brown and Deep Purple. It is not always used to bludgeon the willing listener. J.J. Cale and recently Bryan Ferry have produced tasteful, mellow versions that are very enjoyable. However my favorite take is to be heard on a to-die-for encore performance by Stevie Ray Vaughan and Jeff Beck. Axeman heaven.

5. Season Of The Witch. A Donovan song from the Sunshine Superman album of 1966, this first found a mass audience via Al Kooper's Super Session, but it had already been lovingly recreated in an extended workout in the UK by Brian Auger and the Trinity in 1967. I think that is the correct chronology. Only having a couple of chords, it seems to beg for a lengthy jam or guitar solo in its midst. A band who sadly were never quite as good as their covers, Luna, do a nice recentish version but my two favorites are a nine minute plus guitar workout by Richard Thompson which found its way onto the TV soundtrack for Crossing Jordan, and a cut created for the flop follow-up Blues Brothers 2000 soundtrack, on which Dr. John growls as deep and dirty as the Captain and makes his vocal interpretation definitive.

I was happily convinced that any of these tunes could be performed with a guaranteed level of success but unfortunately someone pointed me in the direction of Vanilla Fudge's Season of the Witch. Despite it's subsequently stellar hard-rock alumni they deserve a spot in a hall of shame for mangling many a great song and this may be their worst travesty. So, perhaps, back to the drawing board. Wild Thing, Boom, Boom anybody ?