Saturday Matinee – How Countries Fight Their Wars; Les Paul with Carol Kaye & Justin Johnson

Awesome [via BlenderGuru email].

Les Paul with Carol Kaye.
Don’t know who she is? You’ve heard her many times before.

Justin Johnson covers ZZ Top‘s “La Grange” with no backup.

Ah, May is here, and in a few more months we’ll be “allowed” to have some of our freedoms back. Perhaps soon we’ll find out who’s been doctoring the statistics to justify their abhorrent destruction of prosperity.

Ah well. Have a great weekend, folks, ignore the scolds and have fun anyway. That’ll really piss ’em off. 😀

Saturday Matinee – Live at Crossroads 2010: Hubert Sumlin, Jimmie Vaughn and Robert Cray; Pino Daniele, Joe Bonamassa and Robert Randolph & The Family Band; AND ZZ Top

Wow. Hubert Sumlin, Jimmie Vaughan and Robert Cray at the 2010 Crossroads Guitar Festival.

Wow again. Pino Daniele, Joe Bonamassa with Robert Randolph & The Family Band were also at the 2010 CGF.

Good God can these three put out some loud! ZZ Top at the same place, same year.

It just dawned on me that it’s been 10 years since all that awesome went down. Lotta time flies buzzing around my head these days.

Have a great weekend, folks. Do what you wanna do, go where you wanna go. Don’t worry about a thing, and always remember: it’s not the heat, it’s the humanity. See you tomorrow.

Saturday Matinee – Food Preparation Tricks, Messer Chups, The Raybeats & Dick Dale

Wish I’d known about these great shortcuts back when I was eating cold Hormel Chili out of the can. [Vid found here.]

Messer Chups cranks some electric surf, and yeah, they’re Russian.

Oleg Gitaracula (Oleg Fomchenkov) – Guitar
Zombierella (Svetlana Nagaeva) – Bass
Rockin Eugene (Evgeny Lomakin) – Drums

“While Messer Chups’ mostly instrumental sound is hard to neatly categorize, it’s safe to say that it would be embraced by fans of rockabilly, horror punk, vintage surf records, Italian slasher films, My Life with the Thrill Kill Kult, Pulp Fiction, lounge music, the theremin, The Cramps, and the theme song from The Munsters.”

That group reminded me of the Raybeats. Their album Guitar Beat is awesome. I have it on vinyl.

Listening to Dick Dale while driving results in a speeding ticket every time. (Don’t ask me how I know.)

Have a great Saturday and a peaceful Easter Sunday.

Saturday Matinee – Southside Johnny & the Asbury Jukes, Maceo Parker, & the Ghost Town Blues Band

Southside Johnny & the Asbury Jukes (in 1985) with their 1976 hit “I Don’t Wanna Go Home.” The missus walked in while I was watching the vid and said, “Okay, so who’s the pirate?” That’s Miami Steve Van Zandt, – he wrote the song. SJ & the AJ had a great retro sound that was all but missing in the mid ’70s.

Maceo Parker makes it funky at the North Sea Jazz Festival, Rotterdam 2012. The badass backup:

Corey Parker, Martha High (backing vocals);
Lee Hogans (trumpet);
Troy ‘Trombone Shorty‘ Andrews (trombone);
Bruno Speight (guitar);
Will Boulware (keys);
Rodney “Skeet” Curtis (bass);
Marcus Parker (drums).

Ghost Town Blues Band picks up the Beatles’ Come Together and throws it right into the swamp, and then it’s Norwegian Wood meets Whole Lotta Love. Kinda matches my attitude these days.

Have a great weekend, folks. Go ahead, leave your house, get some fresh air and go wherever you want while it’s still legal. See you back here tomorrow for stuff.

Saturday Matinee – Germs and You, The First Edition, Gunhild Carling & Elvin Bishop

Yankovic tweeted this out recently as a public service announcement.

The First Edition (featuring Kenny Rogers on bass & vocals) had their first big hit in 1968.

Gunhild Carling is amazing. According to Wiki, she plays trombone, bagpipes, trumpet, recorder, string instruments (such as banjo, ukulele and harp) and can also play three trumpets simultaneously.

So where do we go from here? Oh wait. I got it.

Haven’t heard that song since high school. Elvin Bishop had a few minor hits, but never got the recognition he deserved despite touring with the Allman Bros. (According to the comments on the Utoobage, I wasn’t the only one who thought the other guitar was Dickie Betts – it was Johnny ‘V’ Vernazza.)

Have a great weekend, folks. If you decide to go out, hoard me some, too.

The Village Is Not Immune.

In case that image puzzles some of you, it’s a reference to the greatest paranoia/spy TV show ever.

[Image from here, h/t Carl L. via email.]

Laissez les Bons Temps Rouler! – It’s Mardi Gras!

King Oliver & His Creole Jazz Band – Sugar Foot Stomp (1926)
Louis Armstrong played 2nd cornet, married the piano player Lil Hardin.

Lil Armstrong & Buck Washington – Or Leave Me Alone (1936)
That’s Mrs. Louis Armstrong to you.

Al Hirt – When The Saints Go Marching In
Not sure what year, but I’m pretty sure that’s Pete Fountain on clarinet.

Might as well throw some Cajun into the mix while we’re at it. No idea who the artist is or what year, but the song is called Toot Toot.


Joyeux Mardi Gras!
J’espère que vous en avez un gros!

[Gator roast .gif found here.]

Saturday Matinee – The Great East Japan Earthquake 2011, Steve Gibbons Band, Keb’ Mo’, Juzzie Smith & Jeff Beck’s Killer Lineup

11 March 2011 – The Great East Japan Earthquake (video at Sendai Airport) measured 9.0–9.1 on the Richter Scale. It moved Honshu (the main island of Japan) 8 feet east.

It was the most powerful earthquake ever recorded in Japan, and the fourth most powerful earthquake in the world since modern record-keeping began in 1900. The earthquake triggered powerful tsunami waves that may have reached heights of up to 40.5 meters (133 ft) in Miyako in Tōhoku’s Iwate Prefecture, and which, in the Sendai area, traveled at 700 km/h (435 mph) for up to 10 km (6 mi) inland. Residents of Sendai had only eight to ten minutes of warning, and more than 19,000 were killed, many at evacuation sites, more than a hundred of which washed away. [Wiki]

[Watch the whole thing. Video found here, via here.]

_____________________________________________________________

That’s a tough one to follow, but let’s try this.

Long intro, good story by The Steve Gibbons Band (1977). If you don’t know who he is, check out his credentials. I bought one of his albums for his cover of Chuck Berry’sTulane.”

Keb’ Mo’ plays Son House‘ “Walkin’ Blues” (1930), accompanied by musicians from six countries. It’s part of the “Playing For Change” video series.

Juzzie Smith introduces his One Man Band, and it’s amazing. I can play harmonica and guitar, but my brain won’t let me do both at once.

Jeff Beck (guitar), Tal Wilkenfeld (bass), Beth Hart (vocals), Lizzie Ball (violin) and Jonathan Joseph (drums) crank out Freddie King‘s 1971 classic “Going Down”  at Crossroads Guitar Festival 2013. What a lineup.

That should hold y’all for a bit. See you back here tomorrow for something or other.

Saturday Matinee – Thomas and Brian Owens, Barbara Lynn Ozen & Clarence Gatemouth Brown (Plus Rare Damone Ramone Audio)

Such a pretty cover of Sam Cooke’s 1964 classic “A Change Is Gonna Come” by Brian Owens and his father. (Cooke was singing about the Civil Rights Act and the repeal of Democrat Jim Crow Laws. The white people in that audience are embarrassing to watch.)

Barbara Lynn Ozen cranked some cool Ray Charles, left-handed, on a 1966 TV show called The !!!! Beat.

Here’s a cool convergence. The house band for The !!!! Beat was led by Clarence Gatemouth Brown.

Brown was one of those rare musicians who could play the hell out of a 16d nail if you told him it was a musical instrument, and he had one tight band.


A TACKY RACCOONS EXCLUSIVE

This is a “found” recording ostensibly from Damone Ramone‘s only public performance (Burma, 1979) performed on sewing machines, and sent to us by the 5th Ramone himself.


Have a great weekend folks. Stick around for more stuff.

Saturday Matinee – Ismael Sanz-Pena, Ricky Syers, Taj Mahal & ZZ Top


Persistence of Vision III is an awesome vid by Ismael Sanz-Pena  [h/t Mme. Jujujive].

Cool artistry, cool story, and Ricky Syers is interesting.

The legendary Taj Mahal & The Phantom Blues Band covered Bill Doggett‘s 1956 hit Honky Tonk “filmed at Yoshi’s SF grand opening.” (Yoshi’s had grand openings in 1972, 1979, 1985 & 1997, so take your pick.)

ZZ Top is one of the greatest 3-man blues-rock freight trains ever, and here they are in their prime.

Have a great weekend, folks. We’ll be back here tomorrow, rain or shinola.