Jagger / Arcade Fire on SNL 5/19/12

In case you missed it, this is the first of 3 songs Sir Mic performed with different backing artists on the season finale of Saturday Night Live this past weekend.

Judge for yourself; for me, The Last Time with this lineup rocked the house, and mine too.

Mick Jagger & Arcade Fire - The Last Time - SNL, 19 September 2012

Donna Summer, Gone at 63 -- Workin' Hard No Longer

When it displaced, around 1978, rock music as the dominant dance club music -- one evening in the Quarter (New Orleans) of solid Stones in a club preceded the fall and made it all the harder -- disco became and remains a cultural cancer, turning pop music into lyrical drivel in mind-numbing 4/4 time. One exception: a very hot, exceptional artist, sometimes called the queen of the genre, Donna Summer. Cancer took her Thursday; we lost a great pop star.

From The Washington Post's online cover story on the evening of Thursday the 17th:

... In a 1984 assessment of her career, Times pop music critic Robert Palmer wrote that Ms. Summer “made some of the freshest, most substantial dance records of a period noted for its froth and foolishness." ...

In 1983, I was working hard at learning, for quite Machiavellian reasons, the importance of women in the modern worklplace. And there was Donna, giving us an anthem with She Works Hard for the Money that was all over the radio, in the US and Europe. It was one of the few great R&B songs to pierce the armor of the disco faux-label.

Thanks for everything, Donna. Rest in Peace.

"A White Sport Coat (and a Pink Crustacean)"

Jimmy Buffett, once a local hero here in Florida before he sold out to the man, titled his best album, all ballads of a elderly combat veteran surviving in the keys on a drinking his "Green Label" each day and another about a piano players in mortal danger when playing into a Havana Cuban Crime of Passion. is best album is titled, A White Sport Coat (And A Pink Crustacean) (1973), a tip of the hat to Marty Robbins' song A White Sport Coat (And A Pink Carnation) (1957).

The highlight of Buffett & The Coral Reefers record packaging is the cover art: a photo of Jimmy sitting on lobster infront of is rusted-out Florida lobster trawler, a real working boat. The pink crustacean Jimmy's reaching for is the species of Florida lobster found only in sub-tropical waters such the Florida Keys. Buffet still regularly performs the songs from White Sport. Here's a little taste:

Jimmy Buffett performing at the Key West Streetfest, 2011

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"Walk and Don't Look Back", Peter Tosh (w/ Mick Jagger)

I saw Tosh and Jagger perform this modern reggae classic on SNL one night. The perfect way to say "I'm back!"

Can a Classic R&B Cover -- by a Townes Van Zant Protege', Steve Earle, Performing "Down in the Hole" -- also ring Dylan's "Chimes of Freedom"?

You betcha! It's been a wild ride as a Christian hospital put the last nail in the coffin of my personal independence by cutting my bipolar meds to way under a therapeutic level, inter alia.

"Peace, Love and Revolution" (Lucinda Willimas).

Sorry for the delay between posts here at Gold Coast Bluenote (GCB). I rationalize the delay due to nature of the last ten days of my life. But I heard Dylan's Chimes of Freedom, ringing for us all: truly, loudy and clearly.

E' Vero.

"What Do You Think We Were Doing Out There, Mrs. Fellows, Spawning?": Tennessee's The Night of the Iguana (1961, play, Tennessee Williams; 1962)

Poster and Cover of MGM Promotional Booklet

I re-watched John Huston's film of Tennessee Williams' play The Night of the Iguana one afternoon recently. Tennessee Williams' poetry washed over me -- delightful as the gentle "Indian Summer" shower that starting during the film. I had to pause the film to enjoy the music of the much-needed rain, then on my way back in the apartment, stopped at the computer to jot down these lines.

The post title comes from a confrontation at the beach between disgraced minister T. Lawrence Shannon (Richard Burton) and Ms. Fellows (Sue Lyon). A young girl on the tour of the Pacific coast of Mexico Rev. Shannon follows him into the water when he escaping the group and taking a much needed swim. Shannon's remark about spawning made me bust out laughing.

There's much to come, and I'm going back to my Tennessee Williams / John Huston gem now, but trust me. You won't be sorry if you give this classic a chance. Right now, I feel like I'm getting my own private showing of the film, and the gentle rain is turning this into one fine afternoon.

Deborah Kerr and Ava Gardner have established their characters now. Ava, a fishing widow now running her Mexico resort hotel with her "night-swimming" dancing, simple, obedient young men. Maxine keeps her young men around as told off butch spinster Ms. Fellows after Fellows has Rev. Shannon fired from his last chance at a meaningul existence before what's left of his nerves and restraint shatter.

Mr. Shannon continues his fall as Deborah Kerr steps in both as chef to the closed-for-the-season tourist hotel as well as therapist to the Reverend as he abandons his anxiety about being fired and steers toward the often lethal combination of rum cocoas and suicidal ideation.

All that, the fate of the Reverend Dr. T. Lawrence Shanning hanging in the balance -- whether to crack or pull himself together with the help of the world's oldest practicing poet and a woman who is clearly not in command of her carnal desires, or take that long westward swim from the beach just south of Puerta Viarta, Mexico. Williams brings his poem to a close with Burton and Miss Jelkes playing God and cutting the at-the-end-of-his rope iguana free.

The Plane Crash That Robbed Us All

Yesterday was the anniversary of the death, in a plane crash, of Buddy Holly, Richie Valens, and The Big Bopper. In memory, here's one of my favorite Buddy Holly tunes, Not Fade Away.