Iggy Is Old and Real

"It's just a pig-headed f**king thing I have that a real f**king group––when they're an older group––they also make f**king records.  They don't just go and twiddle around on stage to make a bunch of f**king money... this is not the f**king Smashing Pumpkins ––oh, we've got the bald guy and whoever––no... the only thing I have left to say is that The Stooges are a real group."


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mozallowfullscreen allowFullScreen> Iggy and the Stooges Scarecrow from Fat Possum Records on Vimeo.
Forty years after the last one, there's a new Stooges record coming. Iggy's guitarist and songwriting partner from Raw Power, James Williamson (they hadn't played together in 30 years), reunited with the passing of Ron Asheton in 2009. Ron's brother, drummer Scott Asheton––the band's only other consistent member along with Iggy––also remains. Mike Watt plays bass. (If you'd like an update on their history, here's a good one.)



Here's some of what we're in for:

An Infantile Talking Heads

Two years before the release of their first album, a baby version of Talking Heads played CBGB's as a three piece. Their performance would feature a nascent version of Psycho Killer with slightly different lyrics. At times bassist Tina Weymouth's muse is writing her a different arrangement and she jumps ahead to places singer Byrne doesn't follow. Still, this performance is a great archaeological record of an astonishingly fertile period of musical time and space, CBGB's of the late 70s, a period whose power still continues to radiate.



I was a big fan of the first three Talking Heads records and for those of us who followed Punk and New Wave fashion of the time, these albums were landmarks. Since then, David Byrne has become a TED talking elder statesmen of culture and the offshoot project The Tom Tom Club created the most ridiculously oversampled snippet in music history (Genius of Love). Still, these three albums have lost none of original their luster.

Go here for the complete video of the night's performance.

57 seconds of the Talking Heads Trio doing 96 Tears:

Appreciation to Haroon Akram-Lodhi for the heads up.

Here's Byrne with Richard Thompson doing a two song medley that includes 96 Tears.

Saint Jeffrey

This hagiographic documentary on the short life and shorter career of a Jeff Buckley may be an example of the rare occasion when the hagiographic treatment is appropriate. If you've ever wondered how something like Jeff Buckley could happen, a figure capable of becoming the major musical figure of his generation (the vid compares him to Dylan and Springsteen), then this video is highly recommend. 

If nothing else you'll find yourself dragging your old Buckleys (père and fils) out to play again.

The documentary is a heartbreaking refresher on what might've been. Maybe I'm a just a gooey sap but I've been brought to tears many times during Grace's last divine wail near the end. I've said it before, Buckley's was a voice thousands of years in the making––a voice that may be one of those moments when humanity's potential is realized (not that there aren't many others to choose from). Often such boyish beauty as his can be a handicap to seeing in the grandiose sense, but in Buckley's case his fragrance model's face may've helped to raise him to a vantage point where he could see more of life and better feel its truest yearnings. His drummer Matt Johnson argues as someone who knew him that the yearning on the Grace album is nearly unbearable. It's a caliber of yearning, he says, that could change a listener's life. Legendary Cocteau Twins singer Elizabeth Fraser and one of Buckley's idols, the two recorded a collaboration together, abashedly admits that in their time together she found it impossible not to fall in love with him.

If nothing else, this doc will help you hear his yearning and forever change the way you hear the album. Some may even fall in love.





And this: Buckley is a call-in guest on a radio program and proceeds to sing his heart out over the phone (with harmonica). When have you ever heard anyone do that? (The music doesn't begin until about 4:35.)

The Greatest Voices in Metal? *Yawn*

I grew up during the punk era so metal to me was the soundtrack for barely literate, crooked-toothed stoners, those whose THC soaked brains lacked the attention span for Dungeons and Dragons. For them, the epic sludge of an Iron Maiden or Judas Priest was the right choice––a Playskool-cum-Harryhausen version of D and D.

So it was until the 80s, an era that eschewed fairy tale phantasmagorias in favor of the more streetwise hair-sprayed bubblegum of a Poison and Motley Crue.

Still, if you're shameless headbanger who dreams of taking the family on an old school metal cruise next summer, then dig this: A list of the greatest voices in metal. Ronnie James Dio, my friends, was apparently as good as it got. This according to the forthcoming book The Merciless Book of Metal Lists. See the entire article about it here.

1. Ronnie James Dio (Black Sabbath, Dio)
2. Rob Halford (Judas Priest)
3. Bruce Dickinson (Iron Maiden)
4. Eric Adams (Manowar)
5. Geoff Tate (Queensrÿche)
6. King Diamond (Mercyful Fate, King Diamond)
7. Tom Araya (Slayer)
8. John Bush (Armored Saint/Ant)

I thought you should know.

Time marches on, even for the titans of metal––Eventually, even the edgiest and coolest of us will grow to look like exotically facial-haired versions of our dads.

What Hendrix (might've) said

As said Abe Lincoln in the popular meme, The problem with quotes on the internet is that it is hard to verify their authenticity. My own cursory Googling reveals many claims of the below quote as indeed Hendrix, which could represent a thoughtful consensus or just sloppy research. While Hendrix was no doubt a genius and capable of turning a clever phrase, on this one color me skeptical. Still, whoever is the author it's worth repeating. (For some reason it was paired with this rather unsagely image): 

The image below may prove that all greatness begins with a nerd––Jimi in the military at 19:

Here's Hendrix's first TV appearance from 1965––see him working it a little harder than everyone else. There are no small roles, only small players.

A year earlier Hendrix bent some strings for the Isley Brothers and made an indelible impression on budding guitarist and little brother Ernie Isley.



The classic period most of us remember:

The vid I originally posted no longer allows embedding. Here's a looser (now doubt stoned) performance from Woodstock in 1969:



And lest you think Hendrix is no longer relevant, the latest album release of his tomb-raided material just topped the charts.

And this: Prepare to fall in love––Hendrix on the gayageum (!). No lemon or "O" faces, no ecstatic head tilts or spandex, just funky as s**t playing that's tighter than J-Lo's yoga pants. Here name is Luna Lee:



More Luna Lee covers here.

I Remember

Gawd, I love this song. The original being a heart-cracking minor key lament of histrionic proportions paired with the adorable voice of The Shangri-Las 16 year old Mary Weiss. It just doesn't ever get old. Even my kids have fallen in love with it and dropped it onto their 'Pods. 

Here's a more recent rendition getting a thumb's worth of Beck juice (that's the guitar wizard Jeff, not the Scientologist) giving some new buff to the old nugget. A Jeff Beck guitar solo ain't just a wank, it's an event and Irish singer Imelda May has the equipment to keep up. She throws out some chops here that could sucker punch Bruce Lee. Sweet meat, this is.



And the Shangs from 1964: 

A Lounging Hysteria

In college I worked as a bartender in the sort of red meat and white table cloth establishment your grandfather would've gotten drunk in: Chain smokers and 10 versions of filet covered in egg yolks. Now, these anachronisms are mostly gone from the planet outside a few time-capsulized curiosities. (In my neighborhood it's The Buggy Whip and Dear John's. And, of course, there's the legendary Dresden Room.)

Piano bars were where gray-headed and tipsy patrons dropped a couple of bills in a oversized brandy snifter and requested some fusty old standard they'd never listen to at home. Where I worked only hidebound jazz purists played––to not much interest––with the occasional appearance of an Uzzi-fingered and sequined-jacketed player who'd blitz through the usual while adding the odd movie theme or show tune. (Memory and One have left bitter skid marks on my brain.) Younger guys might work in the odd pop tune (Michael Jackson or Cyndi Lauper most likely) but for the most part it was just abstracted tin pan alley tunes with a few chord substitutions.

If the lounge is ever going to survive it'll need some major retooling. There aren't enough geeks with record players and aging boomers remembering the music of their parents (like me) to feel like finger poppin' to Edie Gormé and Tony Bennett anymore. Therefore, I offer Vikatoriya Yermolyeva, Russian-schooled neo-goth piano babe and piano coverer extraordinaire. Forget Sinatra, how about System of the Down and Slayer? Then she's your gal. Vika is easily the best of anyone you'll find on YouTube and she does it without slathering on egoistic new layers of harmonic complexity. She stays true to the originals. Possibly as a result of her torturous Russian music schooling, her ear is more accurate than a cold war era smart bomb.

Dig her sexy left hand rendering of the Hysteria bass line: pure piano cover porn.  



You want to play what she's playing? She'll sell you a transcription.