the defeatists!

You can't dance to it and why would you want to? Run away, run away...

This is conceiveably the worst video of the worst music ever created by human beings with functioning pre-frontal lobes. Or without, for that matter. My Japanese is not all that good, but I think one of the gay-ish sort of musicians dedicated the whole thing to either Hirohito or MR. Fun...Seriously, Tiny Tim doing "If I had a Hammer!" on glockenspiel as a soundtrack to Soviet era Sex Hygiene tape would have more merit and probably better conceptual values.

Why didn't they do more of this?

There were a lot of "Supergroups" that just exploded in the late 60s and early 70s. Blind Faith comes to mind; Buffalo Springfield; Crosby, Stills, Nash and Young in its various permutations. The Paul Butterfield Blues Band. Manassas. Well, one name flows through all of these, and it's Steve Stills. One place that unites him to Butterfield is the Al Kooper-Mike Bloomfield- Stephen Stills Supersession Album. As Graham Nash has said about Stills, "In the 60s, he played with everybody.EVERYBODY!" Mike Bloomfield was an amazing guitarist but did the white-guy-blues-heroin thing too well, and died young. Too young. Before his death, he was as erratic as Graham Parsons on a coke and itching powder binge, and the original plan was Kopper and Bloomfield. Well, Bloomfield took off after recording about half the album; Kooper called Stills, and the rest was history. This cut of Season of the Witch is amazing because of the interface between Kooper and Stills, but really because of Stills'incredible guitar work.

Santa can be an evil SOB

There are Santas...and then there are Santas.

The Krampus Santa that resides on Mr. Fun's outer arm is a scrawny bike wuss Krampus that has Mrs. Fun wondering about the possible parenting skills, maturity and ability to earn a living of Mr. Fun....Mr Fun better be sure the sinister elf is not around when he gets it filled in.

Commandante probably is regretting the Santa suit in plaid.

John Boehner, El Serracho and Charlie Crist are doing Santa Jello-Shots at the local tanning booth.

Someplace, a hooker in a Santa Suit is performing oral sex on a Christian Conservative Teabag Party twit.

And Bill O'Reilly is still wondering why a girl wouldn't want falafel rubbed on her back while taking a shower...

And, as for me I'm still on the road headed for another joint, always did feel the same just saw it from another point of view...Tangled up in Blue...and red and white and green.

The Julie London Experience

Possibly the strangest...nah, not even close...but a bizarre twist anyway. Or, I bet you never thought of Jackie Chan as a lesbian indie music singer!

Goes to show, incredible talent can't do everything...

 

G'lurk...Rush? Really?

The 80's produced a surprisingly large amount of decent music, once you got past the hair and the disco remnants. Unfortunately, Gibson's panel has selected a list that Crusader AXE thinks is challenged by reality -- unless, of course, they were requiring rotation on FM radio. Best riffs that includes nothing from Bruce Springsteen, J.Geils Band, and one from the Stones. Which came in at number 2. No Bryan Adams, which I can sort of understand. But, come on...

For example, the Stones have "Start Me Up" as number 2. Well, that is an incredible riff, and I have no problem with it at the top end. However, AC/DC is number 1 with "Back In Black". What the fuck? "Cuts Like a Knife" or "Summer of '69" are pathetic, and far, far better. The 80s brought us the Honky Tonk rock of Dwight Yoakum -- the riff from "Guitars, Cadillacs" sets the stage for a lot to come, and --oh yeah -- Yoakum was considered a cowpunk.

Start Me Up is great, but some of the riffs from Steel Wheels were superb. I'm very partial to "Mixed Emotions," for example.

Springsteen. Ok, some of the stuff on The River -- most of it, I guess -- was left overs from Darkness at the Edge of Town and so was recorded prior to the 80s. But, "Born in the USA?" Seriously, people went nuts to things like the title track, and "Glory Days"...Why is there no Southern Rock...this was the glory days for .38 Special and Molly Hatchet? "If I'd Been the One" or "Back Where You Belong" should get a mention.

I've got no issue with the Clash, although I think they could have more than one entry -- "Train in Vain", maybe as well as "Should I Stay". Hell, "Rock the Casbah" would have been fine. They even stuck a Michael Jackson song on the list -- yeah, there was a Van Halen guest appearance, but what the hell? Where's the Van Halen?

If Randy Rhoades sat in on "Hit Me Baby One More Time", would that make the list from the 90s? Or whenever the hell that tripe came out...Well, the purpose of these lists is to excite discussion, and it certainly happened with this mess.

Get too close I'll be gone like a cooooooooool breeze

Crosby, Still & Nash - Southern Cross

HK | Myspace Video

For some reason, I'm thinking of Steven Stills. At one time, people talked about Stills in the same breath as Clapton, Bloomfield and Hendrix. His demons kept him from really slamming the American consciousness the way he could have. Still, (No pun intended) For What It's Worth and Suite: Judy Blue Eyes are incredible. Graham Nash is supposedly working on Stills tape library -- Nash has been associated with him for over 40 years, but was stunned when he started the project. "In the 60s and the 70s, he recorded with everybody." Stills used to wander around with a guitar and Jimi Hendrix in New York and London, just walking into clubs and asking if they could sit in. Now, that's what the blues and rock and roll are supposed to be about. Sitting in, and playing to stay alive. Steve Stills could probably be the poster boy for the Defeatists. Talented beyond belief, but stymied by...rainbows? Fate? Alcohol? Love? He's a cancer survivor now, and the new re-united Buffalo Springfield project should be interesting. He and Neil Young feed off each other, and I'd be interested to see how Jimmy Messina and Richie Furay (whom I dislike and who foisted that pimple POCO on the world of rock and roll) fill it out.

Anyway, some things from Stills. At the time of Southern Cross, Crosby was so out of it they'd turn off his guitar. I referred to them as the Genius, the Braindead and the Twit...I really find Nash's Guitar god posing annoyingly amusing or amusingly annoying. Four chords, and you'd think he was Rory Gallagher...
Where Stills generally seems like a Bluesplayer -- I wonder if he ever sat in with John Lee Hooker?

Since I'm not exactly sure what we're turning into...

Blogging is more work than you might think. My brothers have generally lost interest although they occasionally through something up although they are more into gorilla theatre on Tumblr and Facebook these days. Frankly, this gets old at times. I'm pretty sure that we're not a porno site, and I'm pretty sure that we're still left-libertarian. That said, this is one of my favorite pieces by the poet laureate of New Hampshire who now lives in Jacksons Hole, Tom Rush. It may be apropos, it may not. It is incredible and now I know it's in an open tuning. Bastard.

No respect, I tell you...

Huffington Post has a travel piece up showing bits and pieces of Route 66. Waxing lyrical and implying that we generally do not know our country because we drive interstates instead of things like HW 101 or the Lincoln Highway or Route 1 or whatever. Well, that's fine. Most of the stuff people pretend to be nostalagic for on Route 66 are pretty horrible. For example, Barstow. That said, they chose to show a shot of The El Rancho Motel in New Mexico. Problem is, their picture says "El Rancho---Barstow" on the damn hotel' sign. There are hotels in Barstow that could lure tourists, I guess but the El Rancho is for someone trying to emualte Burroughs and Naked Lunch. A wretched place, home to bunches of street people, the crazed, ill, drunken and drugged multitude that make this a sad commentary on America in the late 20th and early 21st Centuries.

Ok, it is a pretty good song...couple of kind of transformational versions here. There are some live Stones footage ones, but this has Mick Taylor on slide so it's the superior; as for the Nat King Cole Trio, what the hell...

OK, if this is explicit...dipshits.

Old 97s has an EP out called Mimeograph.

01 - Rocks Off [Explicit]

Downloaded of a classic Stones song from the 70s. If an alternative C&W cover of a 39 year old song besides Starfucker is considered explicit, as Amazon labeled it, then I'm really going to miss Lala. Here's the original -- there doesn't seem to be a video of the EP cover.

Savin' everybody takes a man on a mission with a swagger that will set the world at ease...

Horsey And Boney make here the point really well...Baby every bone in my body's gone to jumpin like they're gonna come through my skin/If they could get along without the rest of me it wouldn't matter if they did...Skeletons don't have any place to put their money/Nobody makes britches that size...