When the people of Cuba took to the streets by the thousands in protest over the past weekend, the mainstream media in our county fired up the spin machine. It’s about COVID and shortages, they said.
They were all lying.
This video is credited with helping inspire the uprising. It says everything about the human desire to be free and Cuba’s desire to throw off the shackles of communist tyranny. If you don’t speak Spanish, make sure to watch it with the captions on.
Carlos Santana & Everlast from the 1999 Santana album Supernatural, one of my few impulse purchases. Good stuff.
(Sí, sé que Carlos no es cubano, pero aun así…)
Golden Earring was active from 1961 to 2021, and were the best known and internationally most successful rock band to come out of the Netherlands. [h/t Feral Irishman]
The Skids. The vocals are notoriously unintelligible so the song works for just about anything.
Lotta heavy stuff coming down the road, so stay alert and be safe while I go get a haircut. See you tomorrow.
1. I Don’t Wanna Stand Up
2. Stirring In My Room
3. Today One Love, Tomorrow The World
4. Jamming Affairs
5. Three Little Surfin’ Birds
6. Kaya Bop
7. Glad To See You Cry
8. Is This Love Kills
9. Bye Bye Redemption
America Paz: “I spent three years playing on the street in Chile – when the video went viral my career changed.” More about her here.
Greensky Bluegrass‘ Living Over reminds me of some of the stuff I’d listen to on early morning cross-country roadtrips many years ago.
GA-20 does a mighty fine cover of Billy The Kid Emerson‘s No Teasin’ Around (1954). I need to pay more attention to these guys from Boston.
That’ll do for this edition of The Saturday Matinee. Rock on me bloogies, have a great weekend, and we’ll think of something else to do tomorrow.
In 2016, Korean tourist Jun-Hyuk Choi asked to borrow the bass and sat in with some buskers in Florence, Italy. The trio is Romdraculas Firenze.
Influenced by a number of genres including nuevo flamenco, rock, and heavy metal, Rodrigo y Gabriela eventually got tired of the Mexican rock scene. In 1999, despite not speaking English, they moved to Dublin, Ireland and were a hit. They’ve done much more since. More about them here.]
Aw yeah! The Eels vid is an odd one, kinda fits my attitude. The song was released in Japan in 2001, U.S. in 2002, on the album of the same name. The video volume is a bit low, so if you turn it up, turn it back down so you don’t blow your spickers.
Messer Chups doesn’t appear in my “suggested for you” Utoobage, but I know where to find them: St. Petersburg, Russia. They’re listed under vampire space zombie surf rock. Oleg Gitaracula – Guitar; Zombierella – Bass; Rockin Eugene – 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.”
Hey, Utoob. Just because I click on a random video out of curiosity doesn’t mean that I like garbage like this, so you can remove it from the “suggested for you” list. I’d really appreciate it, because I’m only interested in finding the really good stuff.
Three day weekend for some of you out there, but we’ll hold down the fart until you return. See you then.
The Specials in 1979, with A Message To You Rudy.
From the Utoobage comments:
“For those who do not know the story already, the “rudy” of this song is not a person. In fact, it refers to the slang term “rude boy” (rude boy-rudie-rudy) that originated in Jamaica in the early ’60s to define a specific sub-culture that used to listen to ska and rocksteady. As you can imagine, the term “rude” refers to the not exactly in-line-with-the-law lifestyle they had. [..] This particular subculture heavily influenced the mods and the skinheads, particularly in the look. And in in regards of music too , obviously, since the genre Oi! is heavily influenced by ska.”
Rude Pride is/was a band from Madrid (2013-2020) that played 1970s style Oi! Although the sub-genre is often misconstrued as music by racist pro-fascist bands, this is not one of them. I just like the song. (BTW, that’s the Flag of Jamaica on the wall in the background.)
Keeping with the accidental theme, let’s go with some nasty ska. The Interrupters cover Billie Eilish’ Bad Guy, and their version is better. Duh.
I think that’ll do for now. We’ll see what happens tomorrow.
Joey Ramone‘s song and stop-motion vid New York City were made and released in 2012, 11 years after his death. The song was an overdub of a demo tape. Tommy Erdlai (Tommy Ramone) is in there somewhere (I think that’s him at 02:57).
Geddy Lee cranks it. I should have paid more attention to Rush; I liked the sound but couldn’t stand the vocals.
Stanley Clarke‘s Touch, live at the Newport Jazz Festival (2003). Another amazing bass solo (with some annoying narration stuck in the middle of it).
Hope those of you getting hammered by the record breaking cold get some relief soon, and that the following thaw doesn’t make it worse. We’ll all be here tomorrow. See you then.
First recorded in 1976, The Ramones‘ I Don’t Wanna Go Down To The Basement is sort of appropriate.
Sally Cruikshank‘s animations are Betty Boop on acid. Face like a Frog (1987) includes the Cab Calloway-esque song Don’t Go In The Basement (starts at 02:26 ). In 2017, Cruikshank herself added this to the YouTube comments:
“Danny Elfman composed the track for this film. Period. Copyright mine. Then a year or two later I gave his agents permission to include it on a compilation LP, I guess put out by [David] Geffen. Now they claim I got the music from the album or something. They’re wrong. My film came first. My husband’s going to get into it with Geffen.”
“I don’t always listen to Dead Man’s Party, but when I do so do the neighbors.” – YouTube comment
Oingo Boingo was a standout band of the 1980s, combining ska, punk, jazz & rock, and Dead Man’s Party became a Halloween party standard. According to Wikipedia:
The lyric, “I hear the chauffeur coming to my door / Says there’s room for maybe just one more,” is a reference to “The Bus-Conductor,” a short story by E. F. Benson about a hearse driver, first published in The Pall Mall Magazine in 1906.
Video is from the 1986 movie Back To School. Yeah, 34 years ago…
Happy Halloween, folks!
This year I’m gonna scare half the neighborhood by NOT wearing a mask. Hope you get all the tricks you deserve and all the treats that you don’t.
[Paranoia moons previously posted here. More Halloween-related posts in the archives.]
Android 207 is a fun stop-motion from Carrotkid (Paul Whittington). In 2007, the film received the Best Film, Best Technical and People’s Choice awards at the Vancouver Island Short Film Festival. I’ve posted it before, and it’s still one of my favorites.
Classic Talking Heads video won “Best Group Video” at the MTV Video Music Awards in 1987. I probably posted it before also – I couldn’t find a live version of …oh wait, just found one.
Lost another great talent this week. Johnny Nash (1940-2020) was born in Houston, Texas, but moved to Jamaica in 1965, where rocksteady was big and reggae was just beginning to gain in popularity. Video is from Dick Clark’s American Bandstand, 1968.
Krosfyah‘s single Pump Me Up (1995) was a hit in Barbados, went gold in Canada. Great Soca.
That’s a wrap, at least for now. See you tomorrow and we’ll mess with stuff.
The Chantays were from Santa Ana, California. The oldest was 17, the youngest 14, when they recorded their 1962 hit “Pipeline” (according to the liner notes on my LP.) I was a kid in the midwest when I first heard it, and I liked it, but I didn’t equate it with surfing. I imagined a rock n’ roll sludge pump.
According to Wiki, the Chantays originally called the song “Liberty’s Whip” but I have my doubts.
A year later, The Ventures co-opted the classic. Not sure if royalties were paid but their version didn’t make Billboard’s Top 100.
In the late 1970s and 1980s, paramedic Chris Porsz spent hours walking around Peterborough, a city in eastern England, snapping the photos of the everyday passerby.
