Guy fitted his cat with a GoPro to find out what it does while he’s away, and no, it doesn’t sleep [via].
Ever hear of David “String Bean” Akeman? No? Here’s a documentary of the comic/iconic speed banjo player. Video starts at 06:00 for his rendition of the traditional folk song “Li’l Liza Jane. [Related post here.]
Akeman and his wife were murdered by burglars at their rural Tennessee home in 1973. The killers took only a chain saw and some firearms and were later apprehended and convicted.
The Blasters perform “Jubilee Train” at the 1985 Farm Aid concert in Champaign, Illinois. (Check out the impressive list of performers at the link.)
“Buckjump” by Trombone Shorty – a nice retro-funk groove to wrap things up.
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.
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.
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.
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.
I don’t listen to food shows on the radio, at least not intentionally, but sometimes I do by accident.
KFIAM640 features “The Fork Report” on Saturdays, featuring Neil Saavedra, and his themesong is pretty cool. Lordy, lordy. Last night I suddenly realized that he’s been playing The Reverend Horton Heat all this time. If you’re offended by Rockabilly cheesecake videos, click on it, turn away and just listen. The song is fun. The video is funner.
Yeah, I found that mildly amusing, but then I’m easily amused. So let’s go visit Beverly Watkins instead.
From the UToobage description:
Beverly Watkins plays a mean blues guitar, and that’s putting it mildly. Over six decades of performing, the 77-year-old has opened for Ray Charles, James Brown, BB King and other legendary musicians. She’s one of the greatest female blues guitarists, and still plays local gigs in Atlanta.
The Leopards are from Finland. They appreciate tight skirts, Rat Rods and Rockabilly, but not in that order.
Annastiina Virmavirta – voc, bass
Aleksi Manninen – guitar
Paulo Poverini – drums
Üdvözlök mindenkit a zenekar oldalán!
A nevem Danny Rockabilly! Sok próbálkozás után egy fix zenekar egyben tarása helyett, úgy döntöttem, hogy csinálok egyet fix tagok nélkül. így lehetőségem nyílik zenélni olyan emberekkel, és barátaimmal, akik tényleg szeretik, és szenvedéllyel játszák a Rockabillyt! Ez az én Klánom! Remélem élvezni fogjátok a zenét amit nektek játszunk, és hamarosan találkozunk a koncertjeinken! Folyamatosan töltünk fel képeket és videókat a munkánkról! Kellemes időtöltést kívánunk az oldalunkon!
Gah! See how long you can stand it. (At least Mama Cass did the Mash Potato.) Sixteen years later, it was covered by Van Halen (1982):
Holy crap. That was actually worse than the Mamas & Papas’ version. It wasn’t until David Bowieand Mick Jagger got together to do a halfway decent video cover (1985):
You don’t need to watch that full video either – it’s only posted for those who have never seen it and to restore faded memories for the rest of us. All that preening and prancing takes away from the original, but finally there’s an excellent stripped-down studio cut version, vocals only (2016):
Martha Reeves is laughing her JaggerBowie off about now.
Tip ‘o the Tam to Octopus for the heads-up on the strip-down. Have a great weekend folks. See you back here tomorrow for more suffrage.
Herd mentality experiment [via]. That explains a lot.
This is THE rope trick [via]. Now let’s rock and roll.
Kim Wilson has always amazed me. One of the best blues harp players around, Wilson doesn’t get the recognition he deserves, IMO. I’m no slouch on a Hohner chromatic with a Ham Radio bullet mic, but I sure as hell can’t pull off what he does.
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]