Something Old, Something New, Something Borrowed, Something Blue
Something/Someone Old
This is one of my favorite albums of all time:
Made by these guys:
I just discovered that there was apparently a controversy over its smoothness being the epitome of soulless mainstream rock (as opposed to the raw authenticity of punk).
Like the guy who wrote this article, I can only assume that the people who thought that never listened to the lyrics.
https://variety.com/2017/music/opinion/steely-dan-aja-40th-anniversary-m...
I'm not exactly sure why he's so sure that the narrator in "Deacon Blues" is an unreliable narrator embroiled in a fantasy rather than exactly what he appears to be--a musician playing gigs in a local bar who never really made it and spends his off time seducing suburban housewives. The pretensions of the narrator seem to be more that he imagines himself to be some kind of cool, edgy artist, but even that doesn't entirely occlude his knowledge of his own failures: They got a name for the winners in the world/I want a name when I lose/They call Alabama the Crimson Tide/Call me Deacon Blues
I love, love, love the title track and always have:
Isn't it possible to like music with hard edges and *also* like this?
I think this may be a MORNING IS BEST moment:
"This is the meeting of the We Love Morning club. Every day, we get together to celebrate another bright, fresh morning. Grasshopper, do you love morning?"
"Oh, yes," said Grasshopper.
"Hooray!" shouted all the beetles. "Grasshopper loves morning!"
...
"I love afternoon, too," said Grasshopper.
"What did you say?" they asked.
"I said that I loved afternoon," said Grasshopper.
All the beetles were quiet.
"And night is very nice," said Grasshopper.
"Stupid," said a beetle.
"Dummy," said another beetle.
"Anyone who loves afternoon and night can never, never be in our club!" said a third beetle.
"UP WITH MORNING!" all the beatles shouted.
I sometimes think Arnold Lobel and Theodor Geisel created my basic ethics.
Something New
I spend a lot of time watching strategy gaming on YouTube rather than watching ordinary TV or sports. My very favorite gamer is Marbozir:
https://www.youtube.com/Marbozir
He's not precisely "new," but as you all know, I include anything post-2008 as "new." He's best known for playing XCOM and Civilization 5.
This is a fairly recent release of his:
I might drop a few more of his game series into this thread from time to time, because his series are so diverse--and I love his work.
Something Borrowed
This is another Turkish tv show I've become interested in. Why the Turks? I have no freakin' clue. It's not like I don't see the bad aspects of their culture--they have one of the most persistently hated empires ever, though I'm aware I only hear that story from one side--but I'm just drawn to a lot of aspects of their culture. Perhaps it's because it is an old culture that values literacy and art and scholarship and music as well as war. Very, very authoritarian in its roots, however. That may have changed over time; I hear the Turks now prize their democratic tradition (which I think dates back to the early twentieth century) and have great pride in it, which has led to some of the protests against Erdogan the bastard.
I hasten to add that I know my country has produced far more than its fair share of bastards.
That, however, doesn't stop Erdogan from being one.
Anyway, here is the TV show I've "borrowed" from the Turks: a historical drama that is quite cool, and one which I can't actually predict (it's always a good sign if I can't predict the plot blow by blow).
It's a Turkish historical drama set in the 13th century. The hero, Ertugrul, and his tribe have fled the Mongol hordes and come west into Europe. They enter a difficult political landscape in which conflicts between Christianity and Islam, Europe and the Middle East, and the East and West in general abound, and a great deal of treachery, backstabbing and double-dealing is going on, particularly around the Knights Templar, who are the absolute villains of the piece. The piece is obviously biased toward the Turkish side of things, but although I acknowledge the bias, I have a hard time disagreeing with how they feel about the Templars, who are mucking around in Middle Eastern and Eastern European politics because they want another crusade.
Ertugrul puts his foot into the middle of this--and gets his tribe embroiled in it--because he comes upon a family being tormented by Templar knights and saves them. The daughter of the family is about to be raped when he and his men kill the aggressors. Unbeknownst to him, the family comes from the ruling line of the land. A local warlord has handed these descendants of the ruling line over to the Templars in exchange for some personal advantage he expects to get out of them once they overrun the land. Ertugrul's act of kindness therefore embroils him in some very ugly political fights. When his father, the leader of his tribe, refuses to hand over a guest to be imprisoned and tortured, basically backing up Ertugrul's act of kindness, the tribe is firmly and irrevocably thrust into the center of the political conflicts of the region.
I'm including a video of episode one so that you can listen to the magnificent music. If you want to actually watch the series, Netflix has broken the very long episodes into 45-minute chunks.
It looks like Erdogan the Bastard and I have something in common; apparently he dropped by the set one day, so I guess he likes the show too.
He's still a bastard.
Something Blue
I found a female blues singer from the 20s I hadn't heard of. Awesome.
Meet Sippie Wallace. Wow.
This is awfully cool--she apparently was on Late Night in 1982 with Bonnie Raitt:
Back when I actually had some respect for Letterman.
If you watch through the whole thing, it turns out that in 1982, Sippie Wallace, at the age of 83, had just released a new record. Damn, lady.
Comments
Good morning, CSTMS ~
I love, love, love Steely Dan and have seen them in concert numerous times. We play their albums on long road trips. Makes the going easy. I am sad, sad, sad that Walter Becker died. Such a loss, to me.
Have a beautiful day, folks!
"The “jumpers” reminded us that one day we will all face only one choice and that is how we will die, not how we will live." Chris Hedges on 9/11
@Raggedy Ann Me too. What a talent.
Me too. What a talent. Actually, both of them are.
"More for Gore or the son of a drug lord--None of the above, fuck it, cut the cord."
--Zack de la Rocha
"I tell you I'll have nothing to do with the place...The roof of that hall is made of bones."
-- Fiver
The upside-down and backwards world of German politics and media
Exhibit 1: “Nazis” ♡ Israel now
https://www.compact-online.de/der-angriff-auf-israel-und-der-scheinheili...
This is a full-throated pro-Israel hasbara defense of the latest IDF attacks on Gaza in Jürgen Elsässer’s Compact magazine — a monthly commonly denounced as Nazi propaganda by organized Left and progressive protestors at the global publishing industry’s annual Frankfurt and Leipzig book fairs.
Exhibit 2: “Progressives” ♡ computer voting
An op-ed piece Liebeserklärung: Der Wahlcomputer (“Declaration of Love: The Computer Voting Machine”) by Pascal Beucker on page 10 of the Taz am Wochenende — the weekend edition of the Green-alternative-Left daily Taz.de — dated 10-11 November 2018.
Citing recurring problems in Hesse state elections, Beucker argues for the superiority and efficiency of computer voting machines. Beucker attacks the 2009 decision of Germany’s federal constitutional court that ruled use of such machines in the 2005 national elections unconstitutional. The court held that only hand-counted paper ballots satisfy the conditions given in Germany’s Basic Law.
No link because, oddly enough, the piece is nowhere to be found online — it exists only in the print edition.
@lotlizard This is what happens when
This is what happens when politics becomes a farcical puppet show.
There are few consistent moral principles in politics anymore, including in most political justice movements. There is little or no attention paid to history, not even recent history. And reason is not the tool used to make political decisions. What you do is choose which team you are on--and that's the last decision you make. From there forward, you figure out what you think by checking out your team's talking points, delivered by your political leaders and their friends in the media.
"More for Gore or the son of a drug lord--None of the above, fuck it, cut the cord."
--Zack de la Rocha
"I tell you I'll have nothing to do with the place...The roof of that hall is made of bones."
-- Fiver
This comment needs to be spread far and wide and often.
I cannot possibly enumerate how often over at TOP the content and comments would call to mind "Be True To Your School" by the Beach Boys and nothing more.
That, in its essence, is fascism--ownership of government by an individual, by a group, or by any other controlling private power. -- Franklin D. Roosevelt --
@enhydra lutris Reason is not a team
Reason is not a team sport.
"More for Gore or the son of a drug lord--None of the above, fuck it, cut the cord."
--Zack de la Rocha
"I tell you I'll have nothing to do with the place...The roof of that hall is made of bones."
-- Fiver
Good morning, CStMS. In music, as in most other things there
is plenty of room for pluralism. One not only can appreciate and enjoy multiple genres, one really should, as well as multiple fusions thereof. Purists are not that readily distinguishable from Puritans, after all. Sometimes being edgy for its own sake can get old, such as when it stops being a format for delivering and emphasizing the content and becomes the content itself. As content, it needs to be done at least once, but too often and it ceases to be both edgy and content. That's the problem with trendiness for its own sake, too many perfect images of a Campbell's Soup can buries and then destroys the point.
I didn't mean, when I started, to slag any particular genres, but Link Wray and a handful of others invented "power chords" long ago. Here and there, and/or now and then, they can be effective and powerful. But a steady dies of pieces that are all power chords is indistinguishable from (pick one or more) unlearned, unskilled, lazy, sloppy, undiscerning (doesn't it sound like sneezy and grumpy should come next?), etc. Nuance is, after all, the soul of art. One person, and one only, and only one time, for effect, can play 3 minutes of nothing but E flat minor 7th quarter notes in perfect cadence. More is drivel.
Sippie Wallace - tsk, tsk. She has been featured more than once over the years in Joes Evening blues, and has popped up now and then in multi-artist EBs as well. You might consider dropping in and just sampling the artists while ignoring the news. You might be surprised at what other gems might lurk therein.
Have a great day.
That, in its essence, is fascism--ownership of government by an individual, by a group, or by any other controlling private power. -- Franklin D. Roosevelt --
@enhydra lutris You are so right. I just
You are so right. I just don't come by in the evening much. No offense to Joe intended. But yes, of course I should stop by EB, even if it's kind of after the fact.
"More for Gore or the son of a drug lord--None of the above, fuck it, cut the cord."
--Zack de la Rocha
"I tell you I'll have nothing to do with the place...The roof of that hall is made of bones."
-- Fiver
@enhydra lutris Purists are not that
Purists are not that readily distinguishable from Puritans, after all. Sometimes being edgy for its own sake can get old, such as when it stops being a format for delivering and emphasizing the content and becomes the content itself. As content, it needs to be done at least once, but too often and it ceases to be both edgy and content. That's the problem with trendiness for its own sake, too many perfect images of a Campbell's Soup can buries and then destroys the point.
I agree with every single sentence of this.
As far as the Campbell's Soup can goes, I think Warhol and his peeps were trying to make a point at the Factory. The problem is, whether they're right about their point or not, there's not a very long shelf-life (heh) to the art made in order to make that point. I think they probably were right to break down the notion of art having to exist in some rarefied environment separate from industry, and right to point out that industry and money DO have an effect on art, and right to show that art can repurpose any image, even the most banal.
However...once that point is made, where's the value of the art? It ends up being valuable because Warhol is famous.
Perhaps I'm being too harsh.
"More for Gore or the son of a drug lord--None of the above, fuck it, cut the cord."
--Zack de la Rocha
"I tell you I'll have nothing to do with the place...The roof of that hall is made of bones."
-- Fiver
Thank you for helping me understand Warhol's soup can painting
It seems to me that Warhol's painting has a lot more of a point, as far as I can figure out, than many other abstract paintings that are worth millions of dollars.
Beware the bullshit factories.
@Timmethy2.0 I totally agree with
I totally agree with that. (By the way, the quote you start with wasn't me but enhydra lutris, so any thanks should go to him.)
But yeah, I consider the images of Campbell's soup and Marilyn Monroe far more valuable than the kind of paintings that feature, you know, a square of color with a line of another color bisecting it...
And as I said, perhaps I was being overly harsh.
"More for Gore or the son of a drug lord--None of the above, fuck it, cut the cord."
--Zack de la Rocha
"I tell you I'll have nothing to do with the place...The roof of that hall is made of bones."
-- Fiver
Thanks for the insight Enhydra
Yeah that's it, those paintings with the stripes and squares. I think some of them are just one solid color with maybe some shading here and there. I can do that.
Beware the bullshit factories.
In Re:
Nah.
That, in its essence, is fascism--ownership of government by an individual, by a group, or by any other controlling private power. -- Franklin D. Roosevelt --
The thing is ... well ... I think Warhol was
a pretentious and not terribly intelligent little twerp.
Nonetheless, about 30 years ago, some local Madison artist made a silk screen of a photograph of then-president GHW Bush (laughing loudly, god knows about what), and went around town screening it onto various surfaces (e.g., the plywood fences around construction sites), in bright poppy colors. It wasn't genius, but it was meaningful, to be endlessly encountering that oh-so-very-satisfied face.
And it could never have happened if Warhol hadn't first done the same thing with Marilyn.
Later, somebody else (or maybe the same artist) made a screen of the words "Temple of Greed", and similarly applied them on the sidewalks all around the newly-built home of the UW-Madison school of business.
So.
I dunno.
The earth is a multibillion-year-old sphere.
The Nazis killed millions of Jews.
On 9/11/01 a Boeing 757 (AA77) flew into the Pentagon.
AGCC is happening.
If you cannot accept these facts, I cannot fake an interest in any of your opinions.
Good chilly morning
...but it's not raining! It is supposed get into the 60's later today.
I'm hoping to plant some chestnut trees I ordered from FL.
http://www.chestnuthilltreefarm.com/store/c/31-Dunstan-Chestnut-Trees.aspx
They came in this week. It maybe too wet today, but the soil should dry this week. Planting when soils are too wet can really ruin the soil structure and turn loose soil into a clod that doesn't promote root growth.
Thanks for the OT and music. Hope you all have a good day.
“Until justice rolls down like water and righteousness like a mighty stream.”
@Lookout Wonderful!
Wonderful!
I'm a fan of pecan trees myself. I didn't even know we had a lot of chestnut trees down here. Let me know how it goes. At some point, we want to put in an orchard of assorted fruits and nuts ourselves (we have a good side yard for doing just that).
There's just so much to be done and it all seems to be coming at once. Our HVAC temporarily died and, for no particular reason, started working again. We were without heat through the beginning of this cold snap. So replacing the HVAC and furnishing the living room and rec room and stopping the pool leak and replacing the sprinkler system are all coming at once, making it less likely that we'll be putting in a garden this year. I hope that we will be able to put in the garden next year if not during the cool season this year (Floridians are often backwards; like many around here, I put in gardens in Aug/Sept and Jan/Feb.)
"More for Gore or the son of a drug lord--None of the above, fuck it, cut the cord."
--Zack de la Rocha
"I tell you I'll have nothing to do with the place...The roof of that hall is made of bones."
-- Fiver
I'm a big fan of mini-split HVAC systems
https://www.energystar.gov/products/heating_cooling/ductless_heating_coo...
Good luck with all your projects!
“Until justice rolls down like water and righteousness like a mighty stream.”
Dave's optimism notwithstanding, Raitt had to wait
several more years, before suddenly vaulting to stardom on the coincidentally-titled album The Nick of Time.
As for Steely Dan, I've never been able to relate to people's contempt for artistic competence. Sure, I also hate formulaic committee-written pop music ("We Built This City", anybody?), and I cringe when a bunch of talented instrumentalists put together a decent little collection of hooks and then undermine it with hopelessly lazy and stupid lyrics (Toto, anybody?). But when you've got masterful musicians producing unforgettable melodies, complex lyrics, clever arrangements, all presented with technical excellence, what's to hate? I've got no use for attitude for attitude's sake, punk or otherwise. (Something I've never seen anybody admit in print is that the reason the Clash -- invariably identified as punk -- were so much more successful than any other punk band was simply that they were really good musicians.)
So, yeah, whatever. I like Sandinista, and I like straight-up rock, whether old-timey or new-fangled (Are you gonna be my girl), and sly clever poppy stuff (Arctic Monkeys), and "prog rock" (Jethro Tull, Yes).
The only thing I have no time for is the stuff that really is soulless, created mechanically according to simple and stupid formulas that are instantly recognizable. When Ann Wilson couldn't take any more of Roger Fisher's effed-up behavior and booted him out of Heart, it sadly sucked the soul out that band. They floundered around for an album or two, and then the record company persuaded them to "work with" a couple of those hacks (i think including the one responsible for We Built This City), and the result was:
A. The lamest, dullest music they ever made -- music that embarrasses the audience in the way that cringe-TV like The Office embarrasses the audience.
B. The biggest sales they ever enjoyed.
But you can always find people who will hate. For 15 years or more, Dave Marsh hated everything Neil Young released, until suddenly one day he gave an NY album a 5-star rating. There are old reviews of Springsteen that just will not admit that maybe, just maybe, there's something real happening between Springsteen and his audience, regardless of whether someone outside of that experience can feel it and relate to it. Hell, whatever you think of Miley Cyrus's records, she's got a great voice (check out her backyard sessions) and stage presence, and until she sort of grew herself up, she was pretty much a pornographic punk -- something few self-respecting self-identifying punks would likely want to admit. Everyone expected her to do a Lohan, but she pulled herself out of that dive, and now there are probably people who hate her for putting her clothes back on and refocusing on the music itself, rather than the "shocking" performance antics.
So, uh, yeah, I agree with a lot of what this guy has to say, even if he puts MC right there on the splash for this critique. I mean, it's not like I sit and listen to her records. Not really my thing -- I'm three to four times the age of her target audience, and do not share their chromosomal complement.
[video:https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oVME_l4IwII]
The earth is a multibillion-year-old sphere.
The Nazis killed millions of Jews.
On 9/11/01 a Boeing 757 (AA77) flew into the Pentagon.
AGCC is happening.
If you cannot accept these facts, I cannot fake an interest in any of your opinions.
@UntimelyRippd
Sure, I also hate formulaic committee-written pop music ("We Built This City", anybody?), and I cringe when a bunch of talented instrumentalists put together a decent little collection of hooks and then undermine it with hopelessly lazy and stupid lyrics (Toto, anybody?).
I had forgotten "We Built This City." Ack. A lot of good 60s and 70s bands did some real crap to survive in the 80s. I don't know what happened to the industry around then to make it imperative to create canned, homogenized crap. Some of the canniest artists managed to get around this or to use it for their own purposes (I salute Cyndi Lauper and Blondie, for instance; Madonna managed to pull a kind of Andy Warhol subversion of her own on the conventions of the day; and of course Bowie didn't let a thing like current convention stop him), but a lot of good bands foundered on this reef.
I have been watching a documentary about Chicago (the band), which in some ways is a record of how an incredibly cool and interesting jazz fusion band turned into an 80s pop hits machine. I don't hate Peter Cetera; I actually love "If You Leave Me Now," and I don't even hate "Hard For Me To Say I'm Sorry" and "Hard Habit To Break," but the fact is that the latter two songs just aren't as good as the earlier work. The Terry Kath version of Chicago could write a song about sitting around trying to write a song and STILL write better music than any Cetera hit. But good music had a much harder time flying in the 80s mainstream. Bowie managed to navigate it, as did The Pretenders and some others, but phew! sometimes it seemed like you almost had to produce homogenized pop to get hits. Interesting experiments like Terry Kath's tended to get grounded. *That's* what I worry about when I talk about formulaic music, although at this point most of what I hear on the radio sounds like it was written, not by a committee of producers, but by software somebody designed for a committee of producers.
But as you say, why target Steely Dan with that charge? Because their music is smooth? That's always struck me as silly.
And I'm very fond of the Clash; I had albums of theirs AND Steely Dan albums in my collection when I was a teenager.
About Toto--are you talking about "Africa?"
"More for Gore or the son of a drug lord--None of the above, fuck it, cut the cord."
--Zack de la Rocha
"I tell you I'll have nothing to do with the place...The roof of that hall is made of bones."
-- Fiver
Africa?
Why, yes.
Yes, I was.
"More than a hundred men or more could ever do."
Good God.
The earth is a multibillion-year-old sphere.
The Nazis killed millions of Jews.
On 9/11/01 a Boeing 757 (AA77) flew into the Pentagon.
AGCC is happening.
If you cannot accept these facts, I cannot fake an interest in any of your opinions.
@UntimelyRippd Sorry. I do like that
Sorry. I do like that song. I admit the lyrics are not the height of good writing.
"More for Gore or the son of a drug lord--None of the above, fuck it, cut the cord."
--Zack de la Rocha
"I tell you I'll have nothing to do with the place...The roof of that hall is made of bones."
-- Fiver
beautiful hooks.
flawless musicianship.
horrible lyrics -- so horrible they render it unlistenable to me.
The earth is a multibillion-year-old sphere.
The Nazis killed millions of Jews.
On 9/11/01 a Boeing 757 (AA77) flew into the Pentagon.
AGCC is happening.
If you cannot accept these facts, I cannot fake an interest in any of your opinions.
@UntimelyRippd Didn't some of
Didn't some of those guys come from some other highly-renowned band?
I'm not up on my Toto lore, but I seem to remember something about that, which would explain the top-notch musicianship.
"More for Gore or the son of a drug lord--None of the above, fuck it, cut the cord."
--Zack de la Rocha
"I tell you I'll have nothing to do with the place...The roof of that hall is made of bones."
-- Fiver
They were A-List session guys.
The earth is a multibillion-year-old sphere.
The Nazis killed millions of Jews.
On 9/11/01 a Boeing 757 (AA77) flew into the Pentagon.
AGCC is happening.
If you cannot accept these facts, I cannot fake an interest in any of your opinions.
@UntimelyRippd Well, that
can be just as good sometimes:
I love the movie "Standing in the Shadows of Motown." A great movie about the Brothers of Funk, session musicians for Motown.
Their counterparts in Atlanta did a lot of the instrumental side of the music in the Blues Brothers, backing up not only Belush and Aykroyd but the blues greats featured in the movie. I don't know if that goes for the folks backing up John Lee Hooker, but the Blues Brothers band is basically the top session guys from some famous Atlanta studio.
I love John Landis for having captured this neighborhood on film before it got bulldozed. The people on film in this scene are so real and non-Hollywood that I totally believe that they were just people who happened to be living there when Landis and Aykroyd came by to make their movie.
I also love Aretha Franklin. The world's a poorer place without her.
"More for Gore or the son of a drug lord--None of the above, fuck it, cut the cord."
--Zack de la Rocha
"I tell you I'll have nothing to do with the place...The roof of that hall is made of bones."
-- Fiver
steve cropper and duck dunn, the guitarist
and bassist respectively of the Blues Brothers, were the in-house rhythm section at Stax/Volt records in Memphis, playing in one of the earlier multiracial ensembles, Booker T and the MGs.
as far as Toto, what happened was a couple of the guys looked around and figured, hell, we're the ones playing the music, we might as well get paid as well as the guys with the record contracts. so they recruited some of their colleagues and went all-in. they're topnotch musicians.
The earth is a multibillion-year-old sphere.
The Nazis killed millions of Jews.
On 9/11/01 a Boeing 757 (AA77) flew into the Pentagon.
AGCC is happening.
If you cannot accept these facts, I cannot fake an interest in any of your opinions.
@UntimelyRippd *That's*
*That's* right. It was STAX and it was Memphis, not Atlanta. Don't know why I put them in Atlanta. I think Blue Lou might also have been one of those guys.
"More for Gore or the son of a drug lord--None of the above, fuck it, cut the cord."
--Zack de la Rocha
"I tell you I'll have nothing to do with the place...The roof of that hall is made of bones."
-- Fiver
not sure about blue lou, i'd have to look it up.
i'm pretty sure he was in the SNL house band (i noticed him recently, showing my kids the SNL clip of steve martin doing King Tut).
The earth is a multibillion-year-old sphere.
The Nazis killed millions of Jews.
On 9/11/01 a Boeing 757 (AA77) flew into the Pentagon.
AGCC is happening.
If you cannot accept these facts, I cannot fake an interest in any of your opinions.
I never felt
there was a reason to hate Springsteen, even in the phases of his career when I didn't like him. I loved him as a child in the 70s. He lost me for a while in the 80s, before I listened more carefully and realized that he was still pursuing some of the same artistic goals he was in the 70s, even though his sound had become pop:
And you have a really good point: even poppier music styles are better when performed by a highly skilled musician.
You can see the same thing in Bowie. Compare "Moonage Daydream" to "Let's Dance" or even "Tonight." At the time, I was pissed at Bowie because I was an adolescent listening to Ziggy Stardust every night on my portable record player, and I didn't want poppy stuff from him. But "Let's Dance" is a fine album, and even "Tonight" has good songs on it, including, actually, the title track.
"More for Gore or the son of a drug lord--None of the above, fuck it, cut the cord."
--Zack de la Rocha
"I tell you I'll have nothing to do with the place...The roof of that hall is made of bones."
-- Fiver
The 80s were a crisis for Springsteen.
He was committed to that revival-meeting atmosphere, which depended on the concert audience being small enough that the band were real and touchable. Prior to The River tour, he refused to play larger venues (arenas and stadiums). When he did play arenas, they would curtain off many/most of the seats.
He didn't believe he could accomplish the same effect in a full arena, nevermind a stadium. And in fact, there are reviews from the Born in the USA tour that suggest he could not, at least not on stadium scales. Sure, everyone sang along with "BORN, IN THE USA!", but during his monologues, apparently there were plenty of people who chatted and waited for the next power chord.
Anyway, he worked through it.
The earth is a multibillion-year-old sphere.
The Nazis killed millions of Jews.
On 9/11/01 a Boeing 757 (AA77) flew into the Pentagon.
AGCC is happening.
If you cannot accept these facts, I cannot fake an interest in any of your opinions.
Personally, I prefer
Luck of the Draw to Nick of Time, but there's no denying the quality of the earlier album.
Often people don't follow up one hit album with another, nor one musically top-notch album with another, so kudos to Bonnie Raitt for making some great music.
"More for Gore or the son of a drug lord--None of the above, fuck it, cut the cord."
--Zack de la Rocha
"I tell you I'll have nothing to do with the place...The roof of that hall is made of bones."
-- Fiver
not stating a preference, just observing that
Nick of Time was what put Raitt at the top of the charts.
It was a very unusual thing in the annals of rock/pop -- for a person (a woman, even!) to have worked SO hard for SO long, and then suddenly explode into such extraordinary pop-music success. For heaven's sake, she was 40 years old! How many people "arrive" on the pop-music charts at that age? How many survive in the industry long enough for the big time to arrive so late? It's amazing she even had a record contract at that point.
The earth is a multibillion-year-old sphere.
The Nazis killed millions of Jews.
On 9/11/01 a Boeing 757 (AA77) flew into the Pentagon.
AGCC is happening.
If you cannot accept these facts, I cannot fake an interest in any of your opinions.
@UntimelyRippd
Agreed on all counts.
"More for Gore or the son of a drug lord--None of the above, fuck it, cut the cord."
--Zack de la Rocha
"I tell you I'll have nothing to do with the place...The roof of that hall is made of bones."
-- Fiver
@UntimelyRippd
I bet that would never happen today.
"More for Gore or the son of a drug lord--None of the above, fuck it, cut the cord."
--Zack de la Rocha
"I tell you I'll have nothing to do with the place...The roof of that hall is made of bones."
-- Fiver
I would absolutely have agreed with you, except
that somehow it recently did -- Nathaniel Rateliff, who hit the big time when he was 37. Wikipedia sez:
The earth is a multibillion-year-old sphere.
The Nazis killed millions of Jews.
On 9/11/01 a Boeing 757 (AA77) flew into the Pentagon.
AGCC is happening.
If you cannot accept these facts, I cannot fake an interest in any of your opinions.
@UntimelyRippd Wow. Did he do it
through the web, self-promotion, etc.? Because what I really meant is that the studio world would probably not keep somebody around into their 30s/40s at this point. It's amazing enough they did it with Raitt in the 80s.
EDIT: Actually, no. It looks like the big industry world and its reviewers at the New York Times and elsewhere really liked him, and he was the one who said no to at least one record deal.
"More for Gore or the son of a drug lord--None of the above, fuck it, cut the cord."
--Zack de la Rocha
"I tell you I'll have nothing to do with the place...The roof of that hall is made of bones."
-- Fiver
@UntimelyRippd Do you remember-
Do you remember--that's what the guy who started Boston did.
I read him saying once that he found it funny to hear people referring to his music as "corporate" because, at the time, none of the corporations would give him the time of day and he had to make the thing mostly with his own sound system in his basement.
"More for Gore or the son of a drug lord--None of the above, fuck it, cut the cord."
--Zack de la Rocha
"I tell you I'll have nothing to do with the place...The roof of that hall is made of bones."
-- Fiver
i don't know the full deets on Rateliff, a friend who really
liked the record mentioned the story about how this was his last shot. (BTW, I know from my dad, who heard from his friend, who was the father of Scott Smith, bassist from Loverboy, that Smith had promised his parents that Loverboy was his last shot -- if they didn't make it, he was going to come home from Vancouver and do the college thing. But he was only in his early 20s).
when i was hunting for that video about why modern music sucks, i found another clip with interviews with various famous musicians. one of them was Dick Dale, whose advice to aspiring musicians is to do it all themselves -- make their own CDs, sell them at their concerts, learn out to promote and advertise -- because otherwise they'll be at the mercy of the record company leeches.
The earth is a multibillion-year-old sphere.
The Nazis killed millions of Jews.
On 9/11/01 a Boeing 757 (AA77) flew into the Pentagon.
AGCC is happening.
If you cannot accept these facts, I cannot fake an interest in any of your opinions.
@UntimelyRippd No freaking
No freaking kidding.
"More for Gore or the son of a drug lord--None of the above, fuck it, cut the cord."
--Zack de la Rocha
"I tell you I'll have nothing to do with the place...The roof of that hall is made of bones."
-- Fiver
Also known as "DISCO, the fad that killed the Bee Gees"
Many today don't have any idea what a good band they were back in the beginning, and it was truly amazing what they became instead.
That, in its essence, is fascism--ownership of government by an individual, by a group, or by any other controlling private power. -- Franklin D. Roosevelt --
The tracks they contributed to Saturday Night Fever
weren't even originally written as disco. They re-did the arrangements of their current work-in-progress when they were approached to "headline" the song track for SNF.
This is what Stayin' Alive sounds like when you put a "rock and soul orchestra" behind it (the HORNS! -- Even if you're not impressed in the first 30 seconds or so, I strongly recommend sticking with it to when it all cuts loose!)
[video:https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3YyPvmVAC8U]
The earth is a multibillion-year-old sphere.
The Nazis killed millions of Jews.
On 9/11/01 a Boeing 757 (AA77) flew into the Pentagon.
AGCC is happening.
If you cannot accept these facts, I cannot fake an interest in any of your opinions.
Kinda like this guy better
it wasn't so much about the guy, as about the song.
the point being, Stayin' Alive could actually be a Springsteen song, both lyrically and musically. at about the 25-minute mark of that video, he makes it explicit, during an extended introduction to Spirits in the Night, in which he repeatedly invokes the phrase, Stayin' Alive, in the context of the places and people about whom he writes, for whom Stayin' Alive is a daily, unending challenge.
that said, I've seen springsteen live and i've seen southside johnny live, and i'm sorry, SSJ is cool and all, and there is that one really sweet song that you linked (co-written by springsteen, of course, which usually means he wrote most of it -- see "Because the Night"), but there's really no comparison. which SSJ himself knows. IMHO, everything SSJ has created and recorded adds up to maybe New York City Serenade (which, BTW, in included in that concert -- they perform the entire album, The Wild, The Innocent and the E-Street Shuffle, start to finish. that's why they've got those strings there, playing on Stayin' Alive -- he's going to need them for New York City Serenade.). But then, New York City Serenade is an unreal, improbable, extraordinary thing.
The earth is a multibillion-year-old sphere.
The Nazis killed millions of Jews.
On 9/11/01 a Boeing 757 (AA77) flew into the Pentagon.
AGCC is happening.
If you cannot accept these facts, I cannot fake an interest in any of your opinions.
Well, the problem is that it isn't really the Bee Gees, and, on
the other hand, it also isn't these guys either.
That, in its essence, is fascism--ownership of government by an individual, by a group, or by any other controlling private power. -- Franklin D. Roosevelt --
i'm just saying that the Bee Gees wrote some great
songs that we all heard as disco tunes, but that didn't have to be performed that way -- and weren't even necessarily conceived that way. SA is a gritty slice-of-life narrative, perfectly fitting into a springsteen concert.
The earth is a multibillion-year-old sphere.
The Nazis killed millions of Jews.
On 9/11/01 a Boeing 757 (AA77) flew into the Pentagon.
AGCC is happening.
If you cannot accept these facts, I cannot fake an interest in any of your opinions.
@enhydra lutris I actually somewhat
disagree. Yes, disco can be quite superficial and is obviously poppy, and it's not the greatest musical genre the world has ever seen. But I'll take this:
over this
any day.
Using Rick Astley as my example might be considered loading the dice, so I'm gonna throw in another:
Despite this not being my favorite song of all times, I'll take this:
over this
or this
and this
over this
and this
Why did Robert Palmer always have a bunch of skinny white women with short hair who looked alike in the back of his videos? Or did they just replicate the one woman over and over? In either case, why?
None of this is to say that there isn't a lot of 80s music I love. In fact, I have the greatest respect for George Michael's later work and am really sorry he's dead. There are no flies on this (despite its use of that obnoxious tinny drum machine that apparently was required for all 80s music other than Rush):
"More for Gore or the son of a drug lord--None of the above, fuck it, cut the cord."
--Zack de la Rocha
"I tell you I'll have nothing to do with the place...The roof of that hall is made of bones."
-- Fiver
I guess, to me the question is does anybody really prefer this
to anything off of their first album, for example this
or this
Or maybe even something later, like this
That, in its essence, is fascism--ownership of government by an individual, by a group, or by any other controlling private power. -- Franklin D. Roosevelt --
@enhydra lutris Probably not. But I
Probably not. But I am just as fond of this:
as I am of this:
and at the end of the day (for me), the real point is, you can't hide skill. Their talent comes through even when they're singing "How Can You Mend a Broken Heart," which is probably one of the worst tunes they ever did. Like wading through treacle.
I loved it when I was 8 years old, though.
"More for Gore or the son of a drug lord--None of the above, fuck it, cut the cord."
--Zack de la Rocha
"I tell you I'll have nothing to do with the place...The roof of that hall is made of bones."
-- Fiver
@enhydra lutris As far as I'm concerned
As far as I'm concerned, they brought their excellent skills along with them into a genre that isn't my favorite by any means. That's why I still listen to those songs.
"More for Gore or the son of a drug lord--None of the above, fuck it, cut the cord."
--Zack de la Rocha
"I tell you I'll have nothing to do with the place...The roof of that hall is made of bones."
-- Fiver
Good morning, everybody!
See you got here before me. Hope you helped yourself to coffee.
"More for Gore or the son of a drug lord--None of the above, fuck it, cut the cord."
--Zack de la Rocha
"I tell you I'll have nothing to do with the place...The roof of that hall is made of bones."
-- Fiver
First frost and back spasms
Morning, the sunrise had some yellow in it, not so orange and that was nice. All the roofs are frosty.
I messed up bending my back and not my knees, setting a watering can down on the floor. Suddenly I had a coughing fit and whamo my back said nuh-uh. NOPE u r not so lucky this time, it's all run out. empty luck bucket
omg Anyone else ever had their back just "go out" in a fit of spasms? Agony much? omg it hurts when I laugh.
Perhaps this Sunday will be a horizontal one, the floor is looking pretty good right now, albeit chilly. Staring at the ceiling can be fun. lol Thanks, I am really enjoying today's essays very much anyway, before I hit the floor. It's been years, last time this happened to my back it went away after one day of rest, just one day. A day of rest. cheers
Peace
Yes, I absolutely have had my back do just that.
I concur with your decision about lying flat, preferably on something firm, for at least a day, and hoping it will go away (which it might).
Do you have a local friend or neighbor who can help you out if it doesn't go away soon?
"More for Gore or the son of a drug lord--None of the above, fuck it, cut the cord."
--Zack de la Rocha
"I tell you I'll have nothing to do with the place...The roof of that hall is made of bones."
-- Fiver
Yes, my dawg walking neighbor is helpful
thanks, if I need help the neighbor across the street is there. In fact I have an emergency whistle (obnoxious loud) that she can hear even when my door and windows are shut. We tested it, heh.
This back thing, it is just temporary. It's too bad that laughing hurts, I really can't stop. Everything that I need to do is taking forever. Slowly! Slowly! lol
The Lost Skeleton Returns Again
Vertical seems okay, board straight. Sitting is out completely. No Sitting. lol
@eyo Good. I'm glad of
Good. I'm glad of that. I know what it's like not to be able to tie one's own shoes.
And if you want to avoid laughing, you'd better avoid any movie about the Lost Skeleton.
"More for Gore or the son of a drug lord--None of the above, fuck it, cut the cord."
--Zack de la Rocha
"I tell you I'll have nothing to do with the place...The roof of that hall is made of bones."
-- Fiver
Good luck with the back, I've been there many times. I used to
keep a special stick for getting up off of the floor in the bedroom.
That, in its essence, is fascism--ownership of government by an individual, by a group, or by any other controlling private power. -- Franklin D. Roosevelt --
my back goes out sometimes
way down low in back. Can barely walk. Keep a hiking pole handy. Maybe two. Do some bending forward to stretch vertebrae apart, a forward fetal while on knees. Twisting left and right can be dangerous at first, usually keep it straight, just bend it straight back and forth.
We cannot solve our problems with the same thinking we used when we created them.
Look deep into nature, and then you will understand everything better.
both - Albert Einstein
good morning cstms...
thanks for the ot. Not so smokey here today yet. Crazy smoke yesterday. Getting ready for t-day and much to do. Have a very good one...
Stop Climate Change Silence - Start the Conversation
Hot Air Website, Twitter, Facebook
Juan Browne inflammatory comment
If you watch the vid please ask yourself, why is the wildfire burning "normally" now? He can't seem to explain that part, or maybe it is now burning through "better managed" areas? Perhaps the "mismanagement" is selective, only where the old and poor live? I don't know, someone please give out that information why not.
I think he is making a mistake bringing his right wing arse hole opinion in to the factual discussion, does he actually say "environmental terrorists"? He might as well. Why not just go all the way and say what he is really after? Page views, he says it out loud "welcome new subscribers". feh here ya go:
'Camp' Fire UPDATE Nov. 17 2018
humanitarian crisis
Steely Dan
One of my "older" boyfriends used to play Steely Dan's "Can't Buy a Thrill" album whenever he was in a romantic mood. I liked the jazzy blues of that album enough to buy "Aja" when it came out even after we broke up.
Fast forward to another boyfriend, whose memories of "Deacon Blues" included red sunsets on the open road while he was driving from Tennessee to New York.
Can't speak to the critic who thought Steely Dan's music was "mindless" but I'd have to agree with you that he must not have been listening to the lyrics.
There is always Music amongst the trees in the Garden, but our hearts must be very quiet to hear it. ~ Minnie Aumonier