Lou Reed had an incredible a vocal range. In 2015, as he was about to be (posthumously) inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame, his sister wrote about their early years in A Family In Peril.
Tom Waits‘ “Telephone call from Istanbul” from the movie Big Time. The missus-to-be and I saw it at the Nuart in L.A., and I remember it being damn surreal.
Have great weekend, folks, and be sure to wear a mask and maintain proper social distance if you decide to go looting and burning businesses in your neighborhood. See you back here tomorrow.
Amazing. The contents of clay cylinders found during the excavation of ancient Babylon is evidence that soapmaking was known as early as 2800BC, and these guys in Nablus are still doing it the ancient way, by hand. Why?
Nice animation that must have taken a while to make [via].
Fishing with John (with Japanese subtitles). From the Utoobage comments: “The problem with other fishing shows is that they are too polished, too normal. And they don’t have enough Tom Waits.”
I don’t know what Fishbone was yammering about here, but I like the vibe.
As long as a tune was good, I never paid much attention to lyrics, but sometimes, years later, I found that the songs I liked a lot weren’t about what I thought they were about at all.
Have a great weekend, folks. See you back here tomorrow for stuff.
From the Utoobage description: “The iconic video was created by Gerald Scarfe initially as a backdrop film for when the band [Pink Floyd] played the track on its 1977 In the Flesh tour.”
From the Utoobage comments: “Imagine having to wait 40 years to watch your favorite band’s official videoclip.”
Have a great weekend, folks, and don’t forget that astronomy is gonna happen tomorrow night.
Rag’n’Bone Man’s first hit single, “Human“, was released on Columbia Records in July 2016. It peaked at number one in the Official Singles Charts in Austria, Belgium, Germany, and Switzerland. It was certified Gold in Austria, Belgium, Germany, Italy, the Netherlands, Sweden, and Switzerland.
That’s is an entirely different version and a precursor to the one I’m familiar with:
Have a great weekend, folks, and for Fathers’ Day, buy your Dad a big bacon cheeseburger with fries and a pint of stout. He’ll love it, despite what your Mom says about it causing tumors in rats.
By the end of the week I usually have a couple of videos already in the queue, but I found I had none ready to post, so I defaulted to retro vids.
A 2011 Paul Simon performance of “Kodachrome caught my ear. The missus walked in and asked why I was listening to that sappy song. I said I needed to post something for Saturday.
“If you’re going to post a Paul Simon video, it should be You Can Call Me Al with Chevy Chase,” and she’s right. It’s a classic, and it’s also the best Paul Simon video ever.
He ducked back down the alley With some roly-poly little bat-faced girl
IIRC, that was recorded about the same time that David Byrne was doing his own version of international music, like featuring Tito Larriva:
Then there’s this. Tom Waits took Psychobilly to a new dimension in 2006.
Have a great weekend, folks, and don’t worry. Everything is gonna be all right despite what the doom mongers tell you.
This fascinates me. No idea what they’re making, but it needs a Tom Waits soundtrack, like this:
Wow. Christmas is only week away, so we need a nice happy video. So many to choose from, and so many sappy ones that I don’t want to post, so here’s one that always makes me smile:
Such a simple brilliant fun idea. I wish there were more clips or an uncut version, but I haven’t found them… yet.
Have a great weekend, folks, and enjoy the holidays.
This is the way it is, baby. I Dig Safety, and it’s about time you paid attention to it. Don’t let the title fool you; this could save your life, and it’s got a cool hip soundtrack with bongos, courtesy of Xerox [1969].
The Utoobage description sums it up: “A great clip from the 1958 teen B movie High School Confidential. This clip features Phillipa Fallon as a beat poetess. That’s Uncle Fester, AKA Jackie Coogan on piano behind her. Turn your eyes inside and dig the vacuum.” Here’s the whole awesome [via]:
High School Drag
My old man was a bread stasher all his life. He never got fat. He wound up with a used car, a 17 inch screen and arthritis.
Tomorrow is a drag, man. Tomorrow is a king sized bust.
They cried ‘put down pot,’ ‘don’t think a lot,’ for what? Time, how much? And what to do with it.
Sleep, man, and you might wake up digging the whole human race giving itself three days to get out.
Tomorrow is a drag, pops, the future is a flake.
I had a canary who couldn’t sing. I had a cat who let me share my pad with her. I bought a dog that killed the cat who ate the canary. What is truth?
I had an uncle with an ivy league card. He had a life with a belt in the back. He had a button-down brain. Wind up a belt in the mouth with a button-down lip.
We cough blood on this earth. Now there’s a race for space. We can cough blood on the moon soon.
Tomorrow’s dragsville, cats. Tomorrow is a king size drag.
Tool a fast shore, swing with a gassy chick. Turn on to a thousand joys. Smile on what happened, or check what’s going to happen, You’ll miss what’s happening. Turn your eyes inside and dig the vacuum.
Swing For A Crime is a great compilation of hep cat music interspersed with audio snippets from B-movie suspense thrillers (including the distinctive voice of Lee Marvin hollering “Oh you pig! You lyin’ pig!” from the 1953 movie The Big Heat). I have it on vinyl.
The only performer I know of that was able to recreate the hep cat beatnik persona successfully is Tom Waits.
Have a great Labor Day Weekend, folks.
[Yeah, I fixed it, and I know it’s not Memorial Day Weekend. That’s what happens when you realize it’s almost midnight and you’ve been messing around too much on Twitter to post anything coherently. –Bunk]
The history of Samhain (aka All Hallow’s Eve, aka Halloween) is interesting, and despite what some claim (that it’s “The Devil’s Holiday”) it’s actually the opposite. Check this out.
But that’s not what we’re here for, and we’re not here to post Bobby Pickett‘s “Monster Mash” either even though Leon Russell played on that recording according to Wiki.
Nice try, Bobby, but that sucked donkeys. Ted Cassidy did it right.
So how do we wrap up this Halloween vid post? How ’bout some Tom Waits?
Yeah, when the kids were tads, we’d do up the front stoop right, with spiderwebs, pumpkins that made little kids cry and dogs bark, and blast Tom Waits and Mickey Hart’s Planet Drum cassettes on a boom box that could be heard for blocks. Fun times.
Have a safe Samhain, All Hallow’s Eve, and Halloween, folks. Be back tomorrow for El Día de los Muertes.
