"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"
#1162: public image ltd - poptones (american bandstand, 1980)
hello friends! all of us here at the super groovy music video extravaganza are absolutely thrilled to reveal the extravaganza’s annual list of the top ten grooviest and most super music videos i watched this year:
solstice traditionalists have their own first day of summer, but the late new york observer editor peter kaplan had his. it was called naked day! he’d announce in the newsroom when summer had started,
like some cosmic meteorologist, ignoring the calendar and going by the concrete and clothes and sweat and smiles. today in new york city, here in the middle of may, i think the summer of 2017 has started. naked day is here. peter would be thrilled! how will you celebrate? have a beer, listen to mid-70s rolling stones, and if you’re out on your bike wear white.
the canon of great rock and roll movies is firmly set and hard to crack. stop making sense has genius, gimme shelter has jagger’s evil hips and tina turner’s eviler hips, the t.a.m.i. show has james brown’s evilest hips, and the last waltz has neil and van and and bob and rick and joni. but make room for the late james szalapski’s heartworn highways.
even though it was filmed in tennessee and texas around the end of 1975, it wasn’t released in movie theaters until 1981, and its glorious soundtrack has never gotten the respect it deserves. that’s in spite of rodney crowell singing country music’s finest wine song, a 20-year-old steve earle playing his most beautiful melodies years before they made it onto albums, the two of them singing together, guy clark breaking hearts in a scarf, and townes van zandt doing “a medley of my hit” on a red guitar that always reminds me of the sad loudon wainwright song about his.
the film’s unjust lack of respect should change next month thanks to the wonderful light in the attic record label. save up your money for the 40th anniversary box set – and in the meantime, for free, watch rodney sing about bad booze.
#1046: leon russell & friends - honky tonk woman (live, the homewood session, 1971)
a lot of times people stop me and say, “max, what is it like being a journalist? is it a nonstop amazing party such as the one leon russell threw in a california studio in 1971 for a concert that for some reason was aired on pbs, featuring your herofurry lewis along with derek and the dominoes bassist carl radle, plus don nix, claudia lennear, kathi mcdonald, chuck blackwell, jim horn, john gallie, don preston, joey cooper and someone named sweet emily?” and i just nod my head silently and dance around with my rolling pin and reporter’s notebook.
#1043: rolling stones - 19th nervous breakdown (live c. 1966)
you know what? it’s friday, the weekend is here, the winter is ending, the week is too, phil jackson is coming to the new york knicks (!), and so i’d like to tell you to have fun out there, stay safe, enjoy yourself, listen to rock and roll, or maybe stay at home and watch rock and roll videos, pray for the knicks, and don’t do anything that mid-60s brian jones wouldn’t.
#873: the rolling stones - it’s all over now (1964, live)
you could tell by the shape of his guitars that poor brian jones wasn’t going to make it. and everyone should’ve known by the way he held the mic stand before doing rubber-legged jumps with a meaninglessly balletic clap at the top that mick jagger would.
#727: nina simone - backlash blues (1976, live in montreux)
if an alien or small and uninformed child came to you and said, “what is soulful?” you could play them certain nina simone songs and they’d nod and totally understand immediately. the absolutely only flaw here, though, is an otherwise wonderful mid-song drummer-appreciation speech that snubs david bowie: “like odetta said last night, if you don’t get loose now you better forget it. because you ain’t got much time. none of us do. i think the rolling stones say, ‘we’ve got five years.’”
#548: rod stewart and the faces - bad ‘n’ ruin (1971)
if this day doesn’t end with the acquiring of the toilet-lid-with-trailing-toilet-paper-shaped electric guitar that ronnie wood plays in this top of the pops clip, then the whole thing will have been a complete and total failure. i might as well not have gotten out of bed.
#515: kate and anna mcgarrigle - foolish you (1977)
kate mcgarrigle died yesterday, and the world already feels less sweet and tender.
she and her sister anna sang songs that sounded like they’d been grown in flower beds–they’re the only people i can think of whose harmony sounded like christmas, campfires, chaucer and champagne.
and they were at the center of a little world of music that in its own quiet way was godly: not only had kate been married to the folk singer loudon wainwright iii (whose sad, broken and perfect first three albums give the sense that he probably wasn’t a great dad to their son, rufus), she and anna spent decades singing with emmylou harris, and on their first two albums alone played with little feat’s lowell george, the rolling stones’ bobby keys, the velvet underground’s john cale, fairport convention’s dave mattacks, and the bluegrass god bill monroe.
“it’s my town but i had to leave it, and head south where the climate is kind,” kate sang in her 20s, “and if a time comes when i’m feeling better, i’ll be back with the birds in the spring.”
as far as very gorgeous and very barbiturate-soaked performances from the rolling stones’ famous latenight late-60s rock and roll circus goes, john lennon’s yer bluesmay have gotten the intro from mick jagger and the back-up from eric clapton, the who’s a quick one while he’s away may have gotten the three-part harmonies and cod pieces and sparkly black blouses, but it’s taj mahal’s version of the old folk song corrine, corrina and leavin’ trunk that sound like an empty barroom at sunrise.
#439: ike and turner tina - honky tonk woman (1970)
the back-up singers stole the show last time, but this version has the thickness and the blood. tina turner’s growls are plump and pelvic–monumentally unsanitary.
#418: the rolling stones - hey negrita (1976) (dir. michael lindsay-hogg)
the thing that’s genuinely extraordinary about this isn’t mick jagger’s green mariachi suit (with hand-fan), the soft rattletrap crunch of keith richard’s rhythm guitar (you can practically hear the 22 grams of heroin that he’d be caught with a year later oozing from his hands), ron wood’s literally sparkly slide guitar, billy preston’s tickle-fingered piano or even his romantic dance with mick at the finale–it’s that the rolling stones managed to make a mid-70s funky reggae record.
#388: rolling stones - jumpin’ jack flash (1968, dir. michael lindsay-hogg)
brian jones’ dinner-plate sunglasses, mick jagger’s tri-colored warpaint and charlie watts’ out-of-character guyliner in the jumpin’ jack flash video are all nice, but nothing’s more important than the fact that the song’s about keith richards’ gardener.
