BLOW WITH RY

It might be because I've been reading so much non-fiction lately, but Ry Cooder's book of short stories, Los Angeles Stories, is hard to put down. It's noir type stuff, all centered in L.A. and surrounding areas. There's all sorts of offbeat characters: musicians, car guys, thieves, racketeers, bar owners, restaurant owners, gun shop owners. There's greasy spoons, flop houses, bars, beaches, highways and cars of all sorts. Coming from a musician, I wasn't expecting to be sucked in. But it's good, really good. Like a Raymond Chandler book, with all sorts of references to places that you'll recognize if you're from Southern California, but Cooder's work has musicians who make cameo appearances, most names only the fiendish will recognize. Yee haw, some background investigatin'. Seriously, I may read it again just to revisit the references. In just one story there's Lorrie Collins (Collins Kids), Joe Maphis, Merle Travis and Paul Bigsby, the latter the designer of the Bigsby vibrato tailpiece, And Bigsby's name-dropped in another. All that and crime, drinking, a whole lotta shootings, fast cars, murdercycles, and women. Transvestites, coaches, landlords, trolley drivers and cheeseburgers. And.whiskey, and coffee and cigarettes. And a lot of questions.

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Listen:

Joe Maphis and Rose Lee - Dim Lights, Thick Smoke mp3 at Rocky 52 1953
Joe Maphis - Guitar Rock 'n' Roll mp3 at Rocky 52 1956
The Collins Kids - Beetle Bug Bop mp3 at Rocky 52 1955
Merle Travis - Blue Smoke  mp3 at Rocky 52 1957

THE UTILITY GUY

Ry Cooder is so all over the place, it's hard to figure out where to begin. He's played with everybody. His first band, the Rising Sons, included Taj Majal and Ed Cassidy. He was playing with Captain Beefheart by the time he was twenty. He went on to play with the Stones, Van Morrison, Neil Young, Eric Clapton, Randy Newman, David Lindley, The Chieftains, the Buena Vista Social Club, Ali Farka Touré. I think Flaco Jimenez is in there someplace too. He does his own solo stuff too. 

My sister used to have one of his albums, Boomer's Story, but I don't remember her ever listing to it. The first time I really heard him, and knew it was him, was on the budget LP Jamming With Edward. Recorded during the Let It Bleed LP sessions but released after Sticky Fingers and before Exile. The band is Bill Wyman, Charlie Watts, Mick Jagger, Nicky Hopkins and Cooder. It's jams they had while waiting for Keith Richards to return to the studio. Cooder's slide is all over it. Shortly after that I heard Cooder again, with Jagger, on "Memo From Turner" from the soundtrack of the film Performance. Then he started popping up all over the damn place.

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Listen:
Jamming With Edward - Blow With Ry (streaming) at YouTube Cooder, Charlie Watts, Bill Wyman, Mick Jagger, Nicky Hopkins
Mick Jagger with Ry Cooder - Memo From Turner mp3 at ATumblr (?) From Performance OST
Ry Cooder w/Jim Keltner, Ice T and Ice Cude - King of the Street mp3 at Drummer World WTF
Ry Cooder - Down In Hollywood mp3 at Pierre Cabel (?)
Ry Cooder and Ali Farka Touré - [Title unknown] mp3 at H Chicha (?)

SKETCHES OF BOOM BOOM (SLIGHT RETURN)

If you know the film The Hot Spot, you know it's not the greatest. But you likely also know the soundtrack, featuring collaborations with Miles Davis and John Lee Hooker. The shared material is worth hearing for two reasons. One is that you can clearly hear both, and the other is that combination works. Augmented by Taj Mahal on dobro, Roy Rodgers on slide and Earl Palmer on drums, it's a total supergroup of non-rock musicians. Credit producer Jack Nitsche for corralling these epic talents. He's no stranger to that sort of thing (ala Mick Jagger and Ry Cooder's "Memo From Turner" from the soundtrack of Performance).  

The "Ending Credits" cut has been posted here before, but I just ran across the the whole soundtrack, streaming at YouTube. Just let it rip, crank it up and go about your business. (There's YouTube to mp3 converters available online should you be particularly fiendish).

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Listen:
Miles Davis & John Lee Hooker - Ending Credits mp3 at When You Awake From The Hot Spot OST
Mick Jagger with Ry Cooder - Memo From Turner mp3 at ATumblr (?) From Performance OST
The soundtrack
The Hot Spot Original Soundtrack - Composed by Jack Nitsche (streaming) at YouTube
Video:
The Hot Spot Main Title Sequence at YouTube

CHARLIE HAS GOOD BUD

I ran into an interesting post at this weeks salvage yard, Now That's What I Call Bullshit. The site hasn't been updated for a year, but there's a lot of good stuff buried in their old posts. This particular one is from 2009.  It's four songs by the those guys pictured above. I'm not linking to the songs themselves because every time I link to mp3s by them I get a nasty visit from the goon squad. I'll just give you an idea of what's there, give you a link to the post that has them, and be on my way.

It's four oddballs, three of which are Beggars Banquet outtakes. "Pay Your Dues" is an alternate version of "Street Fighting Man" with different lyrics and title. The second is from the last session with Brian Jones, a ten minute version of Muddy Waters's "Still A Fool". The third outtake is"Sweet Lucy", a version of which ended up on Metamorphosis (a cash-in compilation of Stones oddballs), as "Downtown Suzie". The other song is "Memo From Turner", released in two different versions, one on Metamorphosis, and the other on the soundtrack to the film Performance. The one posted over there is the soundtrack version, and is actually Jagger's vocal laid over backing tracks recorded later, the slide by Ry Cooder, with Randy Newman playing piano, and Jack Nitzsche producing. There's at least one other version that's wound up on bootlegs, supposedly with some or all members of Traffic, and few Stones. I'm not sure of all of the details, but there's a whole Wiki page for the song, so dig in if you're so inclined. But, the one on the soundtrack is the defining version, with Cooder's slide, which really is what makes the song.

Besides the four songs mentioned above, as mp3s (at the bottom of their post), and some text, there's a letter from Big Lips McGhee to Andy Warhol, wherein he thanks him for taking on the Sticky Fingers album art job, and then proceeds to make suggestions. Yeesh.

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Listen:
Four Stones oddballs at Now That's What I Call Bullshit (see above)
Rolling Stones - Memo From Turner (streaming) at YouTube Personnel unclear
Rolling Stones - Memo From Turner (streaming) at YouTube Ditto
Video:
Mick Jagger - Memo From Turner at YouTube A clip from the film Performance
Visit:
Memo From Turner entry at Wikipedia
Letter from Jagger to Warhol Large readable scan
Pay Your Dues lyrics (scroll down)

THE DOG ISSUE

I cannot trust anyone who straps their dog to the top of a car. I don't care if they think the dog likes it. Hell, your kid might find it fun being strapped to the roof of your car, but that doesn't make it safe. Anyone with that kind of skewed judgement doesn't get past the door. I wouldn't trust them to come back with the right brand of beer if they were making a beer run, let alone run the country.

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Listen:
Ry Cooder - Mutt Romney Blues mp3 (via Box.net) at The Slow Drag
Devo - Don't Roof Rack Me Bro (streaming) at Soundcloud

PRODUCED BY JACK NITZSCHE

A while back, I ran across someone writing about the soundtrack to Nicolas Roeg's Performance, saying that, upon revisiting it, he was reminded what a great soundtrack it was. My vinyl copy long gone (again, into the DJ ether), it prompted me to repurchase it, and I gotta say, he was right. Some of you are probably aware of the Mick Jagger cut on it, "Memo From Turner," but the quality of the whole thing is more a testament to Jack Nitzsche's conception, production and the talent he amassed.

Nevermind the vocals (Jagger, Merry Clayton, Buffy Sainte-Marie, the Last Poets, and a young Randy Newman), the backing band included Ry Cooder, Lowell George, Gene Clark and Russ Titleman, among others. The instrumentation included everything from soup to nuts: sitar, dulcimer, Cooder bottleneck, and some Moog (that's an early synthesizer, for you young lawn dwellers). I could only find "Memo From Turner," from that soundtrack, so to round things out, here's "The Last Race," a Nitzsche original that old farts might remember from 1965 film, The Village of the Giants, and you youngsters will recognize as a song from Quentin Tarantino's Death Proof. Nitzsche didn't do just soundtracks, he was everywhere, as writer, producer and conduit of talent. To really appreciate Nitzsche, you ought to check out the excellent profile at The Hound Blog. Though the mp3 links have expired, read it. You will be blown away at how many things have Nitzschtink on them. These two are just a molecule on the tip of the iceberg.

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Mick Jagger - Memo From Turner mp3 at Giant Panther
Jack Nitzsche - The Last Race mp3 at MarkMizzles.WhyPrime
Jack Nitzsche - Excellent profile at The Hound
Jack Nitzsche - Exhaustive discography at Spectropop