Saturday Matinee – Clanadonia, Mickey Hart / Planet Drum & Joe Bonamassa with Tina Guo

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.

Mickey Hart & Planet Drum perform “Fire On The Mountain” (24 July 1999, Rome, New York).

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.

Have a great weekend folks.

Saturday Matinee – Rubbing Forearms, Juan Gabriel, Muddy Waters & The Diablos.

Something to do when you’re really bored. That and other illusions may be found here.

This song seems appropriate given the hurricane tragedies unfolding in the southeast US. From the vid description:

”’Quiero Creedence‘ is the Latin tribute album to Creedence Clearwater Revival. This album includes covers of CCR’s greatest songs by some of the top Latin artists from across the world including Juan Gabriel …”

Other great versions of that classic song may be found here (assuming the links are still intact).

Muddy Waters was an undervalued gem.

The [1976?] band consists of Muddy Waters on vocal/guitar, Bob Margolin guitar, Willie “Big Eyes” Smith drums, Jerry Portnoy,  Harmonica and Luther “guitar” Johnson.

Meanwhile, I couldn’t find a live vid for this 1954 Detroit R&B classic. The ending is pure awesome.

 

There’s not much to say about the tragedy, both ongoing and pending, that hasn’t been said elsewhere. For those of you in the path of Irma with no means of escape, we pray for you. For you looters, please stay put, and move to lower ground.

Stay safe. You can replace your stuff, but you can’t replace your life.

Saturday Matinee – Wind Chimes, Samantha Fish & The Bo Keys

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.

Saturday Matinee – About Hurricane Harvey

In case you’re living in a closet, there’s some nasty weather going on down south with a killer hurricane underway.

Led Zeppelin unapologetically ripped off Memphis Minnie and Kansas Joe for one of their greatest hits.

On the other hand, this blues jam was an original.

So what’s next? Maybe a Rainy Night In Georgia.

To my friends down in Texas and Louisiana, keep safe.

Saturday Matinee – African Raccoons, Toni Tee and Liquid Wisdom & The Specials

Raccoons stirrin’ up sh*t.

Toni Tee & Liquid Wisdom on a bus. They play a cool variety of music (reggae, rock, funk, soul, hiphop, punkadelic) but it’s tough to find a vid with decent a/v on the Utoobage. [h/t Bunkessa – yeah she scored two hits this week; this one and the one above.]

Can’t fight corruption with con tricks;
They use the law to commit crime.
And I dread, dread to think what the future will bring,
When we’re living in gangster time.

The Specials performed their 1979 hit “Gangsters” (with Lily Allen) at the Glastonbury Festival 2007. (The music was lifted from Prince Buster‘s 1964 ska hit “Al Capone.” Have a listen.)

Have a great weekend, folks, and let’s see what happens tomorrow.

Saturday Matinee – Summertime Blues (1958 to Whatever).

From the UToobage description:

“Though Eddie Cochran was only twenty-one when he died, he left a lasting mark as a rock and roll pioneer. Cochran zeroed in on teenage angst and desire with such classics as ‘C’mon Everybody,’ ‘Something Else,’ ‘Twenty Flight Rock‘ and ‘Summertime Blues.’ A flashy stage dresser with a tough-sounding voice, Cochran epitomized the sound and the stance of the Fifties rebel rocker.”

Lotta covers of that kickass song.

1962 The Beach Boys. A 14 and a 16 year old contributed to this recording.

1962 Johnny Chester

Ten years later, Blue Cheer broke ground in 1968 with a heavy metal version of Eddie Cochran’s “Summertime Blues,” released ten years earlier. [This guy was on the SanFran scene in 1968.]

I heard that version when I was in 6th grade, and tried to decide if I liked it or not. Took me several years before I understood what they were doing, and I decided that I liked the original better. Hell, the name of the band was a brand of LSD named after a laundry detergent.

1975 The Who – According to Wiki they’d been playing Summertime Blues since 1967 so this version is out of chronological order.

1970 T. Rex

1975 Olivia Newton-John
1978 The Rolling Stones

1982 Joan Jett.  Hear The Ramones influence?

1987 Alvin & The Chipmunks
1992 Little River Band
2004 Rush
2009 The Black Keys

Cheech Marin, The Prophets, Levon Helm, Guitar Wolf, The Flying Lizards, Bobby Vee, The Crickets, Buck Owens, James Taylor, The Ventures, Dick Dale, Robert Gordon with Link Wray, Skid Row, Johnny Hallyday, Brian Setzer, MC5, Alex Chilton, and Marty Wilde have also covered the song.

Y’all can find the the other killer ccvers  on your own. Have a great weekend and we’ll see you back here tomorrow.

Saturday Matinee – Earl Barton & Lisa Gaye, The Wolfgangs & The Reverend Horton Heat.

If you lived in that time period, you’d have done the exact same thing. Not me. Dig, man, I wouldn’t have been caught dead dancing plaid.

I don’t know anything about The Wolfgangs except that they rock and may or may not use illegal substances.

Very few bands can cover a classic Johnny Cash song like Folsom Prison Blues, but the Reverend Horton Heat did just that, and even cranked it up a notch.

Rock on, my friends. More stuff coming down the pipe.

Saturday Matinee – Portlandia Gutter Punks, Music From Hell & Joe Bonamassa Rips It

Heh. I’ve seen posers like this in Santa Monica and elsewhere in Southern California.

Dang [via].

Reminds me of Tom Waits’ “Conundrum” that he described as the sound of “a jail door closing behind you” and says it looks “kind of like a Chinese torture device.”

So many uncredited influences crammed into one awesome jam.

Have a great weekend, folks, and I promise we’ll never post the real names of your dogs and cats without permission.

Saturday Matinee – Bert The Turtle, Time for Sushi & Jaco Pastorious

Bert The Turtle showed children how to survive a nuclear attack – assuming they’re far enough away from Ground Zero to have time to react. The film was shown in schools from 1952 into the 1990s.

David Lewandowski‘s “Time for Sushi” (2017) is pure disturbed weirdness. (His 2013 vid “Late For Meeting” is a classic.)

The late Jaco Pastorius was one of the greatest jazz-funk fretless bass players in modern times, IMO. [Video h/t TITH]

Have a great weekend, folks. We’ll do something just as fun tomorrow.

Saturday Matinee – Turbulence, Laurie Anderson, MiniMall & The We Five

This Is Your Captain speaking. We’re experiencing some minor turbulence and we ask that you stop screaming.” Wild rides were ridden on at the Birmingham Airport 23 February 2017 [via].

Okay, there’s a link to some surreal 1980s Laurie Anderson stuff above, so let’s go to 2010 live for fun.

Anderson was the Ken Nordine of the 80s (without the baritone voice).

MiniMall has a bit of a retro vibe and consists of:
Merced Stratton — composer, ukulele, vocals
Maral Ohan — composer, vocals
Allegra Rosenberg — composer, bass
Wynne Males — trumpet, vocals
Brennan Doyle — drums

[Merced & Wynne ate sandwiches on our rock-n-roll patio recently because Bunkessa knows them. They were all like harmonizing and musical and stuff.]

The “We Five” had this awesome hit in 1965, a cover of Ian & Sylvia‘s song “You Were On My Mind.”

Sylvia Fricker supposedly wrote it in a bathtub in Greenwich Village in 1962. Yeah it’s lip-synched, but it’s still fun as hell. One of these days I need to find out who the lead guitar on the left is because he rocks.

Have a great weekend, folks. Be back here tomorrow for more of you-know-what.