Dates announced for first tour since 2003
By Mark C. Brown 1 hour ago
It's hard to believe it has been nine years since Neil Young and Crazy Horse launched a full tour (and some fans don't even count it - at every show on the 2003 tour, "Greendale" was performed in its entirety with sets and actors, with just a handful of Young classics thrown in as encores). With the album "Americana" due out June 5, Young has announced several dates over what looks like a very slim summer tour. Those include two nights at Red Rocks in Colorado (where Young filmed a show for release in 2000), the Outside Lands festival in San Francisco for three nights and then three more nights at New Orleans' Voodoo Fest in October.
That's one odd touring schedule no matter how you cut it. Presumably the missing dates will be filled in soon.Fans who worried about "Americana" - it's all covers of classic American songs - are breathing a little easier as tracks emerge. The song "Jesus' Chariot" (better known as "She'll Be Comin' Round the Mountain") has been released and there's plenty of Crazy Horse rock along with wailing guitar solos to satisfy the hardcore.
Like Bruce Springsteen and the E Street Band, Neil Young and Crazy Horse is one of those pairings that fans just expect to see -- but history has shown us in both cases that it can be fleeting. This is the must-see tour of the summer.
Genesis singer has one of the rarest collections in the world
By Mark C. Brown 5 hours ago
Jeff Beck loves cars, and George Harrison loved Formula 1 racing. Neil Young is obsessed with trains, be it Lionel tracks or the real deal. Bob Dylan paints, and Jack White is into taxidermy. Elton John and Rod Stewart are both so obsessed with soccer that they've written songs about them. Ian Anderson owns salmon farms.Phil Collins? He loves the history of Texas, especially what happened at The Alamo.
Collins recently made a trip to Buffalo Gap, Texas to talk about his extensive collection of artifacts and history of The Alamo and the American West. He owns a rifle previously owned by Davy Crockett, a genuine Bowie knife owned by Jim Bowie and a Sam Houston snuffbox.
"It keeps me off the streets. What am I going to do? I don't want to traipse around the world anymore," he told Steve Campbell of the Fort Worth Star-Telegram. "I love it. I sit downstairs in my basement and looking at and sort of drooling over what I've got. It was never my intention to have this huge collection, but one thing led to another and it's my private thing."
He has written a new book, "The Alamo and Beyond, A Collector's Journey." It chronicles his obsession with the place ever since watching TV as a child and his first trip to the landmark when Genesis toured the U.S. in the '70s. In recent years he has funded archeological digs and built his collection into one of the finest in the world. Hey, there are worse ways to spend your money.
This time it's a photo rather than the music
By Mark C. Brown Tue 9:18 AM
Fans and fanatics have made a cottage industry out of playing the music of The Beatles backwards, be it to get clues about whether Paul is dead or whether the band was singing something nasty in the inner groove of the "Sgt. Pepper" album.Here's the Beatles in reverse again, but this time it's a legit rarity. It's amazing that the cover of "Abbey Road" ended up being such an iconic photo, because the "session" involved walking back and forth across a crosswalk outside the studio and letting a photographer get off a few quick shots. Outtakes have leaked over the years, but now you can legitimately own one. The above photo of the band going the "wrong" way across the famous crosswalk now goes up for auction in England, according to The Guardian. Notice that in the photo Paul McCartney is wearing his sandals, bolstering his explanation of why he took his shoes off that day. He claimed he was hot; I hope he was simply embarrassed by those clogs.
If you look at all the outtakes, it really is a miracle that Iain Macmillan got a usable image at all. There are only six actual crosswalk shots, most of them looking like a tourist's snapshot, while one captures the four perfectly spaced, perfectly in pace with each other.
Legendary bassist joins heaven's rhythm section
By percy thrillington Mon 4:17 PM
The New York Times obit is here:
Duck Dunn, whose simple but inventive bass playing anchored numerous hit records and helped define the sound of Memphis soul music, died early Sunday in Tokyo, where he had been on tour. He was 70.
His death was announced online by the guitarist Steve Cropper, a longtime associate and fellow member of the instrumental quartet Booker T. and the MG’s, who said Mr. Dunn died in his sleep but did not specify a cause. Mr. Dunn and Mr. Cropper had been performing at the Tokyo Blue Note with a Stax Records alumni band.
As the resident bassist at Stax’s studio in Memphis for much of the 1960s, Mr. Dunn provided the solid, bluesy foundation for classic soul records like Wilson Pickett’s “In the Midnight Hour,” Sam & Dave’s “Hold On, I’m Coming,” Albert King’s “Born Under a Bad Sign” and a long string of hits by Otis Redding, with whom he and other Stax studio musicians also performed at the Monterey International Pop Festival in 1967.
Stax recordings were known for their raw, down-home soulfulness, a striking contrast to the urbane slickness of Stax’s friendly rival, Motown. Mr. Dunn’s playing was an essential element of the Stax sound.
Booker T. and the MG’s (the initials stood for Memphis Group), whose members — Mr. Dunn, Mr. Cropper, the drummer Al Jackson and the organist Booker T. Jones — were also the core of the Stax studio band, had a few memorable hit singles on its own, among them “Hip Hug-Her” and “Time Is Tight.” (Mr. Dunn did not play on the group’s first and biggest hit, “Green Onions,” which reached No. 3 on the Billboard chart in 1962; at the time he was a member of another instrumental ensemble, the Mar-Keys, which had a No. 3 hit of its own in 1961 with “Last Night.”) The group was unusual for the era in that it was racially integrated: Mr. Dunn and Mr. Cropper were white, Mr. Jones and Mr. Jackson were black.
After Booker T. and the MG’s disbanded in the early 1970s, Mr. Dunn remained active at Stax as a session musician and occasional producer. He also performed or recorded with a long list of well-known artists, including Eric Clapton, Bob Dylan, Levon Helm, John Fogerty and Crosby, Stills, Nash and Young. Reviewing a concert by Mr. Clapton in 1985, Robert Palmer of The New York Times praised Mr. Dunn as “perhaps rock’s most impeccably springy bassist” and said that his presence raised the band’s “level of playing all by itself.”
One of Mr. Dunn’s most high-profile sideman jobs was with the band that backed John Belushi and Dan Aykroyd in their incarnation as the Blues Brothers, playing a repertory that mixed Chicago-style electric blues with Stax-style R&B. The members of the band, who also included Mr. Cropper, had speaking as well as musical roles in the 1980 movie “The Blues Brothers” and were also in the belated sequel, “Blues Brothers 2000” (1998), which starred Mr. Aykroyd and John Goodman.
“Other than Booker’s band, that’s the most fun band I’ve ever been in,” Mr. Dunn told Vintage Guitar magazine in 2007.
Booker T. and the MG’s reunited periodically, although they were without a regular drummer after Mr. Jackson was fatally shot in 1975. Their later appearances included a tour as Neil Young’s backing band in 1993. The band was inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in 1992 and received a lifetime achievement Grammy Award in 2007.
Donald Dunn was born in Memphis on Nov. 24, 1941, and acquired his nickname as a child. After Mr. Cropper, a childhood friend, began playing guitar, Mr. Dunn took up the electric bass — because, he liked to say, it had two fewer strings than a guitar — and the two were working around town while still in high school with the band that would become the Mar-Keys. He followed Mr. Cropper into the Stax studios and was a member of Booker T. and the MG’s by the mid-1960s.
Survivors include his wife, June; his son, Jeff; and a grandson.
Merge Records donates its papers to UNC Library
By percy thrillington Fri 6:12 PM
Merge Records have announced on their blog that the label will donate its archives to the University of North Carolina. The collection of "music, art, and other ephemera from 23 years of releasing music we love" will open to the public in 2013, and will be located at the Southern Folklife Collection at UNC's Wilson Library in Chapel Hill.
Merge was founded in 1989 in Chapel Hill by Laura Ballance and Mac McCaughan of Superchunk. The label has released music by Arcade Fire, Neutral Milk Hotel, Spoon, the Magnetic Fields, Destroyer, Lambchop, Dinosaur Jr., M. Ward/She & Him, Conor Oberst, and many, many more.
The Southern Folklife Collection at UNC was also opened in 1989. The non-circulating collection is dedicated to "all forms of southern musical and oral traditions" in the arts. According to the SFC website, the collection is "especially rich in materials documenting the emergence of old-time, country-western, hillbilly, bluegrass, blues, gospel, Cajun and zydeco musics" as well as the post-1950s folk revival.
It contains "photographs, periodicals, ephemera, manuscripts, video, posters, research files, and manuscript materials", including over 160,000 recordings on 78 rpm and 45 rpm discs, LPs, cassettes, CDs, reel-to-reel tape, cylinders, acetate discs, wire recordings, and more.
Steve Weiss, Curator of the Southern Folklife Collection, said, "We're deeply honored to work with Merge to preserve and provide access to their archives. The Merge Records Collection is an invaluable resource for the study of music, art, and culture of our region."
Rihanna (finally) unfollows Chris Brown on Twitter
By percy thrillington Thu 5:02 PM
The song wherein Kanye West debuted his romance with Kim Kardashian was recently appropriated by Chris Brown, who lets loose in a few freestyle verses — and Rihanna’s not happy about it.
At one point on the track, Brown woos us with the lines, ”Don’t f**k with my old bitch, it’s like a bad fur / Every industry n—– done had her / Shook the tree like a pumpkin just to smash her / Bitch is breaking codes, but I’m the password.”
The identity of this “old bitch” is up for interpretation, obviously, but Rihanna (who in the past, has been romantically linked to Drake, Justin Timberlake, and Josh Hartnett) seemed to have a hunch. After Breezy debuted the song on his Twitter, RiRi tweeted, “Aw, poor dat #neaux1currrrr” and promptly unfollowed Brown’s Twitter account.
How did Brown respond? By unfollowing her back, of course, and also tweeting, “Assumptions! I didn’t say any names so if u took offense to it then its something you feel guilty about.”
You can hear the song in question here, if you need to.
A short history of a nearly dead format
By Mark C. Brown May 9, 2012 12:12PM
We told you about the Buck Owens flexi-discs that were part of the promotion for Record Store Day this year. A lot of younger fans probably don’t know much about flexi-discs, but everyone from The Archies to Eric Clapton used to include them on anything from cereal boxes to magazines. They were floppy, you had to put them on a turntable and hold them down with a couple of nickels to get them to play, and the sound ranged from good (flexis) to terrible (the ones cut off of cereal boxes).
But here to give us a refresher course and some rare sounds is the Internet Museum of Flexi /Cardboard/Oddity Records. Not only have they found some insane flexis, they've put up sound samples of a bunch of them. Check them all out at the link above, but here are some highlights.
For starters, here's R.E.M.'s somewhat-rare version of Syd Barrett’s “Dark Globe” from Sassy Magazine.
Guns N' Roses discuss the very literal title given to their song “Night Train.”
The recently deceased Dick Clark lives on in a flexi where he talks about the acts that appeared on "American Bandstand" (and let's refrain from any "hole in the head" jokes).
Finally, the Beach Boys sing to the ultimate California girl, Barbie.
| Tags: | recordedmusicrock |
TV Comic gets major rock stars to guest on his new album
By percy thrillington May 8, 2012 4:28PM
Jimmy Fallon will release his second album, Blow Your Pants Off, on June 12th. Unlike his 2002 comedy record The Bathroom Wall, which mixed goofy songs with standup performances, the new disc is focused mainly on song parodies and team-ups with high-profile rock stars from his gig hosting Late Night on NBC.
Blow Your Pants Off will include Fallon's impressions of Neil Young, David Bowie, Jim Morrison and Bob Dylan, as well as guest performances by Justin Timberlake, Eddie Vedder, Bruce Springsteen, Paul McCartney, Big & Rich, Stephen Colbert, Brian Williams and Dave Matthews. A number of songs, including "History of Rap" and "Balls in Your Mouth," have already been viral hits.
The track listing for Blow Your Pants Off is as follows:
"Neil Young Sings 'Fresh Prince of Bel-Air'"
"History of Rap" (feat. Justin Timberlake)
"Tebowie"
"Scrambled Eggs" (feat. Paul McCartney)
"The Doors Sing 'Reading Rainbow'"
"Balls In Your Mouth" (feat. Eddie Vedder)
"My Upstairs Neighbors Are Having Sex (And Listening to the Black Eyed Peas)"
"Bob Dylan Sings 'Charles in Charge'"
"Walk of Shame" (feat. Dave Matthews)
"Slow Jam the News" (feat. Brian Williams)
"New French Girlfriend"
"Cougar Huntin’" (feat. Big & Rich)
"You Spit When You Talk"
"Friday" (feat. Stephen Colbert)
"Neil Young Sings 'Whip My Hair'" (feat. Bruce Springsteen)
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