Annals of Late Capitalism

Taking the day off due to a last minute writing assignment (for money, albeit very little) in the real world.



Back tomorrow.

Memorial Day Non Sequitur Blogging

And having absolutely no thematic relationship to today's holiday whatsoever, from 1988, please enjoy the incomparable Leo Kottke -- speaking as we have been for the last week or two of the whole one-guy-singing-with-just-a-guitar thing -- and a stunning live performance of his 1971 classic "Hear the Wind Howl."



The song originally appeared on Mudlark, Kottke's major label studio album debut, in a version about twice as fast. This one's still viscerally exciting, though.

[h/t Matt Mitchell]

Gil Scott-Heron 1949--2011

The original rapper -- well, one of them, anyway -- has passed.

An interesting guy. I can't say I was a huge fan -- although I saw him live once, at a concert for Arista Records, in which he shared the stage with Patti Smith and Barry Manilow (I am not making this up) -- but his 1977 anti-nuke "We Almost Lost Detroit" is obviously even more relevant than ever.

And I really rather like his cover of that Bill Callahan song we argued about last week (from his most recent album)



Like I said, an interesting guy. Although after seeing that video and learning that Scott-Heron was two years younger than me, I have to admit I'm rather pleased at how I'm holding up.

Weekend Listomania (Special Safety in Numbers? Edition)

Well, it's Friday and you know what that means. Yes, my Oriental erotic storm chaser Fah Lo Suee and I are off to beautiful downtown Richmond, Virginia, home of House Majority Leader Rep. Eric Cantor [R-Soulless Automaton].

Eric Cantor responded to the almost unimaginable destruction visited on Joplin, Missouri by recent extreme weather by saying on Monday that if Congress passes an emergency spending bill to help Missouri’s tornado victims, the extra money will have to be cut from somewhere else.

“If there is support for a supplemental, it would be accompanied by support for having pay-fors to that supplemental,” Mr. Cantor, Virginia Republican, told reporters at the Capitol. The term “pay-fors” is used by lawmakers to signal cuts or tax increases used to pay for new spending.

Damn, that's inspirational, don't you think? In any case, Fah Lo Suee and I plan to show our appreciation and solidarity with the empathy-challenged little putz by ringing his doorbell and running.

That being the case, here's a theoretically amusing little project to help you wile away the desperate hours in our absence:

Supergroup Collaborations Between Musicians That Either Should Be, Should Have Been, or Were But Shouldn't Have!!!

And my totally top of my head Top Five is:

5. KGB



As in singer Ray Kennedy (co-author of "Sail On, Sailor"), blues keyboardist Barry Goldberg, and original American guitar hero Mike Bloomfield on guitar. With Ric Grech and Carmine Appice as the rhythm section, circa 1975. And mostly as mediocre as you might have feared.

4. American Flyer



Craig Fuller from Pure Prairie League, Eric Kaz (morose songwriter of "Love Has No Pride") Steve Katz of Blues Project fame, and Doug Yule from the Velvet Underground. Debut album produced by George Martin, for heaven's sake. And it still didn't work, a minor hit or two notwithstanding.

3. The Unraveling Wilburys



A high-concept supergroup -- specifically, everybody in the band had to be certifiably nuts -- I dreamed up in the early 90s. My candidates were the late Syd Barrett, the late Skip Spence, Brian Wilson, Roky Erickson, Fleetwood Mac's Peter Green and Derek and the Dominoes' Jim Gordon (voices told him to kill his mom with an axe). I don't know if the music would have been any good, but I guarantee the rehearsals would have been a trip.

2. Golden Smog



A shifting line-up of 80s and 90s alt and indie stalwarts on a sort of roots-rock busman's holiday, with Wilco's Jeff Tweedy and Big Star drummer Jody Stephens among the most frequent participants. None of their albums has ever really knocked me out, but I'll concede that this Tweedy-sung cover of the Kinks' tune has the real gone spirit.

And the Numero Uno match that should be made in heaven and what the hell are they waiting for, simply has to be....

1. Jeff Beck...



and

Prince.



Seriously, this is so fricking obvious I can only assume it's actually been attempted on the sly and didn't pan out for some reason, alas.

Alrighty, then -- what would your choices be?

[h/t Gwen DeMarco]

An Early Clue to the New Direction That Also Depresses the Hell Out of Me. The Things I Go Through For You Guys....

From 1985, please enjoy -- yeah right, who am I kidding? -- short-lived stitched-together-like-Frankenstein's-monster GTR and their unforgettable and unforgiveable "When the Heart Rules the Mind."



As always, a coveted PowerPop No-Prize will be awarded to the first reader who gleans the clip's relevance to the theme of tomorrow's Weekend Listomania.

"He Seems Sort of Unpleasant and Uncomfortable"

Little Bobby Zimmerman turned 70 yesterday.

Here's some noise he made (with The Hawks) in the studio on November 30, 1965.




And in conclusion, Bill Callahan -- bite me.

Up on the Roof

Funnily enough, I've been listening to a lot of vintage Jefferson Airplane of late -- now that I think of it, perhaps inspired by the upcoming premiere of the 1970 student movie featuring my college Airplane wannabe band -- and I just discovered this remarkable artifact.

Shot by Jean-Luc Godard on top of a Manhattan office building on November 11, 1968, for the froggy auteur's ultimately never finished One A.M. (One American Movie).



And yes, that's actually quite a while earlier than the iconic band performance atop the Apple Building it seems to emulate; in fact, The Beatles rooftop swansong didn't happen till January 30, 1969.

In any case, great minds thought alike. Or something.

[h/t Steve Schwartz]

Artistic License and Registration, Please.

So speaking as we were last week about the whole one-guy-singing-with-just-a-guitar-for-backup thing, I just finished reading a recent adulatory New Yorker profile -- by Sasha Frere-Jones, a very sharp younger rock critic who I have never found irksome, even when I disagreed with him -- about a 44-year-old indie singer/songwriter (a folkie, in earlier parlance) named Bill Callahan. Who is apparently highly regarded by contemporary hepsters, but who I have somehow managed to have avoided hearing previously.

Curiosity piqued, I made a bee-line for a song Frere-Jones rated particularly highly, "I'm New Here" (recorded when Callahan was doing business under the stage name Smog.)



And the answer to your question is -- I don't know about this guy. Which is to say, I haven't quite decided whether he has a genuinely interesting and quirky sensibility or whether he's just a sort of post-modern Gen Y version of a lot of full-of-themselves 60s and 70s poet types I didn't care for back in the day.

Although I gotta admit that this paragraph from the New Yorker piece --

There are other antecedents for Callahan, some of which he rejects. Though he has expressed admiration for Fred Neil, the deep-voiced folkie known for writing “Everybody’s Talkin’,” from “Midnight Cowboy,” and for Merle Haggard, another songwriter who is fond of the comic deadpan, Bob Dylan, the albatross for many songwriters, is irrelevant to Callahan. “I never liked him,” he told me. “He seems sort of unpleasant and uncomfortable.”

-- may have gotten my hackles up to the point where I'm incapable of giving the guy a totally objective listen. At least for now.

Slacker Friday

No Listomania this weekend -- musical or cinematic.



Hey...I'm really old and I'm taking care of an ailing mom. Also, NBC just cancelled The Event without filming a final episode, and I can barely deal with the crushing disappointment, frankly.

Never fear, though. The List will return next week -- tanned, rested and ready. That's just the way I roll.

But in the meantime, I discovered this online the other day, and it's so confounding I simply have to share. From 1968, here's Sissy Spacek -- yes, her -- doing business under the nom du disque Rainbo, and the quite remarkable "John, You Went Too Far This Time."

A song occasioned by the full frontal nude photo of John and Yoko on the Two Virgins album that year. I am not making this up.




I think we can all agree that this is even worse than Welcome Back Kotter star Marcia Strassman's Summer of Love hit "The Flower Children", but to quote Nick Tosches again -- even though it was a bad record, it failed to sell. In any case, Spacek went on to acquit herself vocally in a far more credible manner on the soundtrack to Coal Miner's Daughter in 1980.

I should add that, as you can see, the single was released on Roulette Records, whose president was the legendary Morris Levy, the Jewish Mafia guy with whom John Lennon had some serious legal problems a few years after Spacek's record was released to an uncaring world.

Cahiers du Cowabunga!!!

From July 28, 1962, and the soundtrack to the documentary film One Man's Challenge, please enjoy The Beach Boys at a teen club in Azusa, CA and an absolutely live version of their epochal "Surfin' Safari."




A cinema vérité look at genuine early '60s SoCal beach and teen culture, One Man's Challenge is one of the rarest '60s rock films, and also (apparently) one of the most interesting. In any case, when Marshall Crenshaw got to see it (a 16mm print) for his 1994 book Hollywood Rock, he remarked that the Beach Boys "look like gods on this scene." Dale Smallin, who wrote and directed the flick, was a minor surf music deity in his own right as a songwriter and producer; that's his laugh that's heard at the beginning of "Wipe Out."

I should add that I don't do the whole torrent download thing, but if anybody can find me a copy of this one, needless to say I'd be your best friend.