My love is exceedingly human,

This song is great. It’s wonderful. It stands on its own. Robert Plant may have been a bit strident with his “Led what?” bullshit of his early solo career, but that’s because he had an honest solo career for years before he gave in and starting squeezing lemons again (lighten up, baby. I’m in love with you) and growing out the old mane.

Not much of Plant’s 80′s stuff has aged well, but that’s the fault of the times, really. Not much from the 80′s sounds good today. Try listening to the Eurythmics on headphones. Go ahead. Pretty awful, right? Sounds like a goddamn singing Hallmark card. Yep.

Not so with Big Log. The melancholy guitar and excellent lyrics win out over the synth and the drum machine. Give it a listen. It’s a great fucking song, and the video is the coolest thing ever.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XZQL22xOmUM

Calligraphy by Susan Stuart - LightMotif Productions

Til Human Voices Wake Us

And We Drown

Poetry is not just for pussies. Some of it doesn’t even suck, like this one.

Seriously, I really enjoy TS Eliot. I know he’s kind of the mayonnaise of poetry, I don’t care. I don’t pretend erudition in verse. I know what I learned in high school, and the rest I got from Col. Kurtz.

When Brando read the Hollow Men in Apocalypse Now, I took the next step and read some TS Eliot. I liked it. I like this one in particular. It’s read by … an English gentleman… and it’s the coolest thing ever.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=A2khDhfwsoE

Etta and the Dead

12/31/82

Oakland Coliseum

In honor of Miss Etta’s passing, I present you with one of the neatest little surprises I’ve found.

On New Year’s Eve 1982, the Grateful Dead (a pop music combo) played a gig in the land of Bill Graham. Apparently, from the comments I read in myriad (more than you would think) music forums I scoured, these hooligans liberally provided all and sundry with LSD backstage.

So, you get to see a bunch of tripping hippy telepaths, a legendary blues/soul/pop singer, and a righteously tight horn combo play some really nice set. This is the third set of the night for the Dead. Goddamn, you got your money’s worth with that band (until you didn’t. Like Zeppelin).

The audio is excellent stereo, and will fill your headphones delightfully. The video starts just as Etta takes the stage (or thereabouts) but if you want to watch the whole 2 hour plus show, just restart it. You’re empowered. It’s the Coolest Thing Ever.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=O5K2wGuCSbQ

I Loved This Game

Break Glasses, Wreck a Laptop, Set Fires

All To Turn A Newspaper Page

This is just fucking great. Remember the beginning of Pee Wee’s Big Adventure? The breakfast machine? It’s like that but better, because it’s clever as hell. Joseph Hersher is the genius behind this contraption. All hail.

Thank you to my antipodean friends at Daily Grail for posting this amazing contraption. It wrecks so much shit just to turn a page. Pure Goldberg. It’s the coolest thing ever.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GOMIBdM6N7Q

Pile it up! Pile it high on the platter!

I like it that the Stones are delving through the archives, and releasing some of the cool stuff they find. Things like the expanded Exile On Main Street, or Ladies and Gentlemen, The Rolling Stones (1972 concert film) are actually worth the release. They have a vitality that’s their own.

The latest Rolling Stones release, a concert filmed in Texas in 1978,  is also worth buying. It shows a newly clean (of heroin, not so much of coke, booze, and demon weed) Keith Richards, and a not yet burned out Ron Wood, playing most of their best selling album, Some Girls. I always keep two Stones albums on my playlists, Exile and Some Girls. Two entirely different vibes, coke and pepsi… or rather coke and smack. Some Girls in New York in the Studio 54 era, 1970′s.  You can read a nice review of this release by clicking the image above.

The Stones were still incredible in 1978, as you will see here. Beast of Burden is one of my favorite songs ever, ever, ever. That riff is insanely soulful, like Otis Redding, and the energy is high because it’s the 70′s and cocaine wasn’t thought to be addictive so… the show bounces along a bit like the Ramones. That’s a good thing. This is rock and roll, and Mick’s voice is brilliant (there are rumors of of some tasteful use of autotune, but… that’s what it’s fucking for), Keef is back in charge after a few years on the nod, and Ronnie can still demonstrate why he got the cushiest job in rock. Enjoy the coolest thing ever.

PS – For bonus points you can watch a live version of Shattered from this show, and it’s hot! Watch about 30 seconds in, Mick runs back to the drum riser, almost stepping on Ronnie’s joint, which Ronnie then offers to Mick, who declines with a swift shake of the head. Love it.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bj8lRssjN48

Light Waves Photographed. That's a laser beam.

Coolest Thing Ever

MIT’s Media Lab

Let’s hear it for Femtophotography. What it is, is crazy complicated, with lasers and algorithims, and various maths and sciences. What it does is easy. It allows video recording of a nanosecond event, in slow motion. A half trillion frames per second. Yikes. Check out the Camera Culture webpage, and see what else they’ve come up with.

This video is really cool, but there are a couple others that are even cooler, on the MIT page. One of our loyal readers is an MIT person. Perhaps he will steal the contraption so we can take over the world. Perhaps. It’s the coolest thing ever.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-fSqFWcb4rE

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dU_UG10ok1g

It’s been awhile, but I have sung the praises of James Brown before. There was no one like him, and his music was so intricate and fast… like Motorhead meets Miles Davis. There’s nothing like funk. It’s deep, and from the hips, but it’s not raw, like the blues, or stupid, like metal. The band is so tight that they look bored, but their churning out funk so badass that I, a 43 year old white Led Zeppelin fan, who grew up in New Hampshire (where the only minorities were greeks and french canadians)… even I tap a genteel loafered foot.. offbeat of course. It’s the coolest thing ever.

BTW… the woman that dances in the video, does many of the same (upper body) moves as my teenage daughter and her stupid friends, but they’re listening to dubstep.

3/4 Of The Young Ones (the funny ones)

“Why Can’t You Be More Like Roger Daltrey?”

Because I’m Not Queer!

Ah, British 80′s comedy. Bad News was a Spinal Tap-ish band/documentary created by former Young Ones Rik Mayall (rik), Adrian Edmonson (vivian), and Nigel Planer (neil). They were the subjects of two episodes of the BBC comedy, The Comic Strip. This show was aired on MTV in the late 80′s, and it was funny as hell (most of the time).

Well, the Bad News episodes were very popular, so the boys recorded an album, produced by Queen’s Brian May, and took to playing live, just like a real horrible metal band. They achieved such status as to attract real musicians, like Jeff Beck, Jimmy Page, and the aforementioned Brian May to perform at the concerts.

I love the tshirt for the Checkerboard Lounge (Chicago Blues Club)

Here is a recording of Jimmy Page exchanging some patter with Vim Fuego (Adrian Edmonson) before the song. It’s funny. Vim says, “I said stay behind the stacks!”  to which Jimmy replies, “There’s too many back there already. The pushed me out.”  Good stuff.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=na70Lux3-gA

A better partnership than Page/Plant at this point

And you try to tell me with consternation
That you have found me a brand new lock
Then you try to warn me that there’s only one combination
One new sling – the same old rock

I told you I would post this as soon as I found a video, and I have. Ok, This video was around on Sunday morning, but a brother’s got to make his paper, so I had to put this off. Irregahdless, this song, and performance, is truly sublime. I owe my brethren at FBO for this, as they’re always the first with this kind of stuff.

Jimmy played on the original, back in 1969/70, and it was just like this, but not as passionate.  They key to enjoying this is to not expect a JIMMY PAGE performance. This is Roy’s night, in Roy’s town, to Roy’s crowd. Roy Harper is a true artist, bard, visionary… in a very English way.  He’s magnificent, pure, and (as a result) at times a bit hokey to those not in the same zeitgeist.

This song is an indictment of organized religion and dogma. The rock referred to is not rock and roll, it’s the hurled rock of the defiant against the system. Davy/Goliath.  It’s beautiful. Jimmy plays beautifully and really cuts loose at the end (this song is long. folks. Either pay perfect attention, or zone out and come back at the end when the guitar gets good), and it makes me wonder why the fuck Jimmy doesn’t do more work with Roy. After all, he’s made 5 albums with Roy Harper, and they’re all classics.  There’s been talk about tendonitis or arthritis impinging upon Jimmy’s ability to really bend strings that well anymore… so play acoustic, motherfucker.

This is beautiful. Enjoy.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=M2bdLAVHbQU

Hopalong Zimmerman

He Held Your Hand

And He Sang You A Song

Ima kill the discourteous motherfucker.

This is one of the great SUN Records classics, completely hit out of the park by Balladeer Bob Dylan, the rockabilly troubador. I’m serious. Click the picture of Bob to hear the original. I’ll wait. … not bad, right? A bit tinny, and too fast maybe, but a really good song.

Now listen to Bob Dylan’s cover. It’s a zillion times better, and it’s (relatively) recent (2003 I believe).  It’s got swagger, groove, and some of that swampy creeping darkness. Like that point just outside the reach of the streetlight,  where there could be trouble. Dylan growls and wheezes the undercurrent of menace that the song has. Heartbreak and betrayal make guys kill people. They make people crazy. Who you been lovin since I been gone? Answer me.

He was long and tall, had plenty of cash. He had a red Cadillac and a black mustache.

[I just deleted some of the darkest, funniest, most alienating stuff I've written in years. Those who know me know how dark and mean and evil I can get... it was like that but funnier. Horribly, unforgivably awful. I'd rather run through Birmingham on MLK day in a white hood, yelling the n word with middle fingers upraised, than publish what I wrote. Lou Reed and William Burroughs would get up and leave. So.. um... listen to the damn song. It's good]

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SmTWrBmjRsE