PRESCRIPTION: WAKE THE HELL UP

This song, "Wake Up Everybody" is decades old, which makes it kind of depressing because the lyrics still apply to everything today. Evidently everyone did not wake up. Both versions were released around the late seventies. I'd been listening to Big Youth's cover for years before I ever heard Harold Melvin's original, so I'm kind of partial to his. Either way, it really is a great song and could have been written last week for how appropriate it is. You should listen to both, what the hell.  Whatever version you like, put it on repeat for as long as it takes to sink in.

~ NOTE: ALL MEDIA IS HOSTED BY THE BLOGS & SITES NAMED BELOW ~ 

Listen:
Harold Melvin and the Blue Notes - Wake Up Everybody mp3 at Basement Rug
Big Youth - Wake Up Everybody (streaming) at YouTube

DEEP COOL

Charlie Watts has always been effortlessly cool. Maybe not as some flashy rock star icon. I mean, jeez, look who his band mates were. But he's more long term cool, without really going through any of the hassle. Those others spend too much time thinking about it. Go plain. Go long.

~ NOTE: ALL MEDIA IS HOSTED BY THE BLOGS & SITES NAMED BELOW ~

Listen:
The Charlie Watts Orchestra - Stomping At The Savoy mp3 at Drummer World
Visit:
Charlie Watts page at Drummer World

LOMAX LAMENT

I'm in the middle of reading In Search of the Blues, a great book by an old friend of mine from high school. It's about the song collectors of the 1920s and 30s and their journeys trying to run down the undiluted, unadulterated, pure sound of the real blues. Blues as bona fide folk music passed down organically through live intimate performances, without the influence of recorded music or other modern influences. It's a great book. You should buy it. The friend that wrote it used to let me sleep at her apartment in Brooklyn when she was out of town. Yeah, buy two copies.

If you know anything about these song collectors, you know that John Lomax was one of the first to attempt recordings for listening rather than just to transcribe lyrics. (Most of the song collectors before him used wax cylinders for recording which are only good for a couple dozen plays.) Lomax "discovered" Leadbelly and brought him north to New York City, where his fear that Leadbelly would would be influenced by modern music and habits would be borne out. When I heard the difference between Leadbelly's "The Gallis Pole" and Led Zeppelin's "Gallows Pole" I could only think of two things. One was that Lomax was probably rolling in his grave. The other was that Blues Hammer, the fictitious band in the film Ghost World was one of the best examples of music related dark humor ever committed to celluloid.

~ NOTE: ALL MEDIA IS HOSTED BY THE BLOGS & SITES NAMED BELOW ~

Listen:
Leadbelly - Gallis Pole mp3 at Self Starter Foundation
Led Zeppelin - Gallows Pole mp3 at Tumblr
Watch:
Blues Hammer - Clip from Ghost World at YouTube

LOCK DOWN THEATER NIGHT 16

Well. here's another case of being surprised by a live version of a song I've heard a thousand times. This time it's a song that I already liked, but in other ways the experience was very close to my "Along Came Mary" eye-opender the other day. Like the Association, Rare Earth was a pretty faceless band. I've heard "I Just Want to Celebrate" a thousand times but never saw them do it live and couldn't have picked a single member out of a police line-up. And like the other night, this was in the middle of a much longer video of a music festival, this time the 1974 Cal Jam festival. The one day event featured Deep Purple, Emerson, Lake and Palmer, Black Sabbath, Seals and Crofts, Black Oak Arkansas, the Eagles, Rare Earth and Earth, Wind and Fire.

Rare Earth's performance is good, really tight, and faithful to the record, and then it devolves into a dub-like thing with rotating instrumentation. It's not like anyone is showing off that much, like one of those keyboard solo-drum solo-guitar solo segues. All they're trying to do in this live version is maintain the groove. It's highly effective. Here is the whole festival video. Now you may proceed to skip around to watch Sabbath and Deep Purple.performance. Believe me, Rare Earth are not the coolest looking band. (A link to their performance is at the bottom.)

~ NOTE: ALL MEDIA IS HOSTED BY THE BLOGS & SITES NAMED BELOW ~

Watch/Listen:
Rare Earth - I Just Want to Celebrate mp3 at The Bar None
Rare Earth - I just Want to Celebrate (video) at YouTube Live, from Cal Jam 1974

LOCK DOWN THEATER NIGHT 15

Two years before Woodstock, in July of 1967, there was the Monterey International Pop Festival. It featured Jimi Hendrix, the Who, Janis Joplin, Otis Redding, the Mamas and Papas, Jefferson Airplane, Eric Burdon and the Animals, Booker T and the MGs,the Byrds, Country Joe and the Fish and a mess of others (see the Wikipedia page for the complete set lists). I ran into a YouTube link titled "1967 Music Festival Video Concert" with the poster for the festival used in the thumbnail. The video title may have been deliberately vague so the video wouldn't be taken down, as it appears to have a big part of the film. It's been years since I've seen the entire film, and I haven't sat through the entire video yet, but it's two hours and nearly all the footage I did watch (jumping from place to place for about an hour) was from the film, and worth watching. Before viewing any of the video, I tried to remember the performances that were particularly good. The Who, Hendrix, Otis Redding, and Janis Joplin were all really good, but I had a hard time thinking of who else was in it. It's been years since I've seen the entire film, and even if some of this two hour video is from other sources I don't care. I'm going to watch the whole thing regardless. Besides the four acts above and a good deal of others, the big reason is because the video dealt me one big fat surprise.  A band I'd always thought of as just an over-produced pop vocal group were actually a well-tuned live act. The Association's "Along Comes Mary" on record is just them singing backed by studio musicians. It was the only version I'd ever heard. To see them do it live makes me sorry I dismissed them a thousand years ago. The vid directly below is the festival movie. There's a link to the Association segment below.

~ NOTE: ALL MEDIA IS HOSTED BY THE BLOGS & SITES NAMED BELOW ~

Watch/Listen:
The Association - Along Comes Mary (live) at YouTube Segment from the film
Along Comes Mary - Backing track (streaming) at YouTube
Visit:
Monterey International Pop Festival line up/set list at Wikipedia For the whole festival, not the film.
Monterey International Pop Festival - Official site

ALL-TIME EPIC COVERS NIGHT

The other day I was listening to a jazz compilation and John Coltrane's "My Favorite Things" came on. The very next day the jazz station played it. I was reminded how I felt the first time I'd heard it in it's entirety. It was a few years ago. I'd heard it before, but skipped passed it after hearing the beginning of what sounded like it was going to be a straight forward cover of the song from the film The Sound of Music. I should have known. Then there was the one time that I just let in roll. After thirteen minutes, I pried my jaw off the floor.

The song is a monster. One of my favorite covers of all time. I've posted it before, and I'm not really sure why I even bother mentioning that. If I've heard it a bunch of times, and twice in the past few days, and I still feel like hearing it, you can use the refresher. If you haven't heard it, I suggest you listen to it all the way through, loud, with headphones, spliff optional. Sonny Rollin's equally tweaked cover of "I'm an Old Cow Hand (From the Rio Grande)" is down there too, because it too takes the original to another dimension.

~ NOTE: ALL MEDIA IS HOSTED BY THE BLOGS & SITES NAMED BELOW ~

Listen:
John Coltrane - My Favorite Things mp3 at LBCC (?)
Sonny Rollins - I'm an Old Cow Hand (From the Rio Grande) mp3 at Time Goes By.

MAKE THAT THREE.

Most of you know who Robert Johnson is and some of you know exactly how many known photos of him there are. I hadn't checked in a while, but I know the last time I did, probably about twenty years ago, there were two. Now there are three. And that's big news. It was recently posted online, as in the last day or two, and is from the cover of a book about him by his sister. She had the photo with others in a cedar chest for years. The whole story about it is at Vanity Fair.

For those of you who don't know shit, Johnson was a blues man, had a short life, highly influential, sold his soul to the devil, blah, blah, blah. There's tons of shit elsewhere. There's a couple songs down there and a couple covers (the Stones and the Gun Club) but the real reason is just to hep you to photo #3.

~ NOTE: ALL MEDIA IS HOSTED BY THE BLOGS & SITES NAMED BELOW ~

Listen:
Robert Johnson - Preaching Blues mp3 at More Things
Robert Johnson - Stop Breaking Songs mp3 at More Things
Gun Club - Preaching The Blues (streaming) at YouTube
The Rolling Stones - Stop Breakin' Down (streaming) at YouTube

FOUR MINUTES OF SOUL BLISS

This song is epic. Imagine Norman Whitfield and Isaac Hayes (sorry if you don't know them) co-producing Sharon Jones. All sorts of dynamic strings n' shit. And her voice, fuck, how can anyone keep that up? This song gives me goosebumps.

~ NOTE: ALL MEDIA IS HOSTED BY THE BLOGS & SITES NAMED BELOW ~ 

Listen:
Sharon Jones and the Dap-Kings - Girl (You Got To Forgive Him) mp3 at Soul Donuts

BLUES MEN? YEAH, RIGHT, GOT IT.

A new video from the Residents has been making the rounds in the past couple of days. "Die! Die! Die!" is a cover of a song by Dyin' Dog. Black Francis (ex-Pixies front man) handles the vocals, and the video ties it in with Covid and Trump imagery via basic animation, but the song itself gets the point across. Dark sounding, even for the Residents, and worth hearing. After listening to it and seeing the blurb at Rolling Stone, which really doesn't tell you much, I was still skeptical.

The big question is who's Dyin' Dog anyway?  As with anything to do with the Residents, the bullshit detector was on standby. The story goes that the Residents have a friend in Louisiana that knew Dyin' Dog back in the day and recorded with him for Stan Lewis's Jewel Records. Supposedly nothing was ever officially released, only promo copies existed. This is where it gets interesting. Doing a search for anything about Dyin' Dog or Alvin Snow, his real name, I came across a long post by someone who had a Dyin' Dog acetate and had been looking for information on him. He came across another acetate of a different song on ebay. It's a long post but it fills in a lot of blanks as does the promo the Residents have up on YouTube for some Dyin' Dog related releases. Of the releases, one is a compilation of demos by Dyin' Dog and another is an album by the Residents themselves with covers of the demos and songs inspired by them.

All of this is neither here nor there. Not even whether any of it is the straight story. None of that matters after you hear whoever it is singing. It's Howlin' Wolf meets Reverend Beat Man with added gravel. You'll be wanting it to be the real thing. The Residents can wait.

~ NOTE: ALL MEDIA IS HOSTED BY THE BLOGS & SITES NAMED BELOW ~ 

Listen:
The Residents - Die! Die! Die! (video) at YouTube
Dyin' Dog - Bury My Bone (streaming) at YouTube
Older covers:
The Residents - Hit the Road Jack mp3 at Aquabotic Ray Charles cover
The Residents - I'm So Lonesome I could Cry mp3 at Beware of the Blog Hank Williams cover
Video:
The Residents Present Dyin' Dog - Promo video at YouTube
Visit:
Lost in the Blues: The Search for Dyin’ Dog at Chisler This is great.
The Residents and Black Francis Drop Searing Indictment of Trump’s Handling of COVID-19 at Rolling Stone

TWENTY EIGHT MINUTES OF THIS GUY

Among other things I like about Fela is his knack for lengthy jams, much closer in spirit to long songs by James Brown then any of those guitar oriented diddly-diddly things. While the playing is good, it's the groove that matters. Less "look at me" than "let's get down". I swung by Soul Safari tonight and in tribute on the occasion of Tony Allen's death there were a couple Fela cuts, two that I don't think I've posted before. That's good enough, particularly with the stay at home orders which provide the perfect opportunity to dance like nobody's watching. You ought to check out his posts too, one with an account of seeing Fela live back in 1983.

~ NOTE: ALL MEDIA IS HOSTED BY THE BLOGS & SITES NAMED BELOW ~ 

Listen:
Fela Kuti - Yellow Fever mp3 at Soul Safari 1976
Fela Kuti and Africa 70 Organization - Colonial Mentality mp3 at Soul Safari 1977

HOT ASS LINK OF THE DAY

A buddy of mine just posted this link on Facebook and I know I'll be occupied for a while. It's an interactive globe that you can spin and zoom in on a country and click on an area to hear the radio stations of that area. Right now I'm listening to Alpha Boys School radio in Jamaica (the Alpha Boys School is where many reggae icons learned their trade). This is after listening to a station in Cuba and another in Paris. Yeah, this is a definite no brainer bookmark.

~ NOTE: ALL MEDIA IS HOSTED BY THE BLOGS & SITES NAMED BELOW ~ 

Listen:
Radio Garden - Radio station broadcasts streaming from all over the world.

IT'S FU MANCHU MANIA OVER HERE.

Just as I was parking my car tonight a song came on my CD player from a long forgotten reggae compilation. I was listening to it, thinking "Maybe I should post some reggae tonight". I had second thoughts, "Oh jeez, what a segue, from Fu Manchu (yesterday) to reggae". Then I looked at the title. It was a song by Desmond Dekker, the song was "Fu Man Chu". It doesn't take much for me to select something to post. A little coincidence like that is all I needed to seal the deal, so there you go. You get Desmond Dekker courtesy of the loosest of affiliations.

Dekker had a bona fide top ten hit in the U.S. with "Israelites" in 1968. That's nothing short of mindblowing when you consider that reggae was a totally unfamiliar music in the U.S. at the time. The film The Harder They Come was still a few years away and Bob Marley wouldn't be widely known in the states for another five years or so, and even then he never had a top ten hit here. Dig it.

~ NOTE: ALL MEDIA IS HOSTED BY THE BLOGS & SITES NAMED BELOW ~ 

Listen:
Desmond Dekker - Fu Man Chu mp3 at Le Mellotron
Desmond Dekker - Pickney Girl mp3 at Cubik Music
Desmond Dekker - Pretty Africa mp3 at Dinosaur Gardens
Desmond Dekker - Jeserene mp3 at Oh Hey Great
Desmond Dekker - Wise Man mp3 at So Well Remembered
Desmond Dekker - 007 mp3 at Tumblr
Desmond Dekker - Problems mp3 at Tumblr

KEGGER ROCK

Swear to God, that dude above from Fu Manchu looks like half the people I went to high school with. It's like the second wave of ska in the UK eighties, the Two Tone thing, except these guys, instead of mods, seem to be copping the Southern California surf stoners style guide from back in the day. They might not even be from Southern California. I'm too lazy to look. I really don't know shit about them and I'd put off posting their stuff because what I've heard, though good, didn't (yet) blow me away. I wasn't going to post them tonight, but then I ran into a song by one of our dear departed friends about the band and a thought crossed my mind. If it's good enough for Wesley, it's good enough for us.

~ NOTE: ALL MEDIA IS HOSTED BY THE BLOGS & SITES NAMED BELOW ~ 

Listen:
Fu Manchu - Chevy Van mp3 at J. Yuenger
Fu Manchu - Urethane mp3 at J. Yuenger
Wesley Willis - Fu Manchu mp3 at Derek Erdman

RANDOM AWESOME BLUES SONG NIGHT

It's been posted before but that doesn't mean I can't dig it again. I really like the vocals on this one, and obviously the playing. Enough for three times in a row.

~ NOTE: ALL MEDIA IS HOSTED BY THE BLOGS & SITES NAMED BELOW ~ 

Listen:
Elmore James - Goodbye Baby mp3 at Clayton Counts

THE ANTI-SNEAKERS LEAGUE

With all the crap that's been happening recently, it's easy to get bummed out. Yesterday, something occurred to me that helped put things in perspective. When I'm outside around the hood, there's a shitload of birds, particularly parrots, seagulls, crows, doves, finches, sparrows, humming birds, an occasional hawk of some sort and every once in a while a bluebird. Oh, and a little after the sun goes down three white owls go out on their sorties. With the lack of air traffic (I live in a flight path), the abundance of birds is easier to notice. They tweet, they chirp, and they squawk. They don't know anything about Covid, Trump, or that Little Richard, Tony Allen and Florian Schneider all died this week. Snails still crawl, trees still grow. It's not all about us humans. The rest of the living world is still cruising along. We're just fucking ants.

I decided a good ol' fashioned pick me up was in order and I chose the first song that came to mind, "Nice Day" by Persephone's Bees. Man, I totally forgot what a great song it is. It really hit the spot. It's epic well crafted pop.

It also occurred to me that today is Mother's Day. Nat King Cole's "Nature Boy" is the last song I saw my Mom get lost in, so it's down there too. It too puts things in perspective. Totally different types of music but both songs push the same buttons, for me anyway.

~ NOTE: ALL MEDIA IS HOSTED BY THE BLOGS & SITES NAMED BELOW ~

Listen:
Persephone's Bees - Nice Day mp3 at Audio Drums
Nat King Cole - Nature Boy mp3 at Tumblr

SHIT WEEK CONTINUES

Little Richard just died. This one really, really hurts. I'll do another post, but for now, re-upping an old post from a year ago, the original title of which was "This Man Is Still Alive". Unfortunately, that's no longer true.

They do not get much more textbook than Little Richard. All of the original fifties rockers had their strong points and little (or big) things that distinguished them from the rest of the pack. Chuck Berry, Jerry Lee Lewis, Eddie Cochran, Gene Vincent, the list goes on and on. But little Richard was a unique package. Flamboyant to the point of swish, sharp dresser, mile high hair, and that band he had behind him smoked. Earl Palmer on drums, Lee Allen on tenor sax and Alvin "Red" Tyler on baritone sax, Frank Fields on bass and Edgar Blanchard on guitar, that's the line up on most of his early hits. Just Palmer or Allen alone are enough to make you pay attention, not that you need more than Little Richard himself. But it's all there on  those early records, the driving beat, the honking sax, the piano pounding, and that glorious screaming without screaming voice. Well dressed gravel.

~ NOTE: ALL MEDIA IS HOSTED BY THE BLOGS & SITES NAMED BELOW ~

Listen:
Little Richard - Slippin' and Slidin' mp3 at Stolen Records
Little Richard - Keep-A Knockin' mp3 at The New LoFi
Little Richard - Rip It Up mp3 at Kid America Club
Little Richard - The Girl Can't Help It mp3 at Blog Rage

THE RETURN OF SHIT WEEK

I woke up this morning and before I even had a sip of coffee I got some bad news. My friend Espen commented (comment below) on an old post that drummer Tony Allen had passed. So, fuck, I guess shit week is on. I don't care if anything else crappy happens this week. Losing Florian Schneider and Tony Allen back to back qualifies as a shit week by itself.

Seeing as how I'd just posted the songs below a year and a half ago, I'm not going to bother looking for more. If you're wondering if any of this is worth your time I should point out that Tony Allen was perhaps the greatest living drummer when he passed. A phenomenal talent. So, here's what was posted in September 2018 with a few minor update tweaks.

Hell yeah. I'm not going to give this a second thought. If you're at all into Tony Allen, the drummer behind the Fela back in the day, or Fela's music, or afrobeat, or even drummers for that matter, buckle up. Melting Pot recently posted a two hour radio show that's all Tony Allen, with an interview and a shit load of music, and it's split into two download-able segments. If you're not familiar with Allen, know this. He is a master, no one trick pony. Afrobeat, jazz, and a stint in The Good, The Bad and the Queen (which included Paul Simonon from the Clash and some other rock dudes). Hell, he had Ginger Baker's respect and that's not easy to come by.

Here's the radio show, and links to some other stuff that's been posted before so you don't have to go digging.

~ NOTE: ALL MEDIA IS HOSTED BY THE BLOGS & SITES NAMED BELOW ~

Listen:
Tony Allen Tribute and Interview at Melting Pot Originally aired on KPFK
Tony Allen - Crazy Afrobeat mp3 at Augasm
Tony Allen - Every Season mp3 at Augasm
Tony Allen - Elewon Po mp3 at Aurgasm
Tony Allen and Africa 70- No Discrimination (streaming) at YouTube
Fela Kuti - Live! - Full Album (streaming) at YouTube With Tony Allen and Ginger Baker
Tony Allen - Secret Agent mp3 at Honorama
Recent stuff (2017):
Tony Allen - Moanin' (streaming) at Twisted Soul Art Blakely cover
Tony Allen - Push and Pull (streaming) at Impose
Tony Allen - Wolf Eats Wolf (streaming) at Burl Veneer
Visit:
When Tony Allen Met Fela Kuti at Red Bull Academy
Tony Allen, Drummer Who Created the Beat of Afrobeat, Dies at 79 at NY Times

YES, COOLER THAN YOU.

Boy, I sure didn't expect this. When I heard this afternoon that Florian Schneider passed away I actually felt a human emotion, for a man whose music was intentionally robotic and soulless. Schneider was one of the founders of Kraftwerk, as such a sort of electronic godfather. Their 1974 hit "Autobahn" was one of the earliest uses of synthesized music on a pop record. Less than ten years after it was released, the whole electro/synth pop thing exploded but not before they released Man Machine in 1978, their most perfectly crafted LP to date at that point. That record was all the rage with my friends and I, enough to stage a copy cat photo on a boring summer evening.

Kraftwerk has been in my collection for years. To wit, I remember driving my '61 Ford Falcon with a used FM radio just installed and "Autobahn" being played as I drove downtown for some long forgotten punk show. Being that I was listening to it, in my car and in stereo, I imagined myself on the autobahn, nevermind the fact that the speed limit was 55 MPH and my car could barely go 65 with a tailwind. That had to have been in the mid-late seventies. Yeah, that old. Point is, I've been listening to Kraftwerk a long time. No wonder I felt a human emotion.

~ NOTE: ALL MEDIA IS HOSTED BY THE BLOGS & SITES NAMED BELOW ~

Listen:
Kraftwerk - Elektrisches Roulette mp3 at Pretty Goes With Pretty 1973
Kraftwerk - Autobahn mp3 at Get the Curse (?) 1974
Kraftwerk - Radioactivity mp3 at 666 Thrash Tripes (?) 1975
Kraftwerk - Die Roboter mp3 at Dark and White (?) 1978
Kraftwerk - The Man Machine mp3 at UCSB 1978
Kraftwerk - Electro Kardiogramm Roulette mp3 at Acquiesce to Music 2003
Africa Bambaataa - Planet Rock mp3 at Tumblr 1982 Kraftwerk sampled.
David Bowie - V-2 Schneider (streaming) at YouTube 1977 Named after Florian Schneider.
Video: 
Kraftwerk - Köln II (live in TV studio) at YouTube 1971 Long hair, overalls, flute, guitar, drums!
Kraftwerk - Three more early videos at Beware of the Blog
Kraftwerk - Radioactivity (French TV 1978) at YouTube
Kraftwerk - Live, Lattitude Festival UK 2013 at YouTube
Lemmchen Primary School - The Robots at YouTube Cover by kids in cardboard robot costumes. Keeping the torch lit.

LOCK DOWN THEATER NIGHT 14

Well, shit, when Marc Bolan stuff appears a bunch of times in the matter of a couple weeks it's time for a link dump. Here's all that I ran across, and it's plenty, particularly for any of you that don't know T Rex or Mark Bolan. The video below is a short documentary that aired in 1997 on the twentieth anniversary of his death. That gets me out of doing a thumbnail bio. There's a handful of songs down there and if there's one thing to take away from them, it's the guitar tone. Man, it's a light crunch, like Mick Ronson Lite. That might account for half of the T Rex fans, the other fans likely thought of him as a heartthrob. Those would be the female fans, for the most part anyways. But one thing I kind of like about Bolan was that he was one of the few that bridged the gap between glam and punk rock. If you've read any old punk bios, be it the Clash, Sex Pistols or other, you'll know that a good percentage of them cite T Rex as a pre-punk favorite. Bolan had a short lived TV show in the months before his death (links below). Some of the bands that appeared on the show were borderline punk bands. Generation X (Billy Idol's band before going solo), the Jam, the Boomtown Rats, and Eddie and the Hot Rods, along with a bunch of other bands that were big in England at the time but I've never heard of. Oh, and Bowie was on the last show, the famous guitar face incident.

~ NOTE: ALL MEDIA IS HOSTED BY THE BLOGS & SITES NAMED BELOW ~

Listen:
T Rex - Solid Gold Easy Action mp3 at Get The Curse (?)
Marc Bolan - Children of the Revolution mp3 at Passion at the Weiss
T Rex - Bang A Gong mp3 at Tumblr
T Rex - Lean Woman Blues mp3 at Tumblr
T Rex - Girl mp3 at Tumblr
T Rex - Rip Off mp3 at Tumblr
T Rex - 20th Century Boy mp3 at Tumblr
Video:
Marc Show, Nos 1-6 at YouTube
Marc Show, No 1 at YouTube with the Jam and Showaddywaddy
Marc Show, No 3 at YouTube with the Boomtown Rats, Hawkwind
Marc Show, No 4 at YouTube with the Steve Gibbons Band, Roger Taylor (Queen)
Marc Show, No 6 at YouTube with Generation X, Eddie and the Hot Rods, David Bowie

LOCK DOWN THEATER NIGHT 13

This ain't really my cup of tea, but it warrants a bookmark nonetheless. Depending on how old you are, you may like it, laugh at it, hate it, or long for "the good ol' days". Someone posted a shitload of old MTV clips at Internet Archive, and I mean shitload. And they're apt to be taken down, so go there soon if you're interested.

For you younger folk, you gotta know that MTV used to be almost exclusively music videos. All sorts of shit, all the time. It was a new format and it really did plug along a good many years like that, primarily music videos. Then some sort of shit hit the fan, I don't know because the novelty had already worn off and I was rarely watching it. But seemingly overnight the non-music shows took over. Probably because a big chunk of their original viewership was just as bored as I was. Now it's just another bad network.

There's a whole mess of multi-hour blocks from the eighties going back to the very first broadcast (from August 1, 1981). There's also special themed shows, guest VJs, best-of shows, and other miscellaneous crap including the broadcast of Live Aid in the mid-eighties. Many, many hours of music videos. It might not be your first choice, but probably good enough while you're working on that jigsaw puzzle.

~ NOTE: ALL MEDIA IS HOSTED BY THE BLOGS & SITES NAMED BELOW ~

Listen:
80s MTV VHS Recordings 1981 to 1989 Collection at Internet Archive Scroll down the page for the complete listings.

AND SHE LOOKED COOL DOING IT

When it comes to Hammond B3, there are quite a few male organists that come to mind (do your "that's what she said" thing, we'll wait), but only one female. As far as I know anyway. But Shirley Scott is the one I know, and I dig the shit out of her. I just ran across a live video, which apparently is something that doesn't pop up that often. It's a good one despite the sound quality, but there's a couple of other songs down there as well. If your Hammond listening is restricted to the three Jimmys and Brother Jack McDuff, you'll dig these.

~ NOTE: ALL MEDIA IS HOSTED BY THE BLOGS & SITES NAMED BELOW ~

Listen:
Shirley Scott - Messie Bessie mp3 at Saxosaurus
Shirley Scott - I Wish I Knew How It Would Feel To Be Free mp3 at Internet Archive (?)