Maverick Philosopher

Footnotes to Plato from the foothills of the Superstition Mountains

Category: Music

  • How Roquentin Relieved His Nausea

    By listening to this song.  Art reveals pure ideality sans existence.

  • Saturday Night at the Oldies: Donovan

    I had forgotten how good these old songs from Donovan Leitch's  initial folk phase sound, before he went 'psychedelic.'   Catch the Wind.  Colors.    Some have noticed a similarity between Catch the Wind and Dylan's Chimes of Freedom  (1964) which antedated it.  I just now discovered this version of Chimes which is the best I've heard. …

  • Zombie Girl: But She’s Not There!

    This Halloween Saturday Night at the Oldies features The Zombies,  a 1960's British Invasion rock group that had a couple of smash singles before vanishing into the oblivion whence they sprang. Out and about the other day, surfing the FM band, I came across one of their hits, She's Not There. I have heard it countless…

  • Rock Salt and Nails

    Enjoy it before it is pulled.  If I may wax pedantic, the jilted lover loads her shotgun with two sorts of stuff, not three: rock salt and nails, not rock, salt, and nails. Pedantry aside, a most haunting tune from the pen of Utah Phillips sung by the angel-voiced Joan Baez. Oh the nights are…

  • Saturday Night at the Oldies: Tom Paxton

    Continuing in the folkish vein, here is Tom Paxton's best known tune in a 1966 London performance.  The Seekers' version is no slouch either.

  • Saturday Night at the Oldies: Three Greenwich Village Folkies

    Remember Dave van Ronk?  I haven't heard his version of "Cocaine" in maybe 45 years.  Enjoy it before it is pulled.  Last Saturday I reminded you of Fred Neil.  Here is another delightful tune of his, I've Got a Secret.  Based loosely on Elizabeth Cotten's  Shake Sugaree.  And then there was a young cat who named…

  • Saturday Night at the Oldies: Fred Neil

    Remember Fred Neil?  One of the  luminaries of the '60s folk scene,  he didn't do much musically thereafter.  Neil is probably best remembered  for having penned 'Everybody's Talkin' which was made famous by Harry Nilsson as the theme of Midnight Cowboy.  Here is Neil's version.  Another of my Fred Neil favorites is "Other Side of  This Life." …

  • Saturday Night at the Oldies: Lonely Weekends

    Jerry Lee Lewis in a live 1973 performance pounds out a rousing version of the old Charlie Rich number, "Lonely Weekends."  Here is Rich's version from 1960.  He sounds a bit like Elvis.

  • Saturday Night at the Oldies: Mary Travers

    Mary Travers of the popular 1960's folk trio "Peter, Paul and Mary" passed away on Wednesday, from leukemia, at age 72.  Travers and Co. did perhaps as much as anyone to popularize the songs of the young Bob Dylan.  The best known of them is 'Blowin' in the Wind," which became an anthem of the…

  • Saturday Night at the Oldies: Rock Salt and Nails

    The best version of this haunting Utah Phillips song is the one by Joan Baez. But it has been removed from YouTube.  Here is Rosalie Sorrel's version.  And here is Dylan's. If your ladies was blackbirds/And your ladies was thrushes/I'd lie there for hours/In the  chilly cold marshes/If your ladies was squirrels, with high bushy…

  • Saturday Night at the Oldies: September in the Rain

    In the Sonoran desert, September is still seriously summer.  But today's monsoon rains brought with them a merciful cool-down which put me in mind of this old standard written by Harry Warren (music) and Al Dubin (lyrics) and first published in 1937.  It has been covered by everyone from the Beatles to Slim Gaillard, from Jo…

  • The Ne Plus Ultra of Music

    For me, it doesn't get any better than the late piano sonatas of Beethoven, especially Op. 109, 110, 111. This is music preeminent and unsurpassable, though some of Brahms comes close. Here is Claudio Arrau performing the First Movement of Sonata 32, Opus 111. I am a musical elitist, but not a snob. An elitist in…

  • Does the Left Own Dylan?

    Not according to Sean Curnyn of RightWingBob.com.  (Via Paul J. Cella)  Dylan is an artist not an ideologue, arguably America's greatest troubadour.  For a taste of Left-Right polarity in Dylan's work already in the 1960s compare Subterranean Homesick Blues with Father of Night.  The Weatherman faction of the SDS got its name from the line,…

  • Saturday Night at the Oldies: Les Paul

    The legendary Les Paul passed away this week at the age of 94.  Here is a taste of his impressive chops. 

  • Saturday Night at the Oldies: B. B. King

    I'd say this is the best version of "Nobody Knows You When You're Down and Out."  Better than Bessie Smith's, and better than Clapton's plugged or unplugged.