The Best Lou Reed Solo Album Ever

My call on this impossible task is Lou's 1989 New York lp. I was lucky enough to see the tour, owned the original and just replaced it with a CD copy this week.

It burns even hotter now, with two decades come and gone: Dirty Boulevard, Romeo and Juliet, and Busload of Faith crack, sizzle and pop, both lyrically and musically, like a downed electrical wire on the road in a hurricane. Rob Wasserman's six string upright electric bass and Reed's relentless guitar work create a rock and roll machine in overdrive from the Bowery straight up to Spanish Harlem.

An essential.

One Mo' Time: The Score for "The Departed"

{"Greatest Hits of Gold Coast Bluenote: "Music in Film"}

________________________________________________________________________________________

(Revised and Reposted from August 2007)

Martin Scorcese on the set of The Departed

This past year, decades past due, film auteur Martin Scorsese walked off with almost all the hardware at last Oscars for his latest masterwork, The Departed.

With the exception of, as examples, the use of Jim Gordon's half of Layla and Ry Cooder's slide solo from Memo from Turner in the two-movement Goodfellas climax, the use of music, other than the score, in Goodfellas is an embryonic form of what is accomplished in The Departed.

The following is a non-spoiler soundtrack film teaser with notes:

Gimme Shelter churns -- Ooh, fire is sweeping, our very streets today -- as Mick Jagger and Merry Richards belt their vocals as Keith Richards' lead runs and power chords introduced Jack Nicholson's character Frank Costello.

Mr. French's character is unsheathed to strains of Duane Allmans' opening slide solo in One Way Out.

Billy tunes-up Providence button men - Nobody But Me by the original Isley Brothers --
... nobody, nobody, nobody.., .

When Frank Costello first meets Billy, Let It Loose is on the jukebox: Frank's "all dressed up to do you harm."

Patsy Cline's unsurpassable Sweet Dreams cover is on the stereo at Frank's apartment as French and Frank discuss Billy's reliability [blend from Patsy across Irish ditty into John Ono Lennon's Well, Well, Well.

************
[Used in love scene between Billy and, radically transformed by Van Morrison's soaring live vocal, into a "sexual healing" song. First Verse is softly buried under a "find the rat' scene, then the dialogue fades and the song come up.]

Comfortably Numb (-- by Gilmour, Waters; originally from Pink Floyd's The Wall)

Hello? Is there anybody in there?
Just nod if you can hear me.
Is there anyone at home?
Come on, now, I hear you're feeling down.
Well I can ease your pain
Get you on your feet again. ...

[transition to Madeline and Billy in her old apartment as she packs]

... There is no pain you are receding
A distant ship, smoke on the horizon.
You are only coming through in waves.
Your lips move but I can't hear what you're saying.
When I was a child I caught a fleeting glimpse ...

Out of the corner of my eye.
I turned to look but it was gone
I cannot put my finger on it now
The child is grown, The dream is gone.

... A distant ship's smoke on the horizon.
You are only coming through in waves.
Your lips move but I can't hear what you're saying.

...When I was a child I had a fever
My hands felt just like two balloons.
Now I've got that feeling once again
I can't explain you would not understand
This is not how I am ...

[music fades as teapot boils in kitchen; dialogue and love scene as song fades back in to soundtrack]

... There is no pain you are receding
A distant ship's smoke on the horizon.
You are only coming through in waves
Your lips move but I can't hear what you're saying

When I was a child I caught a fleeting glimpse
Out of the corner of my eye.
I turned to look but it was gone
I cannot put my finger on it now
The child is grown, The dream is gone. [And] I have become comfortably numb.

*******
I'm Shipping Up To Boston - Dropkick Murphys

And when the deal is going down, truly, this song (in a more hard-edged arrangement than in the YouTube video hyperlink above) rolls and blasts -- traditional Irish music punk band. Who would've thought...it figures[?]

********************
The Departed, as in all aspects of it's construction takes lacing a soundtrack with great tunes to an new level in cinema.
************************************************************************

Rolling Stones - Honky Tonk Woman (Live in Hyde Park 1969)

This YouTube clip is as flawed as the original gig was. But the little glimpse we get of the Stones doing this famous free concert in London in 1969 is worth overlooking those flaws.

Some great clips of the band and the crowd and, most importantly, Mick Taylor -- who had about 12 hours to get ready for the show -- in action with the best Stones lineup ever.

The rock history is of vast importance -- so soak it up Ladies and Gentlemen: The Rolling Stones.

Hollywood Babylon: From "Sunset Blvd. to a Hush-Hush Martini a la "LA Confidential"

Best Hollywood Babylon Picture ever. All on the Q-T ... very Hush, Hush. But on the record.

Break out performances by Bassinger, Crowe, and Spacey. Another fine performance from producer / actor DeVito. Superb direction and co-writing on a masterful screenplay by Chris Hanson. Excellent cinematography, perfectly scored soundtrack -- it all works seamlessly.

Don't miss it, lassies and boyos.

(Editor's Note: There is one very dangerous myth, of vital import today, in this film. In the movie, torturing suspects extracts reliable information. In real life, and based on the science of this practice, the information you get by torturing a suspect or witness in captivity is not reliable. That said, the cops and criminals of the day did think it worked so the film is accurate to it's time frame. Look at this element of the film as art, not reality.)

"Abscessed Tooth Ache Blues"

I never did find out which one of the usual suspects, most likely Southern Woman on the Web Donnah in her Owen McQueen outfit, wrote this number. I do know Little Starla queen of my hearta sent me da 12 bar blues below.

And deadlines, dear readers, are deadlines.

This post goes to press today, for you, and for all the merry blues crew on the Wednesday morning Skydog beat at Florida Cracker:

Abscessed Tooth Ache Blues
*****

*****

Grievous Angel

Emmylou Harris and Gram Parsons
(Photo Credit: Pubic Domain)

You gotta pay to play. All traditional blues songs -- the form itself -- started out as a way for a man to express heartache over a woman.

".... Love is Like a Flower, Holds a Lot of Rain ...."

(-- Gram Parsons (performed with Emmylou Harris))