"I Want Love to ...."

I Want Love to

Roll Me Over Slowly

Stick a Knife Inside Me

And Twist it All Around

I Want Love to

Grab my Fingers Gently

Slam Them in a Doorway

And Put my Face into the Ground

....

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Bob Dylan said once that lyrically, every line in a song has to be as good as the first line. Rarely does a lyricist achieve this. On Blunderbuss, with his song Love Interruption, Jack White both meets and exceeds this standard. The music is even more of a revelation.

My faith in the next generation of iconoclastic musicians is strengthening.

Happy Birthday, Bob!

Yesterday America's greatest living poet, Bob Dylan, turned 71. For all he's given me, for all he's helped our generation give the world, here's a little birthday wish: from The Band's Last Waltz (Concert, 1976; Scorsese's film, 1978), here Bob, Robbie & Co. performing Forever Young.

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!"