Friday Fives – some more music edition

I didn’t like any of the questions from my idiot editor.  So, I am going to my old fallback.  Setting my phone to full random on songs.  Going to tell my relationship to each song or band, in the order that they come up.

Bury Me – Dwight Yoakum

I just love this guy, and I am not a country fan by most definitions.  To me, his music is folk music.  I finally got to see him a couple years ago, at Red Rocks no less, and it was fantastic.  I don’t know how I came about his music, but for years I have been performing ‘Fast as You’ with my band, and alone camping.

It’s funny to me that he is an actor.  Being actor is about being a face.  Yet, find me one publicity photo of his face.  You can’t.  Wait… I googled a pic of him without that hat.  Never mind, Dwight, put that hat right back on.

I got to listen to him do a longform interview on the ACS.  He was stupidly likeable.  He didn’t just tell great stories, he sang old jingles and played guitar.

Estimated Prophet – Grateful Dead

One of the few Bobby songs that we all love and appreciate.  And their ain’t many.  Over the years, I have finally come to really appreciate Bob.  Basically, it took Jerry dying to realize what a treasure we always had in Bobby.  We took him for granted, and I will personally cop to it.   However, may I note that this was a big song he was doing when I was following the band in summers of ’90 and ’91.  He would do this caterwauling at the end that was just sad.  We used to call him ‘Bobby Cheese’.  Ok, maybe not ‘we’…. So much as ‘me’.

Side note, this comes from the album Terrapin Station.  My god I love this album.  Terrapin isn’t just my favorite Dead song… it is a super rare moment where the recorded original version is just perfection.  Most of their catalogue never really got great until it was played live.

Nice Boys – Guns & Roses

This is from the album before Appetite.  Can I tell you something?  I was listening to Guns & Roses BEFORE Appetite for Destruction came out.  Credit goes to Tim Ashton, of course.  They had an EP called ‘live like a fucking suicide’.  It was later re-released as side two of ‘Lies’.

Hello… sorry – Todd Snider

I love Todd Snider, he is a folk troubadour, a la Arlo Guthrie, and his father before him.  This isn’t a song, but an intro to one of his wonderful live collections… where he tells as many stories as he does sing songs.  Got to see him live a few years ago, and it was everything I hoped it would be.  One of my favorite clips you can find online is this.  Too Soon To Tell.

Buckets of Rain – Bob Dylan

well, it’s no surprise the list featured the Dead and Bob Dylan.  I still listen to Dylan almost daily.  This is from the masterpiece ‘Blood on the Tracks’.  This is a rather jaunty look at his miserable divorce… which the whole album is about.  Young Bob Dylan was a God, and I am thrilled he got the Pulitzer.  To me, 1974’s Blood on the Tracks is a mystery, of sorts.  This is the music Bob Dylan was making up to 1966.  This should be the successor to ‘Blonde on Blonde’.  However, Bob went weird for almost a decade.  For Bob to ‘go weird’… well that is saying something.  Lay Lady Lay?  What the hell was that?  What was that thing he was doing with his voice?

It’s like Bob went in to witness protection from 1966 to 1974.  Then, he comes back with Blood on the Tracks… and it is like he was never gone.

 

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Friday Fives – Bob Dylan’s nobel prize edition

Do you think Bob Dylan deserves the Nobel Prize?

Yes.  I am a very, very big fan.  His writing has had as much impact in my life as any other single human.

Why a Pulitzer prize in writing for a musician?   Here is why… what author do you listen to every day?  Or even once a year?  No matter how great a book is, you read it and it’s over.  when music is great, you listen often… over and over?  you can have sex listening to music, you can’t do it on a book.  I listen to Dylan almost daily, and I can’t even say that about Alice in Wonderland!

Do you have a favorite  Bob Dylan song?

This would change annually, but of late it has been ‘Positively 4^th St’.  This came from such an amazingly fruitful time (’68) that it wasn’t even put on an album.  Here is how much I love Bob – I have 6 Cds and 9 box sets and 4 dvd collections ALL that just cover his first 6 years.

How would you describe Dylan to someone who is unfamiliar?

Funny, thoughtful… folky.  In that order

Who else deserves the Nobel Prize in Literature?

The rebels and outsiders – Herman Hesse, Hunter Thompson, Henry Miller, Charles Bukowski, Jack Kerouac.

What performance artist stands a chance of also winning the Nobel  Prize?

What do you mean by performance artist?  Like… an actor or musician?  Like… a non painting artist?  Bill Murray

*** for more of my writing on Bob Dylan, here is a link to some of the pieces I have written on my music site.  Odds are, Bob comes up more than any other artist on that site.

Now, enjoy this.  Richie Havens covering Bob Dylan’s ‘just like a woman’.  Nothing better than this – the best covering the best!

Friday Fives – musicology edition

What album do you enjoy every song on?

I wish I could tell you it was Blood on the Tracks, which I think is an absolute masterpiece.   BUT… there are some absolute dogs on there. I mean… Lilly and the Jack of Hearts? To call that filler would be hurtful to things that fill things. So, what albums do? I have to name a few, and they all came out very close together.

Pearl Jam – Ten

Smashing Pumpkins – Siamese Dream

Guns and Roses – Appetite for Destruction

What’s your favorite lyric of all time?

First, let me tell you the one I simultaneously love and hate with great passion on both sides… this line from the Rolling Stones –

“she blew my nose, and then she blew my mind!”

Is there better writing than that?  Yes, but just barely. Is there worse writing than that?  No sir.

To answer your question, though, I have to go to this line:

I was living in London with the girl from the song before

That is Paul Simon, from the ‘Late Great Johnny Ace’. It is remarkable not just for being one of the best songs ever written, it is remarkable that you have never heard it… nor heard of it. That lyric is so great it hurts my heart to think of writing that good. I mean… is there a song before? Was there a girl in the song? No, it’s nonsense.  It’s your imagination.  That is what makes it so great. It’s as if you two were in the middle of a great conversation, and he lets that drop. I guess if we have to give that girl a face and a name, it would be Carrie Fisher. That is Princess Leia to you, to whom Paul was married.  Yeah, not just great songwriter… dude is banging the Princess of the friggin’ Federation.  You better check yourself!

You date Taylor Swift for a Year before breaking up. What is the name of her next album?

“I never fully appreciated, or understood him”

OK, this is it. The executioners are taking aim.  What is the last song you want to hear?

Mayonaise from the Smashing Pumpkins. Studio version. I think this is my favorite song in the whole world. It also embodies the Smashing Pumpkins, and Billy C, so perfectly. Pretty, thoughtful, spacy, and balls out rock your skull off… all in the same piece. Here is a secondary live, acoustic, on the fly version. You may watch this only after you have heard the studio version about 30 times and cried to it.

It’s a quiet little genre and only you enjoy it – what is it?

Just about everything Astrud Gilberto ever did. You know her as the ‘girl from Ipanema’ lady. She is that, and so much more. Her and her hubby, along with a couple others (like Stan Getz and Antonio Carlos Jobin) basically invented Bossa Nova… AND got it to the states. Now that you know that, you will start to notice that a muzac version of Girl from Ipanema plays in they background in all elevator scenes. I know it is one of the most iconic songs ever recorded.  Think about this, is there a better known melody in all of music?  There are a precious few – ‘My Favorite Things’, Fur Elise’, ‘New York New York’, ‘Star Spangled Banner’… these are all melodies that you know whether you like it or not. Same with ‘Girl from Ipanema’.  Why then do I regard this as a ‘secret quiet little music genre’? Because – popular culture has only used that song as an ironic hipster statement.  That song is regarded as the most boring and sanitized song ever. It is used to define something lame. No sir, it was groundbreaking at the time – 1964.

when I say ‘groundbreaking’, that isn’t hyperbole.  When you hear ‘Purple Haze’, you don’t think anything about it.  When people heard that first, in 1967, their faces exploded.  No one had made noise like that, and certainly no one had seen a black kid playing rock.

There is a great story that may or may not be true about Miles Davis meeting the first lady (Nancy Reagan). Supposedly, she said to him “and what do you do that got you a seat at the President’s table?” having no idea who the super creepy, probably super high, and extra black man in front of her at dinner was. His response – straight-faced, Davis replied:

“Well, I’ve changed the course of music five or six times. What have you done except fuck the president?”

In that anecdote, was it necessary I pointed out how black he was?  Since we are talking about old rich white Republicans… yes it is.