Category: Music
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Saturday Night at the Oldies: Women, Devils, and Angels
The tormenting question Devil or Angel? was posed by the Clovers in 1956. But perhaps you are more familiar with the Bobby Vee cover. Elvis Presley learned the hard way that appearances can deceive. Marty Robbins succumbs to the temptations of a Devil Woman and begs his Mary for forgiveness. Angel that she is, she forgives…
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Saturday Afternoon Drowse?
You need some Nitro.
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Saturday Night at the Oldies: Varia
Beatles, I'm a Loser. This one goes out to Comrade Kamala. A loser who is not what she pretended to be. And just to rub it in, Ted Daffan, Born to Lose, 1943. The original! Thelonious Monk, I'm Getting Sentimental Over You. But not over you, Kamala baby. Simon and Garfunkel, The Dangling Conversation. A lovely song,…
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A New Morning
The morning is new! Why make it old by the rehearsal of yesterday's rants? The morning is alive! Why mortify it by the re-animation of useless memories? So I admonish myself, to little effect. Theme music
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Saturday Night at the Oldies: Cats
Loving Spoonful, Nashville Cats, 1966. They's playin' since they's babies. Harry Chapin, Cat's in the Cradle. For you fathers out there. Bond with your son when he's five. Wait till he's 50 and he won't give you the time of day. Harry Chapin was a major talent who died young. Here is his great Taxi. We Boomers are damned…
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Young Man’s Blues
I've been up since 1:00 a.m. It is now 4:20 or so. This old man needs a second cup of java, and a musical re-boot. This goes out to all you young guys getting hammered these days. Awake yet? Now settle down and dig the Mose Allison version.
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Saturday Night at the Oldies: October Jazz
October already! October's a bird that flies too fast. Time herself is such a bird. I would freeze her flight, but not that of Charley 'Bird' Parker, Ornithology Jack Kerouac and Steve Allen, Charlie Parker Kerouac and Allen, October in the Railroad Earth Jack Kerouac, San Francisco Mose Allison, Parchman Farm. This one goes out to Tom Gastineau, keyboard man…
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Saturday Night at the Oldies: Late September and Fare Thee Wells
Rod Stewart, Maggie May. "Wake up Maggie, I think I got something to say to you/It's late September and I really should be back at school." Carole King, It Might as Well Rain Until September The 'sixties forever! We were young, raw, open, impressionable, experience-hungry; we lived intensely and sometimes foolishly. We felt deeply, and suffered deeply.…
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There’s a Moon Out Tonight
I caught a preview this morning at 5:15 from the mountain bike. A great caffeine-fueled ride from 5:15-6:43. It's cooling down in the Zone. Wore a shirt for a change. The strenuous life is best by test. It doesn't matter how old you are. Get out there and bust your hump for an hour or…
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Friday the 13th Cat Blogging!
In the foothills of the Superstition Mountains! Friday cat blogging is an ancient and venerable tradition in the blogosphere. We pioneers of the 'sphere aim to keep it going. To hell with all you change-for-the-sake-of change 'progressives.' I Ain't Superstitious, leastways no more than Howlin' Wolf, but two twin black tuxedo cats just crossed my path. All…
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In Keeping with the Joyous Kamala Vibe . . .
. . . this old tune by the Beach Boys captures the sum and 'substance' of her campaign. Come Tuesday night, the surly scowls of the racist Trump will have no chance against Kamalita's vibrations and excitations. And Kamala Baby would never, ever, bomb Iran.
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Saturday Night at the Oldies: Water High, Wide, Dirty, Troubled, Moody
Bob Dylan, High Water. This is a late-career Dylan gem from Love and Theft (2001). A tribute to Charley Patton. Demonstrates Dylan's mastery of the arcana of Americana. Our greatest and deepest singer-songwriter. My favorite verse: Well, George Lewis told the Englishman, the Italian and the JewYou can't open up your mind, boys, to every conceivable point of…
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Saturday Night at the Oldies: Fortuna Imperatrix Mundi
Carl Orff, Carmina Burana, O Fortuna (With Latin and English). Better performance without lyrics. Joan Baez, There But For Fortune. The best rendition of a song written by Phil Ochs. Watch the short video. Ochs' version. I agree with this analysis of Ochs: The short, triumphant, tragic career of Phil Ochs illustrates one of the harder lessons of American popular culture: that audiences…
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Saturday Night at the Oldies: Pattie Boyd as Muse
A musician needs a muse. George Harrison and Eric Clapton found her in Pattie Boyd. Here are five of the best known songs that she is said to have inspired. If you don't love at least four of these five, you need a major soul adjustment. Frank Sinatra famously said of George Harrison's "Something" that…
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Saturday Night at the Oldies: Weather Conditions
'Debby' is the name of that hurricane harassing Florida? Disasters should be named after disasters: 'Hillary,' 'Kamala,' 'Nancy,' 'Gretchen,' . . . Earl Scruggs and Friends, Foggy Mountain Breakdown Ella Fitzgerald, Misty. Beats the Johnny Mathis version. A standard from the Great American Songbook. Jimi Hendrix, Purple Haze. Not from the Great American Songbook. And presumably not about weather conditions. 'Scuse…