An 8 foot statue to Chuck Berry was unveiled Friday morning, at a plaza on the Loop, University City, St. Louis, just across the street from Blueberry Hill, where Berry still performs.
To commemorate this honor to the “Father of Rock and Roll”, here is Chuck Berry rocking the Shepherd’s Bush Theater, London from 1972.
“Roll Over Beethoven”
“Sweet Little Sixteen”
“Memphis Tennessee”
“South of the Border”
“Beer Drinking Woman”
“Let It Rock”
“Mean Old World”
“Oh Carol”
“Rock ‘n’ Roll Music”
“Nadine”
“My Ding-a-ling”
“Bye Bye Johnny”
“Johnny B. Goode”
Painfully shy and only 18 years old, Francoise Hardy makes her first appearance on French television in 1962 singing “La Fille Avec Toi.” A few months later, Hardy would have a million selling hit with “Tous Les Garçons et Les Filles.”
Here’s a recently unearthed clip of Blondie being interviewed on Australian TV show Nightmoves in 1978. The band offers a concise mini-history of the term “new wave.”
This Channel 4 UK program from the mid-80s compiles some incredible performances culled from Tony Wilson’s late 70s Granada TV series, So It Goes. Includes the Sex Pistols, The Clash, Buzzcocks, Iggy Pop (with horsetail sticking out of his ass and saying “fucking” on 70s TV), The Fall, The Jam, Elvis Costello, Blondie, Penetration, Wreckless Eric, Ian Dury, Tom Robinson, Magazine, John Cooper Clarke, XTC, Siouxsie and the Banshees, Sham 69 and ending with the classic clip of Joy Division performing “Shadow Play.” Many of the groups represented here were making their TV debuts on So It Goes, a regional tea-time program.
Kavel Rafferty collects record sleeves and has a wonderful website devoted to the underappreciated art of the 45rpm record jacket. It’s called “Record Envelope, the little library of factory sleeves” and can be enjoyed here.
Here’s a sample of Rafferty’s impressive collection of sleeves from all over the world..
The Deep Six were a 6-piece (5m 1f) psychedelic folk band from San Diego, who achieved minor success in the mid-sixties with one single and their first and last, eponymous album:
Between late 1965 and early 1966 Deep Six were riding the crest of a wave and when their first single came out, “Rising Sun”, it was a huge hit - but it was a hit in Southern California and almost nowhere else. They toured relentlessly and got lots of good press and good crowds. But when their first (and only) album came out, it failed to show up anywhere on the charts and The Deep Six, badly bruised by the lack of enthusiasm, soldiered on a bit more before calling it a day and splintering into different careers.
Such is the fickle nature of pop, but listening to the album today, there are a few fab jewels tucked away in this album and some interesting things going on here, from the arrangements (some by David Gates), to the stellar list of session musicians (Glen Campbell, Carol Kaye, Mike Deasy, Al Casey, Larry Knechtel, Ray Pohlman, and Barney Kessel) that makes The Deep Six an album well worth re-visiting.
Opening with an amazing cover of The Rolling Stones’ “Paint It Black”, which sets a standard the album tries to maintain. While songs such as “When Morning Breaks”, and covers of “A Groovy Kind of Love” and “Solitary Man” make the mark, there are others, including the single “Rising Sun” - which isn’t as good as one would expect - and the cheesy “Somewhere My Love” (aka “Lara’s Theme” from Doctor Zhivago) that hint at why The Deep Six didn’t make it beyond 1967. A shame, for the potential was certainly there.
Here is the whole album as it was originally relased, upload EarpJohn, who has a damn fine channel on YouTube.
Linda McCartney: Life In Photographs has just been published and it is a lovely retrospective. Linda shot over 200,000 photos in her life and the book contains just a fraction of her work. Here’s a selection of photographs of some of her better known subjects.
The Pink Floyd performing in the ancient (and empty) Roman amphitheatre in Pompeii, Italy in October of 1971, right before Meddle came out. There are three different versions of Live at Pompeii: the one embedded here, which is the original; a 1974 version that inserted “fake” studio sessions for the by-then already completed Dark Side of the Moon; and the expanded “director’s cut” of Live at Pompeii that came out on DVD in 2003. It’s a pretty spectacular performance, I think you’ll agree. Listen LOUD.
1. “Intro Song”
2. “Echoes, Part 1”
3. “Careful with That Axe, Eugene”
4. “A Saucerful of Secrets”
5. “One of These Days”
6. “Set the Controls for the Heart of the Sun”
7. “Mademoiselle Nobs”
8. “Echoes, Part 2”
: the one embedded here, which is the original; a 1974 version that inserted “fake” studio sessions for the by-then already completed Dark Side of the Moon; and the expanded “director’s cut” of