Christmas

Season's greetings and best wishes to everyone out there in cyberwhatever. This has been an extraordinary year in so many respects, and I feel very fortunate to be who and where I am at this moment in time. So it's only fitting to have an extraordinary video, from The Who, at the very top of their game. Keith Moon is so excited by Christmas that he finds it hard to stay in his seat.

Scenes from London life

The Memphians

I don't know when this is set for release, but I sure would love to see it.

Brian Eno Day, 1988

I can't imagine when I will ever have the 12 uninterrupted hours required to listen to this. Perhaps I'll take the day off on February 12, 2013, the 25th (!) anniversary of this original Brian Eno Day.

Steve Reich at UC Berkeley University Museum (November 7, 1970)

And as a bonus, a radio interview from the same year!

Paper and Iron

Okay, Capitalism, let's see what you've got for me this week. Happy Monday to wage slaves everywhere.

We Jam Econo

Something for the weekend: the story of legendary California band The Minutemen. I never saw them live, but I did manage to catch the successor band Firehose once or twice. If only scientists had worked out how to harness their energy...

Scenes from London life

Growing old in public

I turned 50 at the end of October. In recent years, as I pondered the relentless approach of this event, I wondered if, come the day, I would feel depressed or freaked out. When it arrived, I had quiet celebrations on a very small scale, thought about all the interesting experiences and good fortune I've enjoyed in life, offered quiet thanks for all the wonderful people I've known and the loving family and group of friends who have always been there for me. And, fulfilling an aspiration I developed over the past year, I managed to play a good gig with a talented band behind me, just two days before I crossed the threshold. There's not much video from the event, but these are the ones. We have a number of working names, but none which has stuck yet. On bass, Matt Bowers, and on drums Charlie Hoskyns. The event was a charity fundraiser guerilla art show at a disused and unheated garage/vehicle inspection centre in my local 'hood, on a cold, rainy Sunday evening. And why not? Onward!

Self-reflection

Photo by will.the.brain

All You Need is Cash

I can remember when this first aired in the States, and I bought the soundtrack album and listened to it heavily for a number of years. I rented it on DVD recently and nearly wet myself, I was laughing so hard. It's top-notch satire, but what really makes this amazing (as I've ranted previously) is Neil Innes' brilliantly observed songs, each of which incorporates elements from several different Beatles songs.

Evening Star

Today ended with one of the most beautiful autumn evenings I can ever recall in London, and the colours of the sunset, as well as the feelings they inspired, took me back to this wondrous album.

Scenes from London life

Riding with Neil

Neil Young is 67 today. There are few people as cool, in my book, and I struggle to think of many who have brought me as much enjoyment through their music.

Back in ancient times, there was a guy named Larry whose parents lived across the park from my house in East Memphis. He was a couple of years older than me, and I didn't really know him when we were kids, though I did have a crush on his younger sister at the time. Years later, when my buddy, Mark Edwards, and I were trying to start our first band, we "auditioned" (a pompous and misleading term, given that typically it felt like we were trying to woo people to join in our tuneless racket-making) Larry as a drummer. I had seen him at some sort of university party with another band, and he was a decent drummer, plus he was a funny guy and seemed to know how to have a good time.

Anyway, invariably our rehearsals in those days were short on musical content and long on drinking and talking. Larry regaled us with tales of his job as a room service waiter at the Hilton in East Memphis. He seemed to have met all sorts of rock stars in the course of his work, and it must have been a real shock to knock on the door of room 515, or whatever, only to discover Pete Townshend on the other side. But he seemed to be pretty cool about it all. Maybe it was all made up, who knows, and who cares?

The best one I remember was when he knocked on a door and was greeted by a very bored Neil Young, who bribed him to take him out in his car to buy a six pack of beer and drive him around Memphis for a couple of hours, talking and listening to the radio as Neil smoked the occasional "left-handed cigarette."

More from the Panther vaults

I've never seen this gem before, but thanks to the miracle of YouTube, here we witness Lorette Velvette, Giovanna Pizzorno, and George Reinecke, tooling around in Tav Falco's signature 1965 Thunderbird through some of Memphis' most scenic streetscapes, and into the wilds of Mississippi along Highway 61, before encountering the man himself, to the band's cover of Z.Z. Hill's classic "Shade Tree Mechanic." I think this was 1988/89, because I remember missing a party at which I believe this may have had its premier, as I was living in Japan at the time. But it was a long time ago, and I could be wrong.


 

Panther Burns, 1979

I wish there were more footage from this era on the web. This would be about six months to a year before I first saw them play, but this is very much the way I remember them sounding, apart from the fact that Alex and Ross seem much more coherent and sober in this footage. I don't recognize the venue, but through the murky light I think I recognize a few young faces as being familiar. Also noteworthy is that the band was still known as "Panther Burn" at this point.

Elected

Apparently there is something happening in the political arena Stateside today. If only a cigar-smoking chimp and alcoholic, snake-handling rock-star were actually involved...

Happy Halloween

Here's some truly scary music. A couple of years ago on a car trip, I tormented my children with "War Pigs" several times, and my younger daughter astutely observed, "He's rhymed 'masses' with 'masses' - how stupid is that?" I can't argue. Stupid it may be, but stupid can be heavy and awesome too.

Roba (Robbery)

During most of my final days in Memphis in the early 90's, I pretty much just listened to jazz and ethnic music of various descriptions, and in parallel with the Tuvan rabbit hole I fell down, I also developed a serious sweet tooth for the amazing sounds coming out of Madagascar at the time. I spent so much time listening to D'Gary that I began to have serious doubts about whether it was even worth ever picking up a guitar again, and Tarika Sammy's second album was also in very heavy rotation. Every track on it would have been a hit, in my view, if not for the language barrier, strange instrumentation, and whirling polyrhythmic patterns which often seem to turn in on themselves, mesmerizing and disorienting Western ears. Still, they were commercial enough to make the New Orleans Jazzfest, and this is a great performance, with the added bonus of my old Memphis chum Candace Mache being visible in the audience in the opening seconds.

Scenes from London life