By the late 1970s, rock music was in the doldrums, the pits. Almost everything seemed to be corporate-marketing-department-formula-driven-pre-packaged-garbage, and much of it sounded the same. There was so much over-produced audio drek, I started going retro. Then this song hit me, and I liked the vibe.
Have a great weekend, folks. Be back here tomorrow for more stuff.
P.S. We filed a complaint with the WordPress peeps about auto-play advertisements and got a positive response. They asked for a screencap of the offending ad, so I sent one. Let’s see what they do with it.
The Blasters. I saw them in the early 1980s at The Whiskey. They opened for The Fabulous Thunderbirds, who opened for some other band. Those two bands left little else to say, and I honestly can’t remember who the headliner was.
Sid Laverentsplayed the classic song “Nola,” written in 1915 by pianist Felix Arndt (author of many player piano rolls). Laverents 1970 short film film Multiple SIDosis is one of the few amateur films to have been selected for inclusion in the National Film Registry [h/t wheels].
BTW, Newark Athelete (1891) is the oldest film in the NFR and runs about 10 seconds.
Workman on lunch break plays boogie woogie at the Public Piano in St Pancras Station, London. Some think he was just a plant in a public works suit, but so what. It’s all entertainment.
Guy fitted his cat with a GoPro to find out what it does while he’s away, and no, it doesn’t sleep [via].
Ever hear of David “String Bean” Akeman? No? Here’s a documentary of the comic/iconic speed banjo player. Video starts at 06:00 for his rendition of the traditional folk song “Li’l Liza Jane. [Related post here.]
Akeman and his wife were murdered by burglars at their rural Tennessee home in 1973. The killers took only a chain saw and some firearms and were later apprehended and convicted.
The Blasters perform “Jubilee Train” at the 1985 Farm Aid concert in Champaign, Illinois. (Check out the impressive list of performers at the link.)
“Buckjump” by Trombone Shorty – a nice retro-funk groove to wrap things up.
I’m embarrassed to admit that I once confused Nena (Gabriele Kerner of Hagen, West Germany) with Nina Hagen (Catherine Hagen of East Berlin, East Germany). Never again.
How ’bout something primal? Nothing better than Scottish tribal drums and bagpipes. Clanadonia is what it is, and it’s loud. “The Last of the Glaswegians” is going to be stuck in my head for days.
Amazing speed cellist Tina Guo jams it with Joe Bonamassa on “Woke Up Dreaming” at Carnegie Hall (June 2017?). Takes them a bit to get in synch, then it soars. Guo’s take on Led Zeppelin’s “Kashmir” is fun, too.
I found this both oddly fascinating and mildly disturbing. It’s an a/v collage from 2013 somewhere near Lake Erie, yet it’s also kind of an appropriate soundtrack for the damage caused by Hurricane Harvey, and for those survivors who haven’t yet fully realized what they’ve lost.
What happens once the news crews are gone? What happens once the reality sets in that you survived the ordeal, but you’ve lost everything? Our prayers are with you.
Now about those looters and scammers…
For a long time, this was THE signature song of Screamin’ Jay Hawkins, and in some ways his 1956 hit was a blues parody. In January of 2014, Samantha Fish picked it up and jammed it right down our throats with no apologies. Killer version.
Loved this proto-funk theme, and I love the Bo-Keys for rocking the retro soul grooves that I grew up with.
Have a great Labor Day Weekend, folks, and we’ll be back tomorrow with more stuff than your imagination can even tolerate. Or not.
