Here are two short, rarely seen film clips featuring the Marx Brothers. The first clip is a promo film Groucho, Chico, Harpo and Zeppo did in support of their movie “Monkey Business”. The other clip features Groucho and Carole Landis entertaining some marines during WWII.
Yeah, I hear ya. You want some kickass rockabilly about right now, right? Let’s tear it up.
Billy Burnette was born into a Rock-N-Roll Family and his band is entirely awesome. Have at it.
And have a great weekend, folks. Be back here tomorrow for more fun,
Tom Waits was indicted [sic] into The Rock and Roll Hall Of Fame in 2011, and Neil Young introduced him. Great intro, great clips, great quotes. Someone said that Waits doesn’t sing the same song the same way twice.
“I think what I try to do is write adventure songs and Halloween Music.” –Tom Waits
That last quote cracks me up, because back when we still had trick-or-treaters coming around, we’d do up the front entry and blast Mickey Hart’s “Planet Drum” and Wait’s “Bone Machine” to the neighborhood. Great Halloween music.
Loud, piercing and sharp… a whistle is hard to ignore. But whistling languages are in danger of dying out. But residents of Kusköy on the Black Sea coast still communicate by whistling.An ee sounds higher than an ah. Consonants are distinguished by changes in pitch over different intervals of time. Eskimos communicate with whistles; so do indigenous people in the Amazon, and in Europe shepherds keep boredom at bay and communicate by whistling to each other. But the world’s 70 whistling languages are slowly becoming extinct. Kusköy in Turkey is defending the tradition.
I’m not sure if Harpo was self-taught, but I know that some items in his Wikipedia entry are contradicted by Groucho’s Autobiography. The story I recall (that means “I seem to remember but I’m too lazy to research it”): there was a dispute with a theater owner where the brothers were perfoming. Harpo was pissed, said he hoped the place burned down. It did, and Harpo vowed never to speak on stage again. I don’t know if it’s true, but I recall (again, that means “I seem to remember but I’m too lazy to research it”) that’s what Groucho claimed.
Awesome Retro Cover of Miley Cyrus’ “We Can’t Stop,” and it beats the hell out of the original. Post Modern Jukebox is amazing, and that song is dedicated to Calo who’s having some tough times. Get well, Suki.
Ike Willis‘s version of Zappa’s “Suicide Chump” with Sarah Zimmerman. Most of her stuff is acoustic, but she’s no slouch on electric slide guitar. The last line in the song is “All you can say as you run down the street is:” and Willis cuts it off. In Zappa’s version, it transmogrifies into “Jumbo Go Away.”
Let’s get back to the slide.
Johnny Winter‘s “Mean Town Blues” from 1970, and no, that’s not a cover – he wrote it. Awesome Texas boogie in the style of John Lee Hooker.
That’s it for this edition of The Saturday Matinee. Rock on.
Santigold’s “Lights Out” vid has some cool retro patterns.
Great WTF video: Ленинград — Рыба. Russian/Punk/Dixieland by a band named Leningrad, titled “Fish Of My Dreams.” English lyrics translation here. [h/t Bunkessa].
Yep. There’s more Rockabilly in the first 02:30 than you can shake a dead rockin’ cat at. The Stray Cats were awesome. Where do we go from here? Oh wait. I got it.
Kinda hot here the past few days, and with some unusual humidity for Bunkville, I had to turn off the a/c occasionally on a 2-hour commute just to let it de-ice. While we’re waiting for Dear President to start pushing the Affordable Air Conditioning Act, let’s spin some tunes that are too hot to handle and too cold to hold on The Saturday Matinee.
The Lovin’ Spoonful in September 1966. A few years after that song came out I discovered that John Sebastian wasn’t black, yet he had soul.
The Temptations were great, and this is one of their greatest: “I Wish It Would Rain.” According to Wiki, it was originally released as a B side to a Melvin Franklin song on Motown Records in 1967 and made it to No. 4 on Billboard’s Top 100 the following year. [The songwriter, Roger Penzabene, was distraught after finding that his wife had been cheating on him and offed himself a week after the song’s release.]
Let’s cool off with this classic. It’s got subtitles, too.
Yep, real cool, except for the pirouettes. Have a great 3-day weekend, folks.
