La Fin De La Semaine Essay Question: Special "Time For My Boot Heels To Be Wandering" Edition

Okay, it's a holiday weekend, and consequently I have better things to do than write some kind of long sardonic intro to the following.

So let's just get to the business at hand with no further foo farrah. To wit:

...and your favorite (or least favorite) song/recorded performance (live or studio) by Bob Dylan is...?

Discuss.

No arbitrary rules, obviously, but just to be clear -- we're talking about one of Bob's songs, or Bob performing one of his own songs or Bob performing a song by somebody else. No Dylan covers by other artistes need apply.

And in case you're wondering, my favorite -- by a mile -- is...

That's absolutely spellbinding, but I should note here and for the record (as it were) that I was actually planning to post the electric studio version of same that Dylan did with The Hawks, and which I first heard on a Trademark of Quality bootleg circa 1974.

And which is right up there in my Top 10 Greatest Performances of Anything by Anybody list. 😎

Alas, to my surprise, it's not up at YouTube, so I went with that almost as fabulous live Aussie version from the same period (1966).

And speaking of which, I originally heard that on another Trademark of Quality bootleg, the one with this hilarious album cover by the great William Stout.

Okay, and moving right along, my least favorite Dylan performance, and man, is it fucking awful, is...

As you may have noticed, Bob's singing a duet with himself on that in both his normal and his Nashville Skyline voices, so it's possible -- perhaps, maybe, could be -- that it's meant tongue-in-cheek.

I doubt it, though. 😎😎

Have a great holiday weekend, everybody!!!

Oh wait -- I found that studio version of "Johanna" with The Hawks. Enjoy!!!

Well, Isn't This Just the Cutest Thing

From their about to be released (Aug. 29) new album Straight Line Was a Lie, please enjoy New Zealand power-poppers The Beths and the album's utterly infectious title track.

In the interests of full disclosure, I must confess I was previously unaware of these kids -- who've been around for a decade, actually -- until somebody at a political blog(!) I hang out at posted a link to the above the other day. In any case, I was instantly charmed and (assuming you don't already know from them) I suspect you will be too.

In the meantime, you can (and should) find out more about them -- including tour dates and where to stream more of their music -- over at their website HERE.

I should add that seeing them live has now become a bucket list thing for me; fortunately, they're scheduled to perform in NYC in early December. 😎

Today's Cartoon Chuckle(s)

I must admit, it took me a minute to get the first one. And if you don't get the Sir Mix-a-Lot one, look at his lawyer's rear end. 😎

Hot Fun in the Summertime

And speaking as we were yesterday of Bruce Springsteen in 1975, attentive reader VR has inquired whether I was in attendance for any of the Boss's legendary August week-long 10-show run at the Bottom Line, the performances that directly preceded the release of Born to Run 50 years ago yesterday.

The answer -- yes, I was. I saw three of the shows in fact (three and a half, if you count the early one broadcast live on WNEW-FM, which I made sure to listen to/tape at home before I went out to see the 11:30 follow-up).

What can I tell you -- I was a hardcore fan.

Here's one of my favorite performances from the aforemetioned radio show. BTW, I seem to recall there was later a very fancy shmancy two-LP bootleg of it that I went on to play countless times in several different apartments of mine. 😎

I should add that -- believe it or not -- I was bitterly disappointed by the first of the shows I attended, and for possibly the stupidest reason imaginable. To wit, that some of the guys in the E-Street Band -- particularly Miami Steve Van Zant (who I had never seen playing with the group before) -- hit the stage wearing white ice cream pimp suits, rather than the usual casual street attire. I don't know why, but it struck me as some kind of ghastly betrayal at the time. I kid you not.

Hey, by the second show I had gotten over it. 😎😎

Oy Gevalt, Now I'm REALLY Old!!!

Today is the 50th anniversary of the release of Born to Run. Seriously -- just kill me now. 😎

Okay, in actual fact the good news is that in celebration of the event, Springsteen just released this quite splendid outtake from the original album sessions. Probably wouldn't have fit in with the album as released, but it's a pretty cool song nonetheless.

I should add that I remember the aforementioned release day of BTR beyond vividly. It was around 4pm on a Friday, and a messenger from CBS Records dropped it off for me at the old Park Avenue offices of Stereo Review. It came in a soft cardboard gatefold cover (without a spine), and with the iconic photo of the Boss and the Big Man on the front, but with the title stuff (artist and album name) in a script typeface (like the above) rather than the familiar plain cap letters. And nothing else inside or on the back cover. The disc itself had a white label with no info on it at all, not even the album title.

Needless to say, I immediately played it through from start to finish and thoroughly kvelled. I thought it was the greatest thing I'd ever heard, and my opinion has not changed substantially since then.

I should also add that said copy of the album would fetch quite a pretty penny on the collector's market today, but needless to say I gave it away to somebody -- I forget who -- years ago.

Yes, I'm not just old, I'm an idiot. 😎😎

La Fin de La Semaine Essay Question: Special "Urban Hellhole" Edition

So I originally did a version of this in 2008(!), back when the world and this blog were young, and if you had told me then that our noble republic would someday be in the hands of a demented short-fingered vulgarian with a vocabulary of approximately 700 words and the emotional maturity of a toddler, I would have suggested you were fucking high.

In any event, it turned out to be true, which is one of the reasons (i.e., I'm really exhausted coping) I've recyled it now. It also seems newly relevant, given that the aforementioned SFV is -- post his occupation of our nation's capitol -- now threatening to send Federal troops into other liberal cities, specifically including the Big Apple.

Hey -- good luck with that one, Donny. To paraphrase Humphrey Bogart in Casablanca -- "There are certain sections of New York, shithead, that I wouldn't advise you to try to invade."

Which leads us, inexorably, to the subject of today's business. To wit:

...and your favorite (or least favorite) post-Beatles Pop/Rock/Folk/Soul song/record about/referencing New York City and environs in the title or lyrics is...???

Okay, no arbitrary rules here, but if you nominate any version of "New York, New York" I will come to your house and kill you AND your family. Sorry.

Obviously, NY-themed songs are almost too numerous to mention, but in case you're wondering, my fave(s) is a tie between...

...and...

As you may recall, Fear was a band much beloved of John Belushi, and the song above holds a special place in my heart because they performed it during their legendary SNL appearance, at which they almost literally brought the house down (a story I'll perhaps retell on another occasion).

As for the Tradewinds record, hell -- what could be a more poignant existential dilemma than being the only living surfer boy in New York? 😎

Alrighty then -- what would YOUR choices be?

And have a great weekend everybody!!!

The Boys of Summer Just Seem a Little Weird

So the other day I'm channel surfing and I chanced across some ESPN kind of thingie and they were talking about an upcoming Yankees/Boston contest.

And I suddenly flashed on a song I hadn't thought about for several decades.

From their self-titled 1968 debut album, please enjoy Beantown band Earth Opera and their obviously conflicted plaint about how "The Red Sox Are Winning."

When you are gone I keep track of the time
In my diary line by line
And the past is behind
It was so long ago
When believing and beauty
Celebrated the birth
It was green, lovely green
We could fly like milkweed

But nowadays no one seems to care
They laugh at me when I ride my bike
Turn away in shame when I fly my kite

I spend my Saturdays
Alone in the mirror
Arranging my hair
In the end, what is there?
To talk of passing time
Should I turn off the TV?
Or go to the race track
And bet on the dogs
And the weather is strange
No summer this year
In the days of the war
But the Red Sox are winning

As you can tell from all of the above, these guys were very echt-late Sixties in their melding of folk-rock, psychedelia and general mishegass. I actually owned the album (and its successor, the even wiggier American Eagle Tragedy -- don't worry, I didn't buy them, but rather stole them from my college radio station). But the baseball song was the only one I played a lot; for some reason its sledgehammer irony really spoke to me at the time (Vietnam, and all that).

In any event, two members of the group -- David Grisman and Peter Rowan (who wrote the song) -- went on to much better things as members of Old and in the Way with Jerry Garcia and Vassar Clements; their self-titled LP became the best-selling bluegrass album of all time.

Meanwhile, if you want to hear more of the Opera guys, the full album can be listened to -- for free -- over at YouTube HERE.

You're welcome very much.

Wednesday's Cartoon Chuckle(s)

Heh. 😎

Your Tuesday Moment of Words Fail Me

From their 1999 album Hooray for Boobies(!), enjoy (if possible) wiseguy Pennsylvania punk band the Bloodhound Gang and the, er, interesting video for their re-imagining of The Association's 1965 classic "Along Comes Mary."

Seriously, watching that I don't know whether to laugh or cry. And that's just over how they removed the melody from the original song. 😎

I should add that the aforementioned album was actually a Number 1 hit (and "Mary" in the singles Top 10) in...wait for it...Germany. 😎😎

Take That, Joan Jett!!!

From a fascinating essay by critic Adam Gopnik in the Aug. 4 issue of The New Yorker:

With minimal ingenuity, any historical period can be made to dissolve into the ones around it. Take the rock revolution—that great shift which, emerging in the mid-nineteen-fifties and established by the mid-sixties, definitively separated the Broadway-and-jazz-based tunes that had previously dominated popular music from the new sound. The break ravaged record companies and derailed careers. In the fifties, the wonderful jazz-and-standards singer Beverly Kenney performed a song she’d written called “I Hate Rock ’n’ Roll,” and then—perhaps for other reasons, but surely for that one, too—took her own life [emphasis mine - S.S.].

Okay, I was unfamiliar with Ms. Kenney and her tragic end, so as you can imagine that got my attention.

You can find out more about her over HERE; it's way fascinating, trust me -- she should be remembered for a whole bunch of cool things rather than suicide.

And here's the anti-rock anthem in question.

Seems a little extreme to me, but obviously it was a different time. In any case, I'm a fan of that whole Fifties deadpan cool girl jazz singer genre -- I adore Chris Connor, for example -- and Ms. Kenney is obviously a superior representative of same.

I should add that the above is from a 1958 live performance on the old Steve Allen show, but alas the actual video of it has not made it to YouTube.