"it took me about three or four weeks to toilet train my cat, nightlife. most of the time is spent moving the box very gradually to the bathroom." -charles mingus
"she had a chihuahua named carlos that had some kind of skin disease and was totally blind." -tom waits
"he had a huge room with nothing in it except this huge vast hammond organ, right next door to the police." -david bowie
"he's got a mind like a sewer, and a heart like a fridge" -elvis costello
"you can't hold the hand of a rock 'n' roll man." -joni mitchell
"lou's jukebox spun for love and many other things, too: beauty, pain, history, courage, mystery" -laurie anderson
"hey there, hey now, well, you can make a pacemaker blink, easy thing, make a man's heart go bibbity boom. -john cale
"i've still got things inside me, sad things, happy things, that people don't know about." -loretta lynn
"to try to maximize the relationship of listening to a record through promotion is like experiencing driving a car by reading about stimulus programs." -bonnie 'prince' billy
"too much cheesecake too soon! old money's better than new" -roxy music
"my mother used to tell me about vibrations. to think that invisible feelings, invisible vibrations existed scared me to death." -brian wilson
"i could even find it in my heart to love mike love." -belle & sebastian
"i'm going to boogie my scruples away." -lowell george
"i'm a lunatic, and you are so super cool." - george jones
"i'm good and i'm bad and i'm happy and i'm sad and i'm lazy" -willie nelson
"i drive a rolls-royce, cause it's good for my voice." -t.rex
"i mean every letter in the words in the sentences of my quotes." -lil' wayne
"lyrics choochoo from my mouth like locomotion." - pato banton
"i'm dealing in rock and roll. i'm not a bonafide human being." -phil spector
"phil approached me with a bottle of kosher red wine in one hand and a .45 in the other, put his arm around my shoulder and shoved the revolver into my neck and said, 'leonard, i love you.' i said, 'i hope you do, phil.'" -leonard cohen
"they'd whisper at each other and look at phil and whisper at each other. finally this lady, tanked, comes over to phil and says, 'alright, sonny, what's your problem?' and he said, 'premature ejaculation, what's yours?'" -tom wolfe
"i bite my nails and if that fails i go get myself stoned, but when i do i think of you and head myself back home." -gram parsons
"i would say groucho marx, to name one thing, and willie mays, and the second movement of the jupiter symphony, and louis armstrong's recording of potatohead blues, swedish movies, naturally. sentimental education by flaubert, marlon brando, frank sinatra, those incredible apples and pears by cezanne, the crabs at sam wo's, tracy's face." -woody allen
brian eno songs that will make good book titles for my 10-volume memoir, in order: here he comes, baby's on fire, golden hours, brutal ardour, taking tiger mountain, events in dense fog, through hollow lands, some of them are old, everything merges with the night, dead finks don't talk
ry cooder albums that every man should own: into the purple valley, boomer's story, paradise and lunch
"really, we don't want people twiddling their goatees over our stuff." -radiohead
"i love songs about horses, railroads, land, judgment day, family, hard times, whiskey, courtship, marriage, adultery, separation, murder, war, prison, rambling, damnation, home, salvation, death, pride, humor, piety, rebellion, patriotism, larceny, determination, tragedy, rowdiness, heartbreak and love. and mother. and god." -johnny cash
"the moon is clear, the sky is bright, i'm happy as the horse's shite." -the pogues
"i hope that you all out there, young, old, tall, short, fat or thin, quick or slow, no matter what kind or color or shape or person you are, if you like to make music, why, go ahead. -pete seeger
"chuck berry isn't merely the greatest of the rock and rollers, or rather, there's nothing mere about it. say rather that unless we can somehow recycle the concept of the great artist so that it supports chuck berry as well as it does marcel proust, we might as well trash it." -robert christgau
mashable says about us: "expect the unexpected with this awesome gem. groovy." and 33 1/3: "nice to have someone steer me in a worthwhile direction"
#1215: the grateful dead - althea - 1981 (live at rockpalast)
this blog is 16 years old! in 2008, before the global financial crisis, posts were nearly daily. in this economy you can’t do that. and so the max abelson super groovy music video extravaganza has aged and slowed, just like its namesake.
nowadays, to have an expansive idea about what qualifies as a music video rewards you with expansiveness in return. some things i’ve liked recently are the videos that dust-to-digital posts on instagram, which is almost as satisfying as mtv at its peak; alice rohrwacher’s beautiful and dreamy la chimera, where a duo playing guitar and the triangle pop up to sing songs about our hero and his gang, like jonathan richman in there’s something about mary; and anything that aired on rockpalast, this especially.
i’m increasingly of the mind that the body politic really is in need of a phrase that’s close to but not exactly “ok, boomer,” though that specific lingo is no longer good. (it tastes in the mouth like a piece of gum that’s lost its minty freshness). my proposal: “ok, fred,” the title song of errol dunkley’s 1979 reggae album. for extra emphasis as you say it you strike one of the poses from his music video. think about it.
#1213: triston palmer - entertainment (at aces international hi-fi, 1982)
there was a lot of pressure on for the last few months: what should the twelve hundred thirteenth video be? when i heard tristan palmer sing so slow and so low that “entertainment is a form of enjoyment,” i know which video it would be. the people swaying behind him know what he means.
Back in 2009, during the glorious early days of the Super Groovy Music Video Extravaganza, and the early days of Tumblr, I posted a terrific black and white photo of Stevie Wonder from the 1970s. An extremely interesting photographer named Al Satterwhite took it – he also photographed Hunter S. Thompson, Ali, Arnold, and more. My apologies to him for using the photo without his blessing. Keep up the good work, Al.
#1212: trisha brown dance company - accumulation (2016)
just about the best thing i did this year was go with liza to see the trisha brown dance company perform across about a mile of the shore of the rockaways at the beach sessions dance series. it ended in a solo dance, led by the thumbs, to my favorite grateful dead song. here it is a few years earlier in seattle.
#1211: david byrne - the house of life (ile aiye) (1989)
this winter, i had the serious pleasure of meeting the singer and photographer and filmmaker and drawer and bicycle rider and diarist and talking heads cofounder david byrne. we spoke about nerve pain, procrastination, schedules, airborne potatoes, cocaine, and star trek. read it in a t magazine near you.
#1210: prince jammy - crowning of prince jammy (jaillhouse version) (1982)
one of history’s best music lists – better than pitchfork’s, rolling stone’s, or elvis costello’s – was made by a teenager named snoopy in the summer of 1977. he published his 125 favorite albums from the golden age of dub reggae in the london music newspaper black echoes. forty-four years later, thanks to a lucky break, i found him. snoopy answered my questions about his life, the list, and its beautiful music with the same kind of warmth and expertise that makes his writing so valuable. go on over here to read all about it (and listen to the 125 albums).
#1209: grateful dead - scarlet begonias > fire on the mountain (1977)
in early 2009, a 52-year-old grandfather began leaving comments on the internet archive’s grateful dead collection, where nearly every note the band played live can be listened to for free.
“god, how i love this music,” he wrote under the name justafloatingsage, about a 1968 show. a few months later he told this story below an irresistible 1970 fillmore east concert: “so i am feeling a little tired a few months back. i get my sorry ass into the doctor’s office,” and “one of them little f—-ing tests comes back and informs me that prostate-cancer has me scheduled to meet with the big banana-head in the sky.” he went on: “here on the grateful dead archive i give my most sincere thanks for the chance to have lived.”
the post, like a good grateful dead song, got better as it kept going: “i should have mastered learning to love, i can see that now. i am now willing to love. so much of my life was suffering. listening to the dead was one of those simple pleasures for me.” he turned back to the concert: “time to just shut up and listen to the show,” he wrote. “i’ll see you on the other side.”
the internet archive’s mission is “universal access to all knowledge.” it’s possibly best known as the home to the wayback machine, an essential digital library of more than 602 billion saved web pages. the dead database, small by comparison, tallies about 15,644 concerts, including multiple versions of the same shows: 4,714 recorded straight from the soundboard, 6,308 taped by the audience, 1,026 from the year 1990, 660 from 1980, 322 from 1971, 114 from 1968, and two from 1965. all of the music here is streamable. much is forgettable. hours and hours, days and days, are sublime. but nothing moves me like the 10,000 or so comments left by listeners.
#1208: matt sweeney & bonnie `prince’ billy - resist the urge (2021, dir. kevin “spanky” long and atiba jefferson)
such a rare example of a music video that’s incredibly sweet in both senses of the word. this song is tender and sentimental and deeply loving, and the video that skater and director spanky long made for it is full of moves that i personally think can be called absolutely gnarly. super sweet stuff from superwolves.
#1207: johnny cash - i got stripes (on a monday) (1959)
every ounce of the world’s amphetamines seem to zap into johnny cash’s left leg and shoulders when he says “wooh!” after a minute and a half. twenty-two seconds later, he sings them right back out when he lifts his neck to sing the word “water.”
whose face was made of metal and muscle? how did he write in cold blood with a toothpick? where did he bake delicious rap snitch knishes? which grimy limey was a slimy blimey? may daniel dumile rest in metal.
#1205: alphonse “bois sec” ardoin and canray fontenot - bonsoir moreau (1966, newport folk festival, dir. alan lomax)
if you’re going to watch heartbreaking and electrifying footage from more than half a century ago of the fiddler nicknamed “dry wood,” make it this one up above – or this one down below.
#1204: alphonse “bois sec” ardoin and canray fontenot - eunice two step (newport folk festival, 1966)
alphonse ardoin was born around 1914, back when archduke franz ferdinand was getting himself assassinated. he grew up in a hamlet in southwest louisiana, where he was called “bois sec,” or “dry wood,” because, during rainstorms, “he was the first one who’d run into the barn,” according to this old and trusty guide to cajun music. ardoin played a kind of creole music called “la la” that’s that’s even older than zydeco. watch this and understand dry wood’s la la.
