Roky Erickson live!
Here’s some video I shot of Roky Erickson with Okkervil River at SXSW last March. Resurrected.
Here’s some video I shot of Roky Erickson with Okkervil River at SXSW last March. Resurrected.
Two of my favorite musical artists, Neil Young and Daniel Lanois, have collaborated on Neil’s new album Le Noise. Daniel discusses the process of making the record.
Le Noise is being released on September 28. It’s just Neil, some guitars, some amps and a mixing board. I dig it, but I can’t help but wonder what it might have sounded like with Crazy Horse in the mix. Still, pretty powerful. SImple yet epic. Zen metalism.
Here’s a track:
Generally when Wisconsin’s All Tiny Creatures goes out on tour, band member Andrew Fitzpatrick carries around an old Sony handheld cassette recorder, tapes a bunch of random phenomena then edits the best of it into a sort of abstract personal memento of the experience. Says Fitzpatrick, “I managed to capture about three hours worth of material over the course of 14 days, which I then edited down to about 14 minutes. The process of editing the material is rewarding; it enhances my memories of the trip, and it’s an interesting way to construct a new narrative of sorts.” Makes for good listening, says I.
Although they recorded but three albums, Buffalo Springfield was one of the most influential rock bands of the 60s. This Fall, surviving Buffalo Springfield members Neil Young, Stephen Stills, and Richie Furay are reuniting to perform at Young’s annual Bridge School benefit concerts on October 23rd and 24th in Mountain View, California.
Furay told Rolling Stone that got he a text message from Young that read, “Call me.”
“I called and he asked me if I’d be up for a reunion at the Bridge School Benefit,” Furay says. “He said, ‘If you’re into it, I think Stephen [Stills] will be into it.’ The three of us then arranged a conference call, chit-chatted for a few minutes, and planned it all out. The last time I was onstage with them was the last Buffalo Springfield show at the Long Beach Arena back in 1968. Our lives have gone in different directions and I wouldn’t say that we’re close friends, but we’re friends and its an opportunity for us to get together again for a good cause. I’m very excited.”
Rick Rosas (from Neil Young’s band) will sit in for the late Bruce Palmer, with CSN drummer Joe Vitale filling in for Dewey Martin who died in 2009.
Below, David Crosby performs in stead for an MIA Neil Young as Buffalo Springfield sing their million-selling single, “For What It’s Worth” at the Monterey Pop Festival in 1967. Introduced by Peter Tork of the Monkees.
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Fresh out of his tenure with new wave stars Squeeze, 25-year-old musician Jools Holland had launched his career as a TV presenter on the BBC channel 4 show The Tube. Assigned to cover Jamaica’s music scene circa 1984, the confident Holland strode right in to Kingston and made it happen.
Expertly directed by Geoff Wonfor, Jools’s special features footage of rising stars Mutabaruka, Dennis Brown, Black Uhuru and the Wailing Souls, along with spotlights on legendary riddim section Sly & Robbie and maniac producer Lee “Scratch” Perry (who claims he “comes from the trees”).
Not satisfied with the established stars, Wonfor and Holland prove their cred by including a gritty dancehall sequence with star microphone men Yellowman, Billy Boyo, Massive Dread and Lee van Cleef. They all do well until the on-fire Eek a Mouse suddenly hits the stage in pancho and sombrero and turns the place out.
Bookended by his intro while swimming fully dressed through a hotel pool and a beautiful finale shoot in heaviest Trenchtown for his big-band/ska tune “Black Beauty,” Jools in Jamaica is a remarkably bright document of an island in its deepest post-independence economic and political depths.
After the jump, catch the rest of the doc…
A pack of drug and art addled young Germans run amok in a recording studio on a major label’s dime Even better, a pair of sisters, one of them a popular mainstream singing star, travel around Europe making weird tapes on a portable tape recorder and then lavishly package the treated results as a triple LP set in an elaborate and expensive silver and gold foil sleeve circa 1970 in Germany? I’m so there.
More tripping and flipping after the jump…
Of all the wonderful prog bands I was introduced to in 7th grade by a friend’s older brother (doesn’t it usually work like that?) I’m most thankful for Henry Cow. In place of the D&D imagery most prog bands employed, the Cow were of a distinctly leftist, worldly bent. Dead serious and as likely to quote Schoenberg, Webern and Messiaen as they were to freely improvise an entire set, this was powerful and stern stuff. As is proclaimed on the sleeve their 3rd LP, 1975’s In Praise of Learning, “Art is not a mirror, it is a hammer”. Yeah ! Being comprised of some of the strongest, most idiosyncratic players in all the U.K. : guitarist Fred Frith, Drummer Chris Cutler, Keyboardist Tim Hodgkinson, reed player Lindsay Cooper and vocalist Dagmar Krause, each of whom deserving of multiple posts of their own devoted to their massive amounts of notable great works, they were one of the first bands signed to Virgin records and toured with the likes of Faust and Captain Beefheart during their relatively breif run in the mid-70’s. I seriously doubt that any hardcore Cow fans don’t aleady know about the following beautiful footage, the only known to exist of the band, playing most of the aforementioned LP live in a field somewhere in Switzerland in 1976 as released as part of a lavish box set
Much more vintage live Henry Cow after the jump…
The Gleaming Spires were a Sparks-related group of mid 80s New Wave-sters who had a local Los Angeles radio hit called “Are You Ready for the Sex Girls?” The tune is a perennial favorite on various artists New Wave compilations, but I always liked this song, “A Christian Girl’s Problem,” better.
I was just reading on the House of Self Indulgence blog that this song was part of the soundtrack for Greg Dark’s moody/mock doc 80s fuckflix classic, The Devil in Miss Jones 3, starring punky porn icon Lois Ayres. That makes sense.
During the late 1940s and early 1950s, Scotland carried out a series of social experiments, which dealt with an acute housing shortage caused by the sudden increase in the post-war population. Over two decades, thousands of working class families were moved out of slum tenements, from the city of Glasgow, into a series of New Towns, literally modern housing schemes, scattered across the country.
In 1947, East Kilbride was designated as Scotland’s first New Town, with the aim of bringing together “new methods of production and assembly in order to create dwellings, serving humanity and also reflecting a type of technological progression.”
More from Hedgefund after the jump…
We’ve had plenty of Cher-related novelties here on Dangerous Minds. And we’ve out share of Harry Nilsson and Phil Spector rarities as well. So why not go for a triple-header? Have a listen to what Harry called “Nilssonny & Cher,” produced by the monomaniacal Phil Spector. Recorded during downtime in the recording of John Lennon’s Rock ‘n Roll album, this is one of those “lost” records that came out for a very short time before disappearing completely, but that is now as easy to hear as pressing play below…