[Bill,
March 7, 2008]
YouTube weekend, Bill's Notes Version: In Which Ray Davies Serves as an Apogee
By 1994 I'd spent the previous couple of/bunch of years focused on others things besides music. I was ensconced in a house in Gabon, and a visiting volunteer left behind a cassette tape. Since there was plenty of time for personal entertainment there (being no television), I plunked the tape into my player and heard it out. It was pretty good ...
I was particularly blown away by one song. Which was kinda rare, 'cuz I was (was, past tense) a serious rock snob and tended not to be blown away by anything new. So, in my pretentious way, if I said something was good, that's because it was really good. (God, I was such a snot, but I hid it well. I hope.)
Anyway, the song that blew me away was Smashing Pumpkins misspelled Mayonnaise (which I refuse to misspell). Harry has the link to a video. I won't repost it here. Good choice, Harry.
Anyway, I made a copy of the tape and brought the copy home with me. Several years later, I played it in my car for Jen, and she told me the names of each band. All but "Cracker" I've forgotten. Anyway, that tape is what clued me in that rock had undergone a serious early-90s renaissance.
But that's not what I want to post. I want to keep posting Sweet Jane. Here's Phish channeling the Dead:
Speaking of channeling the Grateful Dead, here's Led Zeppelin sounding like the Dead in Down by the Seaside:
Speaking of Led Zeppelin, here's something where they're back to the Power Chords. I've always thought that the opening guitar riff to The Rover should be the default ring tone on every cell phone in America:
One of Jimmy Paige's best guitar solos. Seriously. And like all Led Zeppelin songs, it ends about a minute after it should. Seriously, weren't you done by the 4:30 mark?
The opening riff may have been borrowed from Wicked Annabella by The Kinks:
Now, one of my favorite Kinks' songs was from an album that came out in 1983. They always say your favorite music is what you were listening to when you were 19. Maybe there's something to it.
I recall "breaking format" back on my "Monday Morning Hangover Hour" with this song, but no one cared except the station director, who went on to radio success on WINS-AM. See the problem? I mean, effing AM? Believe it or not, there used to be AM people at one time in the world. But yes, I was a college DJ for WSOU-FM from 84-85. Monday 10 a.m. -12 p.m. Yes, it was two hours. And I kept it mellow ... for the most part. 'Cuz I was the one who was hungover.
More akin to breaking format, though, was this one. I had just heard that Sioxsie & the Banshees cover of Dear Prudence was No. 1 in England (which of course was the heart of all coolness, Cool Brittania and all that), so I busted format with it. Some people were very impressed. Which of course was the point. It's not that great a song. Either time.
Re this song: There's also a personal story here about a Chicago business trip that quickly descended into a netherworld of strange characters, smoke-filled haunts and non-sequiturs — a Three Stooges routine acted out; catching the end of Jackie Brown in a crowded, rundown bar/theater, encountering a chain-smoking photographer in an apartment full of cats; analyzing the lack of risk-taking in a wall mosaic depicting Jack Nicholson in The Shining; a late night run for fries in a seedy section of town; a shy, boozy girl making a cutting remark while Dear Prudence played in the background; and an Faulkneresque character named Shoe who insisted on showing us all his different sets of shoes. But doesn't everyone have a story like that? It's just so friggin' cliche.
Speaking of Jackie Brown, the last song in the movie (the only part of it I saw) is Bobby Womack's Across 110th Street. The video is the opening sequence from the movie.
110th Street refers to Harlem's boundary. But I've always given Harlem a five or 10 block "grace zone," unless I was near Columbia University, where I had to go several times for various reasons. The song is actually the title track from a 1972 movie. Thanks, Wiki.
And now, just to bring things full circle, here's the Grateful Dead covering what's possibly Bobby Womack's most famous song, It's All Over Now.
And since we're on the Dead here, a very very long version of the next song partially served as the soundtrack to a homecoming weekend in Narragansett filled with strange characters, smoke-filled haunts and non-sequiturs — two women so obsessed with an ex-boyfriend they once shared that one was in therapy and other had previously stabbed the guy; this triad drinking and uneasily reminiscing together, then encountering a cabal of conspiracy-theorists who insisted that Edison had stolen Tesla's research and the Federal Reserve was illegal; putting down one drink an hour for 48 straight hours; an obdurate insistence on having relations because, "When else will I be back in Rhode Island?"; two shy, lonely folks meeting up and beginning what would become a marriage within a year; a costume party in a maze-like, rundown, mansion in which every crowded hallway only seemed to lead deeper and deeper into the depths of the earth — until you were suddenly outside; a pointless discussion in a parking lot with two members of the college's hammer-throwing squad; and a compilation video of college scenes scored by one guy's version of Row Jimmy that had all the URI alumni tearing up 'cuz it was never gonna be like that again. Then we walked back to the hotel in the rain.
Anyway, here are Parts I & II:
I was particularly blown away by one song. Which was kinda rare, 'cuz I was (was, past tense) a serious rock snob and tended not to be blown away by anything new. So, in my pretentious way, if I said something was good, that's because it was really good. (God, I was such a snot, but I hid it well. I hope.)
Anyway, the song that blew me away was Smashing Pumpkins misspelled Mayonnaise (which I refuse to misspell). Harry has the link to a video. I won't repost it here. Good choice, Harry.
Anyway, I made a copy of the tape and brought the copy home with me. Several years later, I played it in my car for Jen, and she told me the names of each band. All but "Cracker" I've forgotten. Anyway, that tape is what clued me in that rock had undergone a serious early-90s renaissance.
But that's not what I want to post. I want to keep posting Sweet Jane. Here's Phish channeling the Dead:
Speaking of channeling the Grateful Dead, here's Led Zeppelin sounding like the Dead in Down by the Seaside:
Speaking of Led Zeppelin, here's something where they're back to the Power Chords. I've always thought that the opening guitar riff to The Rover should be the default ring tone on every cell phone in America:
One of Jimmy Paige's best guitar solos. Seriously. And like all Led Zeppelin songs, it ends about a minute after it should. Seriously, weren't you done by the 4:30 mark?
The opening riff may have been borrowed from Wicked Annabella by The Kinks:
Now, one of my favorite Kinks' songs was from an album that came out in 1983. They always say your favorite music is what you were listening to when you were 19. Maybe there's something to it.
I recall "breaking format" back on my "Monday Morning Hangover Hour" with this song, but no one cared except the station director, who went on to radio success on WINS-AM. See the problem? I mean, effing AM? Believe it or not, there used to be AM people at one time in the world. But yes, I was a college DJ for WSOU-FM from 84-85. Monday 10 a.m. -12 p.m. Yes, it was two hours. And I kept it mellow ... for the most part. 'Cuz I was the one who was hungover.
More akin to breaking format, though, was this one. I had just heard that Sioxsie & the Banshees cover of Dear Prudence was No. 1 in England (which of course was the heart of all coolness, Cool Brittania and all that), so I busted format with it. Some people were very impressed. Which of course was the point. It's not that great a song. Either time.
Re this song: There's also a personal story here about a Chicago business trip that quickly descended into a netherworld of strange characters, smoke-filled haunts and non-sequiturs — a Three Stooges routine acted out; catching the end of Jackie Brown in a crowded, rundown bar/theater, encountering a chain-smoking photographer in an apartment full of cats; analyzing the lack of risk-taking in a wall mosaic depicting Jack Nicholson in The Shining; a late night run for fries in a seedy section of town; a shy, boozy girl making a cutting remark while Dear Prudence played in the background; and an Faulkneresque character named Shoe who insisted on showing us all his different sets of shoes. But doesn't everyone have a story like that? It's just so friggin' cliche.
Speaking of Jackie Brown, the last song in the movie (the only part of it I saw) is Bobby Womack's Across 110th Street. The video is the opening sequence from the movie.
110th Street refers to Harlem's boundary. But I've always given Harlem a five or 10 block "grace zone," unless I was near Columbia University, where I had to go several times for various reasons. The song is actually the title track from a 1972 movie. Thanks, Wiki.
And now, just to bring things full circle, here's the Grateful Dead covering what's possibly Bobby Womack's most famous song, It's All Over Now.
And since we're on the Dead here, a very very long version of the next song partially served as the soundtrack to a homecoming weekend in Narragansett filled with strange characters, smoke-filled haunts and non-sequiturs — two women so obsessed with an ex-boyfriend they once shared that one was in therapy and other had previously stabbed the guy; this triad drinking and uneasily reminiscing together, then encountering a cabal of conspiracy-theorists who insisted that Edison had stolen Tesla's research and the Federal Reserve was illegal; putting down one drink an hour for 48 straight hours; an obdurate insistence on having relations because, "When else will I be back in Rhode Island?"; two shy, lonely folks meeting up and beginning what would become a marriage within a year; a costume party in a maze-like, rundown, mansion in which every crowded hallway only seemed to lead deeper and deeper into the depths of the earth — until you were suddenly outside; a pointless discussion in a parking lot with two members of the college's hammer-throwing squad; and a compilation video of college scenes scored by one guy's version of Row Jimmy that had all the URI alumni tearing up 'cuz it was never gonna be like that again. Then we walked back to the hotel in the rain.
Anyway, here are Parts I & II: