Packaged highlights of Roxy Music in concert at Konserthuset, Stockholm, as recorded by Swedish Television on January 27th, 1976.

Track Listing:

01. “The Thrill Of It All”
02 “Mother Of Pearl”
03. “Nightingale”
04. “Out Of The Blue”
05. “Street Life”
06. “Diamond Head”
07. “Wild Weekend”
08. Band Introduction
09. “The In Crowd”
10. “Virginia Plain”
11. “A Hard Rain’s A-Gonna Fall”

This concert was available as a bootleg within days of its performance, and has been a staple of the unauthorized Roxy catalog ever since. The concert was considered solid and workman-like at the time, but now it looks bloody marvelous.
 

 
Bonus…Bryan Ferry on his latest album ‘The Jazz Age’, after the jump…
 

Larry Hagman in “Stardust.”
 
In this excerpt from British TV show The Real…, Larry Hagman spares no details in describing the time he drove Keith Moon to rehab after the drummer over-indulged in Black Beauties (amphetamine). Moon and Hagman were friends, having originally met on the set of Stardust, a 1973 movie about the Brit rock business starring David Essex.
 

 
Thanks to Charles Lieurance.

 
A shameless plug for Jerry Sadowitz’s new show at the Leicester Square Theater, London, December 2012.

Strange that after all these years that one of the funniest comedians in the world should receive some of the attention he rightly deserves, all because of a recording he made twenty-five years ago.

Thankfully Mr. Sadowitz (‘Comedian, Magician, Psychopath’) will be touring the UK in the New Year, so those who haven’t seen him can find out what they’ve been missing.

Meantime check Mr Sadowitz’s site for details.
 

 
I wonder if Mark Thompson had anything to declare when he went through customs en route for his new job at the New York Times? Probably not.

And now he is ensconced as CEO at the NYT, I wonder if “Gnasher” Thompson has anything to declare over the Jimmy Savile scandal that has engulfed the BBC?

Probably not.

Even so, I can’t help thinking that this is not the end of the story, for I find it hard to believe that Thompson knew nothing about those stories regarding Jimmy Savile, or was not at least aware of them. It now appears that I am not the only one who thinks this. Allegedly former BBC journalist, Keith Graves, finds it hard to believe, as he, or someone commenting under his name, posted on the Daily Mail:
 

 

Mark Thompson says that during his time at the BBC he “never heard any allegations” about Savile. During his years in the television newsroom, culminating in a period editing the flagship evening new, rumours about Savile being ‘into little girls’ were rife as were often crude comments about hims and his behaviour. It is inconceivable that those rumours, which were, I recall, often discussed in the BBC club bar by news staff, did not reach his ears.

- Keith Graves, Valencia, Spain, 28/10/2012 13:27

Even Mike Hollingsworth, the man who first employed Thompson as his assistant at the BBC, said in the Daily Telegraph, Thompson would have had to been “tone deaf” not to have heard rumors about Jimmy Savile.

“He must be mad denying that he’d heard anything about Saville. We had all heard the rumours. You would have to have been tone deaf not to have heard them…

“I know that Mark has a strong Catholic faith, but it wasn’t as if this was something that people would whisper about when he came into a room – he is a man of the world. You just have to look at the programming he put out when he took over at Channel 4 to see that he wasn’t in the least bit squeamish when it came to all kinds of discussions about sex.”

This incredulity from former colleagues has only increased the growing disquiet over the “baggage” Thompson is perceived to be bringing to his new job at the New York Times, as one of the paper’s editors, Margaret Sullivan wondered in a blog: 

“How likely is it that [Thompson] knew nothing?....His integrity and decision-making are bound to affect The [New York] Times and its journalism – profoundly. It’s worth considering now whether he is the right person for the job, given this turn of events.”

The questions hinge on what Thompson knew about the Jimmy Savile scandal, when he was Director General at the BBC. It’s an important issue, one that saw his replacement, George Entwisle (or “Incurious George”) resign his position over not knowing about a Newsnight item that led to a gross libel against an innocent man. If Entwistle was considered guilty for not knowing about the serious allegations broadcast by his flagship news program, then where does that leave Thompson, who claims he knew little or virtually nothing about a planned Newsnight investigation into abuse allegations involving Jimmy Savile?

What little Thompson did know he dismissed in a letter to Conservative MP, Rob Wilson:

“What did happen is that, at a drinks reception late last year, a journalist mentioned to me the existence of the investigation and said words to the effect of “you must be worried about the Newsnight investigation?” This was the first I had heard of the investigation…Although I recall hearing at the time of his death that BBC Television might do something (a tribute) about Jimmy Savile in due course, again I had not been briefed about the programmes themselves. I assume they were commissioned and broadcast by BBC Vision, the BBC’s television arm, in the usual way.”

This is obvious buck passing. Moreover, as it was Thompson who tightened up BBC procedure after the scandalous Brandgate affair - where two BBC presenters (Russell Brand and Jonathan Ross) were involved in a prank call that was deemed to be offensive and “a catastrophic breakdown of editorial and compliance control by the BBC” - it seems incredible that Thompson did not take any real interest in a planned BBC investigation into serious allegations of pedophilia involving a major BBC star. 

 
More questions for ‘NYT’ CEO Mark Thompson, after the jump…
 

 
I’m sharing this again because the previous videos I linked to on Youtube disappeared. Here’s a chance to catch them while you can.

One of my most vivid rock ‘n’ roll memories was seeing Patti Smith’s first performance on The Mike Douglas Show in 1977. Imagine how dumbstruck daytime TV viewers must have been seeing The Patti Smith Group popping up between episodes of As The World Turns and re-runs of Dobie Gillis. Hell, I was even blown away!

I actually had to go to a friend’s house to watch Patti on the Douglas show because I didn’t own a TV set. It was the first time I saw her perform live and it confirmed everything I imagined The Patti Smith Group would be: wild, inspired, unadulterated rock n’ roll. And part of what made this particular performance so bona fide is Patti and the band didn’t condescend to or mock the daytime TV format they were operating in. They put their hearts into it. Every fucking show mattered to them, whether it was sandwiched between soap operas or on the stage of legendary Manhattan punk clubs. Patti was a punk without the wiseass, holier-than-thou bullshit. She wanted to spread the rock gospel throughout the nation, from the Bowery to double-wides in middle America. Everybody was invited to the party.
 

Craig Ferguson, I think, has a pretty good handle on it, but I’ll let him explain…

Via Nerdcore

 
Jason Mecier‘s portrait of Honey Boo Boo made of “two cans of hair spray, three tiaras, make-up, mascara, fake eyelashes, coupons, sketti, butter, ten cheese balls, two Red Bulls, one Mountain Dew, a McDonald’s chicken nugget, a pink Snuggy box, an empty toilet paper roll, one cabbage patch doll and a jar of Pigs Feet.”

Apparently it took Mecier over 50 hours to make it.

Via Boing Boing

 
Here’s one for all the synth geeks out there: keyboard maestro Jan Hammer on the BBC TV show Rock School 2 in 1987, giving some advice on how best to play the keytar, or rather, his Yamaha KX5 remote keyboard.

Learn it and learn it well, children. As Jan is careful to point out, the key to getting his trademark note-bending synth style is not about a specific kind of keyboard or synth:

it’s really not [about] a particular instrument or a particular patch, it [could be] something with a sharp attack, with a reasonable amount of sustain, that is going through some sort of distortion device or an amp. And then it’s about what you play.

Amen!
 

 
Most people only know Jan Hammer through his work on Miami Vice, but he was responsible for some brilliant music before the era of the-white-suit-with-rolled-up-sleeves.

‘Don’t You Know” by the Jan Hammer Group from 1977 is a classic break and a gorgeous tune in its own right, a beautiful slice of psych-funk that will wipe the smirk off any Hammer-doubters listening (even if it leaves his unfortunate comb over intact):
 

 
Thanks to Philip McEachen.

 
‘There is a nude orgy scene, but I don’t actually strap myself on to anything of the female nature,’ Dudley Moore tells Valerie Singleton about his latest film 10 in this interview from Tonight in Town in 1979.

While his comedy partner, Peter Cook has little to do but smoke cigarettes and rehearse the sidekick role he’d soon be performing, a few year’s down the line, for Joan Rivers’ chat show in 1986.

Thankfully, after a brief chat, Cook is allowed show off his mercurial, comic talents in an improvised sketch with Moore. It’s not classic Pete ‘n’ Dud, but it’s still worth watching, as so much of what these two comedy greats made has been sadly lost.
 

 
Bonus - seldom seen ‘Not Only, But Also’ sketch, after the jump…
 

 
As Geekologie points out, most objects turned into a TARDIS by Whovian fanatics are kind of, well… crappy. But this TARDIS refrigerator painted by Blake “to look like the wall so his roommates would stop eating all his food” is pretty special.

I dig it.