@SarahSilverman: My NFL team will be called the the Boston Agnostic Jews and the mascot is a Leonard Cohen T-shirt with an open button down over it...
- 15 May 2018
Thursday, May 31, 2018
Gene Clark: The Loner With A Touch Of Genius, GO Magazine, March 31, 1967
Courtesy of Echoes
RELATED ARTICLE: 18 "New" Songs From 1967 By Byrds Co-Founder Gene Clark: The Holy Grail?
RELATED ARTICLE: 18 "New" Songs From 1967 By Byrds Co-Founder Gene Clark: The Holy Grail?
Photo courtesy of Omnivore Recordings
Comedian Jim Carrey Says Nixon & Roger Ailes Are Waiting In Hell For Trump...
@JimCarrey: “Hey Dirty Donald, Tricky Dick Nixon, here. The dark one likes the cut of your jib. Taking people’s children away at the border really made an impression. Ailes and I can’t wait to see ya!”
More Political Art From Comedian Jim Carrey...
Cool, New Political Song "State of The Union" by James McMurtry (Free Download)
Free Download of "State Of The Union" on the artist's website...
My brother's a fascist, lives in Palacios, fishes the pier every night
He holsters his glock in a double retention, he smokes while he waits for a bite
He don't like the Muslims, he don't like the Jews
He don't like the Blacks and he don't trust the news
He hates the Hispanics and alternative views, he'll tell you it's tough to be white
He holsters his glock in a double retention, he smokes while he waits for a bite
He don't like the Muslims, he don't like the Jews
He don't like the Blacks and he don't trust the news
He hates the Hispanics and alternative views, he'll tell you it's tough to be white
It's the state of the union I guess
It's always been iffy at best
We're all in the family, the cursed and the blessed
It's the state of the union I guess
We're all in the family, the cursed and the blessed
It's the state of the union I guess...
It's always been iffy at best
We're all in the family, the cursed and the blessed
It's the state of the union I guess
We're all in the family, the cursed and the blessed
It's the state of the union I guess...
"State of The Union" by James McMurtry
G/C G/B G/A G G/D D/F# D D/E Em7 Em7
e|---3-----3-----3-----3-----3-----2-----2-----2----------3--------------3------|
B|---3-----3-----3-----3-----3-----3-----3-----3----------3--------------3------|
G|---0-----0-----0-----0-----0-----2-----2-----2----------0--------------0------|
D|---------------------------0-----------0----------------2--------------2------|
A|---3-----2-----0-------------------------------------------------------2------|
E|---------------------3-----------2-----------0-------------------------0------|
[Intro]
G/C G/B G/A G
Em7 G/D
G/C G/B G/A G
[Verse 1]
G G/B G G/B G G/B D/F#
My brother's a fascist, lives in Palacios, fishes the pier every night
D/F# D D/F# D D/F# D G
He holsters his glock in a double retention, he smokes while he waits for a bite
G G/D G G/D
He don't like the Muslims, he don't like the Jews
G/C G/B G/A Em7
He don't like the Blacks and he don't trust the news
D D/F# D D/F# D D/E D/F# G
He hates the Hispanics and alternative views, he'll tell you it's tough to be white
[Verse 2]
G G/D G G/D G G/B D/F#
My sister's a Christian, she likes to go fishin', she don't mind my brother at all
D/F# D D/F# D D/F# D G
He puts her on redfish and flounder and trout, and they tear up the flats in the fall
G Em7 G G/B
She gets back to Dallas all sun burnt and sour
G/C G/B G/A Em7
Worn out from slinging plugs hour after hour
D D/F# D D/F# D D/E D/F# G
Seeing spots when she closes her eyes in the shower, she don't see a conflict at all
[Chorus 1]
G/C G
It's the state of the union I guess
D/F# D G
It's always been iffy at best
G/C G/D Em7
We're all in the family, the cursed and the blessed
D/F# G
It's the state of the union I guess
G/C G/D Em7
We're all in the family, the cursed and the blessed
D/F# G
It's the state of the union I guess
[Interlude]
G/C G/B G/A G
G/D Em7 G/D G/B G G/A G/B G/C
G/C G/B G/A G G/D
D/F# G
[Verse 3]
G G/D G G/D G G/B D/F#
Mother turned eighty, consummate lady, we took her to Golden Corral
D/F# D D/F# D D/F# D G
'Cos she likes the Yeast Rolls and Bourbon Street Chicken, we oughta known better by now
G G/B G G/B
'Cos me and my brother got into it good
G/C G/B G/A Em7
I called him a hick and he called me a hood
D D/F# D D/F# D D/E D/F# G G/D
He said Dad always treated his Mexicans good, I guess you think you're better somehow
[Verse 4]
G G/D G G/D G G/B D/F#
Yeah you think you're better, cardigan sweater, snowflake if ever there was
D/F# D D/F# D D/F# D G
You think you're so cool 'cos you did good in school, you got whipped every day on the bus
G G/B G G/B
Sister let out 'fore the shouting got worse
G/C G/B G/A Em7
Went to Wednesday night prayer at the new Christian church
D D/F# D D/F# D D/E D/F# G
With a cross on her neck and a nine in her purse, she might be the wisest of us
[Chorus 2]
G/C G
It's the state of the union I guess
D/F# D G
We're all in a hell of a mess
G/C G/D Em7
We're all in the family, the cursed and the blessed
D/F# G
It's the state of the union I guess
G/C G
It's the state of the union I say
D/F# D G
Christmas dinner, might be hell to pay
G/C G/D Em7
So how 'bout them Cowboys and have a blessed day
D/F# G
It's the state of the union I say
G/C G
It's the state of the union I guess
D/F# D G
It's always been iffy at best
G/C G/D Em7
We'll do all we're able with what we got left
D/F# G
It's the state of the union I guess
G/C G/D Em7
We'll do all we're able with what we got left
D/F# G
It's the state of the union I guess
Sunday, May 27, 2018
Parquet Courts, Live At Rough Trade NYC (For Pitchfork Live) - May 17, 2018, Celebrating Their New Album "Wide Awake!"
Parquet Courts perform at Rough Trade NYC on May 17th, 2018 for the release party of their newest album "Wide Awake!"
Cool, new song I hadn't noticed before: "Today Your Love, Tomorrow the World"
0:30 Total Football 4:24 Normalization 6:12 Almost Had to Start a Fight 10:16 Mardi Gras Beads 14:22 Violence 20:17 Before the Water Gets Too High 24:30 Today Your Love, Tomorrow the World 27:40 Freebird II 31:35 Back to Earth 35:56 NYC Observation 37:28 Extinction 40:15 Wide Awake
Saturday, May 26, 2018
Thursday, May 24, 2018
Friday, May 18, 2018
Guitar's Not Dead! May 2018 Playlist: Stephen Malkmus & The Jicks, Courtney Barnett, Parquet Courts, Ty Segall & White Fence
Don't let anyone tell you guitar is dead! These days, we who love the guitar and rock and roll oft times despair the dominance of auto tune, pop music, synthesizers, and so on. But fear not! Guitars still ring loud & true!
Out Today (All featuring Bold Guitar):
Stephen Malkmus & The Jicks Sparkle Hard
Courtney Barnett Tell Me How You Really Feel
Parquet Courts Wide Awake!
Ty Segall & White Fence "Good Boy" (single, album Joy out July 20)
Add to The Playlist:
Stephen Malkmus "Middle America" (solo, acoustic), "Bertha" (Jerry Garcia tribute live feat David Hidalgo), "China Cat Sunflower/I Know You Rider" from Day Of The Dead: Tribute To The Grateful Dead, "Margaritaville" (Jimmy Buffett cover) and "Flaked Theme Song" from Flaked, "Solid Silk". "Shiggy", "Middle America", "Refute", "Freeze the Saints" and "Trigger Cut" (solo, acoustic from Live From Saint John's Episcopal Rectory)
Courtney Barnett "Never Tear Us Apart" (INXS cover for Aussie Apple Advert), and "Over Everything" & "Continental Breakfast" from Lotta Sea Lice with Kurt Vile
Parquet Courts "Soul And Cigarette", "Mount Napoleon", "Memphis Blues Again" from Milano (Daniele Luppi, Parquet Courts, and Karen O.), and "Frightened" (Mark E. Smith/The Fall cover) by A. Savage (singer/guitarist of Parquet Courts) and Thawing Dawn (A. Savage solo album)
Ty Segall Freedom's Goblin
Special Mentions:
Folk/jazz legend Barbara Dane just celebrated her 91st birthday. Check out her new retrospective "Hot Jazz, Cool Blues & Hard-Hitting Songs".
Highly anticipated release coming in June, 14 "new" songs from The Byrds' Gene Clark (circa 1967) Gene Clark Sings For You.
Bonnie "Prince" Billy released a video of a Susanna cover "Wild Is The Will" for the anti-gun violence protest #NationalSchoolWalkout . The powerful video evokes the hope and despair that survivors of the Parkland, Florida school shooting, most notably Emma Gonzalez, have come to represent.
Other Artists We've Enjoyed Lately: King Tuff, Tim Buckley (and read two Buckley books, by Underwood and Browne, both great), Sister Rosetta Tharpe, Love (50th anniversary of their classic Forever Changes), Horse Feathers, Gabor Szabo (as per Lee Underwood in the Buckley book), Johnny Cash (Total Sun Collection), Neil Young (Tonight's The Night Live At The Roxy), The Who (Live at The Fillmore East 1968), Doug Sahm, Paul Butterfield, Michael Bloomfield, John Prine, Ben Harper & Charlie Musselwhite, The Vaccines, Mick Ronson, David Bowie, and many others...
Thursday, May 17, 2018
Washington Post: Stephen Malkmus Had His Groove Denied. He Was Upset For About Five Minutes.
Stephen Malkmus in his Portland, Ore., home with Magic, his family’s puppy. (Jason Quigley/Washington Post)
PORTLAND, Ore. — One night last November, an unexpected opening act popped up at the Portland Institute for Contemporary Art. Stephen Malkmus, best known for fronting the 1990s indie-rock giants Pavement, took the stage without even a guitar. Malkmus, wearing a trucker’s hat and T-shirt, brought a laptop, picked up a microphone and sang an album’s worth of the songs he planned to release as his next record.
“I was blown away,” said Steve Doughton, who helped organize the event meant to kick off PICA’s exhibition of his 1997 art film, “DELTA.” “The album is phenomenal.”
Malkmus had created the music in his basement with Pro Tools, Ableton software and keyboards. It felt good to experiment, to move away from the guitar-driven songs that dominated his catalogue. Then he dropped the files to Matador Records. It had been more than three years since the last Malkmus record. His longtime label wasn’t thrilled to get a keyboard-based set driven by drum pads.
“They didn’t want to put it out,” said Malkmus. “Or they thought it was dumb to put it out first because it was a head-scratcher. Maybe some of my more traditional fans that know Pavement would scratch their heads.”
For some artists, a rejected record would spark an ugly standoff. As Malkmus tells this story, he’s relaxed, sitting on a puffy chair in the TV area of the basement.
His youngest daughter, 10-year-old Sunday, and her friends tiptoe, crawl and crouch around furniture. They’re spying. The family’s puppy, Magic, steals sips from a can of LaCroix on the floor.
Malkmus keeps an eye on the Trail Blazers game. It has playoff ramifications. Joe Ingles, the versatile small forward on the Utah Jazz, hits a three.
“He’s a piece of work,” says Malkmus. “He’s Australian. They call him Jingles.”
This is the first time Matador rejected anything from Malkmus. But instead of rage, the label’s dis actually inspired a name for his then-untitled electronic album: “Groove Denied.”
“It was probably a big deal to them, and to me it was like five minutes of kind of being pissed and then the rest was kind of pissing and moaning about it and not being pissed,” he says. “I could have just put it out myself, but I also listened to what they had to say. I was like, ‘You may know more about this than me,’ and I also always had this record.”
“This record” is “Sparkle Hard,” his album out on Matador this month, the one Malkmus is touring behind this summer with the Jicks, a band assembled after Pavement’s demise and now pushing 18. “Sparkle Hard” is also why he won’t share his basement tapes. He wants to focus on his first album since 2014.
Matador didn’t hate “Groove Denied.” Chris Lombardi, the label’s founder, says he definitely plans to release it. He just believed “Sparkle Hard” should come first.
It is all part of his mission to put Malkmus back atop the indie pedestal.
Lombardi knows what he’s up against. To the aging indie-rock intelligentsia, Malkmus, 51, is a legend, his catalogue packed with enough cheeky puns to power a Pitchfork alumni cruise. To the general public, he barely registers. His most marketable currency is a band, Pavement, that had one minor hit, “Cut Your Hair,” during Bill Clinton’s first term and that expired in 1999. The most recent Malkmus album, 2014’s “Wig Out at Jagbags,” was almost universally praised. It has also sold as many copies over its lifetime (21,000) as Taylor Swift’s “Reputation” moved by lunchtime last Nov. 10.
The notion that Malkmus had “Sparkle Hard” on reserve is startling when you consider how good it is. There’s the groove of “Bike Lane,” a takedown of suburbia framed around the death of Baltimore’s Freddie Gray, the country-tinged “Refute,” a twist on the Nashville tear-jerker that features ex-Sonic Youth singer Kim Gordon, and “Middle America,” a song as beautifully melancholic as anything Malkmus has ever done.
Malkmus actually wanted to cut “Middle America” from “Sparkle Hard.” It bored him, and Jicks bassist Joanna Bolme agreed. “Okay, the lyrics are great, but to me, he can write that s--- in his sleep,” she says.
Naturally, that’s the song Lombardi pegged as “the one we want to go out with.”
And selling Malkmus, or reintroducing him, has become his latest mission.
“The music industry has changed, listening habits have changed, and we have to kind of direct people’s attention to something truly genius,” says Lombardi. “To kind of get everybody focused on what Steve Malkmus is again, we wanted to tell the story from a bit of a safer place.”
The reluctant leader
Malkmus grew up in Stockton, Calif., about an hour south of Sacramento. The son of a conservative-leaning insurance salesman and a former schoolteacher, he excelled at tennis, picked up Aerosmith’s “Night in the Ruts” and the first B-52’s album at Tower Records, and played bass in a punk band called the Straw Dogs.
At the University of Virginia, Malkmus studied history (senior thesis: “Inventing Tradition in America: The Country Club of Virginia”) and, after his 1988 graduation, formed Pavement with his Stockton friend Scott Kannberg. Matador signed them and put out 1992’s “Slanted and Enchanted,” an album so acclaimed that there’s a chart on its Wikipedia page devoted to listing the publications that have ranked it one of the greatest albums of all time.
Early on, Malkmus established an aesthetic driven by spontaneity. Vocals were done in a single take. Lyrics were packed with slacker slang and obscure references. (Was that about Ad Reinhardt? A tennis serve? War?) Guitar parts were punched out almost as an afterthought. “Unrepeatable energy,” Malkmus later called it when talking about Pavement at its best.
“I can remember doing that track, ‘Rattled by the Rush,’ on [1995’s] ‘Wowee Zowee,’ ” says engineer Bryce Goggin. “We were mixing it and there was no guitar solo on it, and he picked up a guitar and played that guitar solo in one pass.”
Then there was the image. Other ’90s frontmen — think Eddie Vedder or Billy Corgan — delivered deadly serious dispatches with steely gazes. Malkmus wore untucked, button-down shirts and performed with his eyes half-closed. Bob Nastanovich, a UVA buddy drafted to become Pavement’s “auxiliary noisemaker,” believes his detachment was often misinterpreted.
“He was actually nervous, and the way that was portrayed was looking like he didn’t care,” says Nastanovich. “If you recall the few appearances he made on national television in the 1990s, he came off as incredibly awkward and often put forth a disastrous performance.”
Take a 1994 booking on “The Tonight Show With Jay Leno.” Pavement was set to play one of its most radio-friendly singles, “Cut Your Hair.”
And yet Malkmus, ignoring the blueprint laid down at rehearsal, opened the performance with a series of improvised chirps. When the song finally kicked in, he sang with his eyes partially rolled back in his head.
“I know I did not look cool,” says Malkmus. “I was just trying to play the song, probably. It feels weird up there. Jay Leno’s up there. Everybody’s acting like everyone’s normal. I’m sure basically I really did not want to do it, and I was just making myself, ‘Come on, you can do this. Please be over.’ That happens often on those types of shows. Like when Pavement played Coachella. I was like, ‘I can’t wait until this is over.’ ”
It would be over, in 1999, after which Malkmus recruited the Jicks to back him. Each record — “Sparkle Hard” is the seventh — has brought more critical acclaim, fewer albums sold.
“It’s kind of how we used to feel about ‘Arrested Development,’ ” says actor Will Arnett, who recruited Malkmus to score his Netflix series, “Flaked.” “And while in some ways I’m sure it is frustrating, imagine what his life would be like if he became the Stone Temple Pilots. His legacy artistically is immense but what he obviously wanted was to have a life, a real life experience, and he was kind of, in a lot of ways, unencumbered by superstardom on the surface. He’s probably the big winner in all of this.”
Secret words
Last month, during a Malkmus appearance at New York City’s Town Hall for public radio’s “Live From Here,” host Chris Thile gushed about one of his favorite rhymes, of “Tennyson” with “venison” in the 2011 song “Lariat.”
“Where did it come from?” Thile pressed.
“Well, Tennyson just comes to my mind,” Malkmus said, without a pause. “I think I like tennis a lot. I like sons. I like daughters. And then Venice. I like the town of Venice a lot. It’s both in Los Angeles and Italy. And I also love the sun. Who doesn’t? Today was a beautiful, sunny day!”
Walking around Portland, Malkmus is asked about his working method.
“I just play it, I sing into the microphone,” he says. “Sometimes I’ll imagine I’m looking at a crowd and I’ll be thinking, ‘What will I be able to say in front of a bunch of people?’ Sometimes, I’ll just do it, I won’t think of anything. I’ll have two glasses of wine and try it. Then I’ll listen back and see what I like.”
This question, of how he creates, confounds even those closest to him.
“I mean, his wife told me that she never heard him ever writing songs, but then he just seemed to have all these songs,” says Kim Gordon.
Jessica Jackson Hutchins, an artist whose work is in the Whitney and Museum of Modern Art in New York, says her attempt to understand her husband’s creative process has even led her to make peace with his longtime fantasy sports commitment. The activity used to get on her nerves. Now, she wonders if fantasy sports and crossword puzzles help free his brain to write.
“I don’t really see him working on songs,” says Hutchins. “Sometimes he walks around with his acoustic guitar and messes around with it. And he works on it downstairs, and I can hear him playing stuff and sometimes cracking himself up.”
This time around, Malkmus says he is trying to be more open, to give the people — or in this case, the press — what they want. Does he wish he could sell more records? It’s such a straight question. What he wants from “Sparkle Hard” is something new, whatever it is.
“I just don’t want to just put it out and have it come out for one week and have some attention for one week and do the same shows in the venues that we go,” says Malkmus. “Because that’s not fun. It gets a little boring. And I would have wanted that on the other ones, too. I’m just talking about it more. Why not just say why you’re really doing it instead of saying it’s about the art. You want to do well, you want to succeed, you want people to like you and think it’s cool music.”
Last year, in the midst of the “Groove Denied” dilemma, Lombardi and Matador co-president Gerard Cosloy flew out to see Malkmus to explain why they thought the electronic album would be wrong right now. Lombardi remembers Malkmus answering the door.
“Am I dropped?” he asked.
Malkmus, sitting at his kitchen table recently, laughs about the exchange. Yes, he did offer that up. But he says he wasn’t worried or concerned. Nobody’s untouchable.
“And I might as well ask first,” he says. “Make it easier for them to break up with you. Who knows what’s going on with their finances. I don’t know what Queens of the Stone Age sells. What if they gave them so much money hoping that they would be like the next Foo Fighters?”
Then he lets out one of those nasally giggles.
He loves Matador and considers Cosloy and Lombardi his friends. But if he had to go, “there’s plenty of nice labels for, like, over 50 artists.”
Wednesday, May 16, 2018
Trump and The Rolling Stones... A Complicated Relationship
The New York Times today reports that the investigation into collusion between Team Trump and Russia was codenamed "Crossfire Hurricane" by the FBI, after the opening line of The Stones' classic song "Jumping Jack Flash".
Observers will recall that Donald Trump has been using another Stones song, "You Can't Always Get What You Want" at rallies during the campaign and continuing to the present day.
Add to that Keith Richards badmouthing Trump in the press about the past and the present and you have a very complicated relationship between The Orange One and The Rolling Stones.
Personally, I've always thought "You Can't Always Get What You Want" is a strange song for a politician to play (shouldn't they tell you that you CAN always get what you want?). It's just Trump trying to do a Scorsese and use baby-boomer soundtrack memories to trigger emotional responses.
Trump's use of the song recalls debates would "fair use" and the history of artists asking politicians to "stop and desist" using their songs at rallies. Having an artist declare that they disagree with the message of a politician using their song ought to be enough to convince the politician to choose another song. Some question whether an artist can or will actually sue someone for using their song at a public rally without permission and if they would be successful in such a suit and at what cost in time, money, and publicity.
Add to that, in The Stones' case, that much of their publishing rights were given to Allen Klein (the most successful non-musician in rock history) in a settlement, leading to the absurdity surrounding The Verve's "Bittersweet Symphony", Richard Ashcroft's masterpiece that was nearly scuttled by Klein's maneuvering, which resulted in Klein receiving more profits from the song than the actual composer (and the composers Ashcroft was accused of copying). All due to a short sample (about 12 notes by my count) in "Bittersweet" of an orchestral version (by Andrew Loog Oldham of "The Last Time"). One of the greatest rock n roll swindles of all time.
Why Keith Richards had to get rid of Donald Trump
Original at BBC.com
REUTERS
Rolling Stones star Keith Richards says he can't be bothered to get angry any more - but the last time he did was nearly 30 years ago with Donald Trump.
"He [Trump] was the promoter for us in Atlantic City [during 1989's Steel Wheels Tour]," he told the BBC.
"[It was billed as] 'Donald Trump presents the Rolling Stones' [with the band's name written in miniature]."
"I got out my trusty blade, stuck it in the table and said: 'You have to get rid of this man!'"
He joked: "Now America has to get rid of him. Don't say I didn't warn you!"
And he wasn't the only one talking politics.
EPA
Ahead of the band's No Filter Tour, frontman Mick Jagger spoke about Brexit.
"I'm not really happy with the status quo. In the UK I think we're going through a difficult moment. It's very hard to understand all the difficulties we're having with Brexit.
"The current government seems to be having a very hard time to navigate through it. Everyone would like to see a fast resolution and a united front rather than a split."
'Weird existence'
He also referred to Trump's choice of song to follow his victory speech when he became US president last year, the band's You Can't Always Get What You Want.
"It's a funny song for a play-out song - a drowsy ballad about drugs in Chelsea! It's kind of weird. He couldn't be persuaded to use something else."
Jagger says he's still enjoying being a rock star but admits he doesn't know what else he could do.
"I've really done little else in my life - it's a bit limiting. It's a very cloistered, weird existence. I'm very happy to do it but I don't know about much else."
The tour kicks off on 17 May in Dublin before taking in several UK dates followed by concerts in France, Germany, the Czech Republic and Poland.