"Where the eagle glides ascending, there's an ancient river bending ...." --Neil Young

From 1979, a year that rock saw punk and Anglicized reggae ascending -- here, with audience reaction removed, is an acoustic track from a live collection comprising one of Neil's finest albums.

"Either he's going to have to stand and fight, or take off out of here."

Joni Mitchell at her post-Blue (1971) finest, from her 1976 folk / jazz album Hejira -- Jaco Pastorius on bass on this cut, Coyote.

Dig it ladies and gentlemen!

"It's Comin' on Christmas, They're Cuttin' Down Trees ...." -- Joni Mitchell

Joni Mitchell

"Nothing ever goes away until it has taught us what we need to know."

-- Pema Chödrön

"A little love and affection, in everything you do,

Will make the world a better place

With or without you."

-- Neil Young

Combine those two principles, those two observations, those two insights. In reflecting upon them, I find a working theory about why the women in my life can both bring me so much joy, while also leaving me clinging to the dying embers of a painful relationship.

And so it is with the Christmas season, for those who partake. Christmas in America carries with it a lot of baggage, some of it worth cherishing, some of it an almost unbearable burden. But Sister Chödrön reminds us the season has things to teach us. And since the Mayans were wrong about existence ending this week, Christmas won't be going anywhere, remaining firmly rooted in western culture. Rooted there to teach us things we need to know.

And so I come to this year's Christmas song, one that does not fall within the traditional Christmas songbook. I offer River, a song about a young Canadian woman exploring her feelings, at Christmas time, about a shattered relationship.

I think the insights offered here, one by a Bhuddist nun and two by Canadian singer/songwriters, have much to offer us this holiday season. I hope "my aim is true."

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

"I Wanna Love You but I'm Getting Blown Away": Neil Young's "Like a Hurricane" (1977)

It's hurricane season down here in Florida. As politically incorrect as this is, I can't help but let my mind wander back to the early 60s and all the fun we had teasing women about storms that they shared a first name with. You see, back then feminism hadn't gotten more than a little start progress that that kicked in during the early 70s. Hurricanes not only had women's names but also were referred to, even by TV meteorologists, as "she".

I remember one wicked storm back around '62 named Hurricane Carla -- a storm that shared her name with my dad's best friend's wife. Carla and her ole man got no end to the teasing they had to endure from close friends as that storm battered the Florida west coast. I even fictionalized all this once, shifting both the characters and also the time frame around. Here's an excerpt from my unpublished short story Wrist Shake (in press):

.... Preparing for the [fly rod fishing for tarpon] trip, four of us sat in the living room working on tackle: me, my dad, his comedian/fishing partner Jerry, and my brother Henry.

Jerry was on a roll, teasing as always. My girl Carla and I were fighting, so Jerry had plenty of fresh material. ...

Jerry started in on me. “So what’s the matter, lover boy, Hurricane Carla blow you ashore this evening?”

“Cut me some slack, Jer,” I half pleaded and half barked.

“Lay off him,” Henry said, “he can’t make tackle and weather Carla’s swirling gusts all at the same time.”

Now Jerry starts to croon, “When you’re down, and troubled, and you need a helping hand …”

“Please,” now I was pleading, “leave Carole King’s insights out of this.” I struggled to recover, “Don’t you have some shopping to do? That fine new white sport coat in your closet just cries out for a pink plastic carnation for the lapel.”

Dad decided it was time to move things along. We all reacted to the authority in his eyes and his voice: “If you gentlemen can wrap this up, we can still catch the 10:30 [pm] high tide.” We were immediately back on task. ....

Flash forward to the late 70s. Sexism had begun it's slow death and the iconoclastic Neil Young had come up with a worthy follow-up to his power ballad Cortez the Killer (1975), Like a Hurricane (1977) -- a song whose lyrics compared lovin' a woman to enduring a hurricane. Moreover, Neil's trademark power chords and lead riffs between verses do a fine job, metaphorically turning electric guitar solos and chord crashes into what it's like to be in a hurricane. And almost every live album Neil did after '77 contains a version of this song. (The acoustic live versions were even done on a giant antique pump-style pipe organ.)

'Nuff said. Here's Neil Young and Crazy Horse performing the original album cut of Like a Hurricane from Neil's 1977 American Stars 'n Bars album.

Tracing Roots: "Cowboy Junkies" do Patsy Cline

Banyan Street, Boca Grande, Florida

I'm back from a South Florida beach vacation high that just won't let go. Boca Grande is simply full of memories that go back generations. Every time I visit I come back with more stories about family, friends, storms, fishing and fisherman.

Just running on instinct, when I got back I put on the first thing that popped into my head: The Cowboy Junkies 1988 album The Trinity Session. So, sticking with my half-developed theme of rediscovering roots, here's a cover of Margo and the boys doing a beautiful blues arrangement of the Patsy Cline classic Walking after Midnight (1957), released 54 years ago this year.

MusiCares 2010 Person of the Year: Neil Young

I caught the MusiCares broadcast of exerpts from it's 2010 award gala on VH1-Classic last week -- a show honoring Neil Young for his career as a performer, songwriter and philanthropist. Before I get to a one of the gala's highlights below, here's the MusiCares mission statement.

MusiCares provides a safety net of critical assistance for music people in times of need. MusiCares' services and resources cover a wide range of financial, medical and personal emergencies, and each case is treated with integrity and confidentiality. MusiCares also focuses the resources and attention of the music industry on human service issues that directly impact the health and welfare of the music community.

I want to do my part by showing you this clip and encouraging you, if you can, to make a donation here.

Now to a highlight -- my favorite was John Fogerty, Booker T., and Keith Urban covering Neil's Rockin' in the Free World ...

Let me mention two other performances I loved and can't find clips of: Dave Matthews doing Needle and the Damage Done and Elvis Costello beautifully reinventing The Losing End.

Congratulations Neil, you earned it, man.

Joni Mitchell: "Cold Blue Steel and Sweet Fire"

Inspired by some wicked cold weather (-26 degrees F) in Minnesota, whiteray at Echoes in the Wind did a cold theme column for his Saturday Single post last weekend. And the clip he used inspired me: Joni Mitchell's Cold Blue Steel and Sweet Fire.

This song is from the album For the Roses, her follow-up to her most lasting imprint on the music of her generation, Blue. For the Roses, though, is the only album of hers, from her five decades of recording, that the Library of Congress has chosen for the National Recording Registry. For the Roses is diverse, experimental, and, at times, perfectly in her well-honed groove. And its a groove all her own; her timing is hers and hers alone. There's no better example than Cold Blue Steel and Sweet Fire.

I found this album when I dedicated myself to completing my Joni education. When I put it on, this track grabbed me by the throat and has never let go. Lou Reed’s haunting Heroin on The Velvet Underground & Nico and Cold Blue Steel are the best two heroin/major addiction songs I know.

As for Cold Blue Steel and Sweet Fire's lyrics, I will let them speak for themselves -- here's the second half of the song:

....Red water in the bathroom sink
Fever and the scum brown bowl
Blue Steel still begging
But it’s indistinct
Someone’s Hi-Fi drumming Jelly Roll
Concrete concentration camp
Bashing in veins for peace
Cold Blue Steel and Sweet Fire
Fall into Lady Release
“Come with me I know the way,” she says
"It’s down, down, down the dark ladder
Do you want to contact somebody first"
I mean "What does it really matter?"
"You’re going to come now
Or you’re going to come later"

The topic is raw and gritty, but Joni's performance kills the pain -- it's beautiful, seductive, yearning, just like the drug you're needin’. As for me, there were more than a few commutes to work where Joni's Cold Blue Steel was the medicine I needed.

Joni Mitchell: "A Case of You"

A Young Joni Mitchell

My buddy whiteray up at Echoes in the Wind just turned me on to a new tool that will allow me to place a song I'm discussing right into a post. Instead of being limited to what I can find on YouTube, where sound quality is hit or miss at best, I've now got my entire music library to work with, with high quality audio.

So let's try it out. All you have to do is click the play button below. Before you know it you will be wrapped in the arms of Joni Mitchell's A Case of You from her 1971 album Blue, arguably one of the best albums of our era -- it's listed at number 30 on Rolling Stone magazine's list of the 500 Greatest Albums of All Time.

With A Case of You Joni stripped the record down to the essentials: in this case her hammer dulcimer, her voice and her songwriting, in this song examining the ebbs and flows of a love affair. (This record is from when Joni was in her late twenties; in a more recent interview, a mature Joni says of love, 'Yea, I got that all figured out'.)

I hope you enjoy this favorite of mine as much as I enjoy having a way to let you listen to it. Just hit the play button below and sit back.

*****

"There's One More Kid That'll Never Go To School, Never Get To Grow Old, Never Get To Be Cool"

*****

*****

A music mentor of mine recently sent me a modern hard rock video of Thrash Unreal's song Against Me!

Whether or not there is a direct influence, on my second listen to the Thrash Unreal track, Neil Young's 1989 social and musical thrasher above came to mind.

Maybe I'm gettin' old, but for my money I'll take Rockin' in the Free World.

The Shape I'm in

"The Shape I'm in", sung by the late Richard Manuel, The Last Waltz, The Band

I've written about The Last Waltz concert film elsewhere. Here's one of my favorite servings of this rock n' roll gumbo.

When the Cover Version Pushes Aside the Original

Here we discuss a few cover versions of songs that are better than the originals. I think of these as I do great film sequels: they occur only rarely.

The Otis Redding clip below is one of the earliest examples, in post-50s rock, of a cover artist stealing a song out from under the original artists. If there is any justification at all for the Stones continuing to add Satisfaction to their set lists, it is as a tribute to Otis Redding

Immediately below is a live performance from 1966, around the time Redding "broke out".

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And here's another: Neil Young doing a live cover, in 1992, if Dylan's Just Tom Thumb's Blues

Having, on my great southwest Texas travel adventure 20 years ago, 'been lost in Juarez at Easter time', where 'the cops definitely had no use for me', I have always loved and identified with this early Dylan classic.

Here Neil, his classic black Les Paul in hand, turns up the volume and distortion to give "Just Like Tom Thumb's Blues" just the right coke-jitter edginess. Though this performance is a decade and a half old, it stands perfectly as a metaphor for the city under drug war siege Ciudad Juarez is today.

But Neil is like that -- he makes whatever he touches timeless. Neil is one of the few performers who can incorporate Dylan vocal mannerisms into his performance without looking silly.

Think about it, who even tries?
(I heard Jagger stumble and botch it only once. He never tried again after Godard caught him doing Dylan in the recording session for "Sympathy for the Devil", included in Godard's film One Plus One.

Here, Neil executes a rugged Dylan-esque vocal flawlessly.


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This last definitive cover I'll mention here you can put to the test yourself. Johnny Cash's cover of U2's song One is number 5 on my black jukebox in the left column. Johnny Cash' cover of One, by U2, discussed in an earlier post here, is now definitive. Just check out track 5 and let me know what you think. In my view, now that Cash has passed on, he owns this song (artistically) and no one will ever take it back.

The lesson here: just because you didn't write that great song doesn't mean you can't do the best version ever. Indeed, I do the world's best cover of Neil Young's Cortez the Killer, I just can't prove it anymore.

{Post inspired by WhiteRay at Echoes in the Wind: "Otis Redding, Neil Young & Gypsy"}

"There's One More Kid That'll Never Go to School, Never Get to Fall in Love, Never Get to Be Cool."

Neil Young -- Rockin' in the Free World (music video)

There are a lot of wanna-be social protest songs detailing our social and moral decay as a society. None rock this hard. When Neil and Crazy Horse performed it on Saturday Night Live, it burned the house down and I got to experience the "busted guitar string heard round the world."

This is a masterpiece. This is what rock 'n' roll is all about.

From "Blue": "A Case of You" - Joni Mitchell

From "Blue": "A Case of You" -- Joni Mitchell




A rhythm all her own. A voice for the gods. A rock 'n' roll soul. A river "to skate away on."

"I Could Drink A Case of You, And I Would Still Be on my Feet"

Publisher's note: Fan reaction to the Gold Coast Bluenote jukebox rocketed her to #8 on the Rosedale, Mississippi Juke Joint charts this week. The Publisher will therefore leave the juke joint jive up top, as lead post for a while longer, until demand drops off. And the Sandman, our graveyard shift DJ, has a great new track for you today: dedicated to the one who everybody loves -- that old school universal love thing: "A Case of You" by Joni Mitchell, from her 1971 album Blue.

Et Toi!

2008 Grammy Album of the Year: Herbie Hancock's "River: The Joni Letters"

Shocking the pundits, Herbie Hancock's win recently for Album of the Year at this years' Grammys marked a substantial tip-of-the-hat by Grammy voters to some much ignored musical excellence. The album is a multi-artist collaboration brought off by Hancock, inspired by Joni Mitchell's lyrics (check out a sampler of the record, including Hancock discussing his inspiration, here).

In Hancock's acceptance speech, not only did he thank Joni, profusely, he also eloquently acknowledged that he stood on the shoulders of giants, naming Miles Davis and John Coltrane in particular.

I snatched one track from the album off YouTube to give you a taste: it's the title track from Joni's groundbreaking 1974 album Court and Spark. This cut features one of the great young vocalists of the last decade, Norah Jones, as well as Weather Report alumnus Wayne Shorter on saxophone.

Herbie Hancock, River: The Joni Letters
Court and Spark

*****

*****
Exploring the earlier work of any of the artists named above is a fine investment of your time.

A Neil Young Primer

If at some point you've become interested in exploring Neil Young's enormous catalogue, let me throw in my two cents:

Neil with Crazy Horse on both occasions:

Everybody Knows This is Nowhere (1969);

Rust Never Sleeps (1979).

These are both essential albums of the rock 'n' roll experience.
*****

".... You Got the Fight, You Got the Insight ..."

Joni Mitchell's Shine

Ms. Mitchell's first album of new music in a decade -- she's been devoting herself to her painting and visual arts work -- is, go figure, an element of a ballet score. Even if some critics find the Shine album uneven in quality, the heights she reaches with both the tract If and the ballet score adventure, are the blood and guts of what sets great art, and artists, a step above.

The track If contains the lyric-quote-title of this post -- one among the many insights here into the nature of our lives these days. Joni is, again, using her poetic and compositional talent to guide us on our furrowed path.

For those who want to learn more about Ms. Mitchell's career and musical legacy, see both Wikipedia's essay and also, humbly offered, my post on her album Blue.

Shine on, Joni, shine on!
*****

Wanna Climb Inside the Andy Warhol Scene?

The Sundance Film Festival-praised independent film -- one Lou Reed never wanted made because of his anger at the lead character -- shows the tender-but-plastic world of Andy Warhol's 1960's "Factory" as back drop to the revolutionary (or whacked -- you call it) actions of Valerie Solanas, portrayed exquisitely by Lili Taylor in I Shot Andy Warhol.

If nothing else, this film intelligently explores why real revolutionaries are considered so dangerous and/or crazy by North America's "Silent Majority", leading their lives of quiet desperation. Valerie Solanas unnerved even the hippest cats of her day. Canadian director Mary Harron does her homework and gets it right, ugly and tragic, yet starkly human. Truly fine work, but not for everyone.

Me, I can't wait to see Ms. Harran new film, The Notorious Bettie Page.

In Honor of the 53rd Anniversary Year of the Fender Stratocaster (Part II)

Who Played What?

(Preface: this list is not an attempt to be complete or correct. Rolling Stone magazine, a make-up rag 'no self-respecting fish would be wrapped in', tries similar tricks, to their chagin, quite often. Putting artists in order is futile: where do you rank Duane and Derek in Miami in 1070 or Duane and Dickie the at the Filmore East?

This list is an attempt to get the Strat, Tele, Esquire, and Gibson conversation going.)

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Jimi Hendrix (Fender Stratocaster)

Duane Allman (Gibson; Strat in the early days in Muscle Shoals during his Session Player years)

Eric Clapton (I've seen one photo of Slowhand at about 16 with a Tele; early days, Gibson, later switched to a Strat)

Carlos Santana (PRS Custom)

Stevie Ray Vaughn (Strat)
Keith Richards (primarily a 1952 Telecaster; often these days a Gibson ES-355 -- but he not only did he developed his own tunings, he will use any ax, modified ax, or dobro that would get the job done)

Lowell George (Strat)

Buddy Holly (Strat)

Lou Reed (Strat, among others)

John Fogerty (Gibson Les Paul Gold Top and Tele, among others)

Bruce Springsteen (Fender Esquire neck on a Telecaster body)

Dickey Betts (1961 Gibson SG; 1957 Gibson Les Paul, Strat)

Buddy Guy (Strat)

The Edge (Gisbon Explorer, Strat, Gibson Les Paul Custom)

John Frusciante (Strat)

Lucinda Williams (J45 Gibson ("the workhorse" acoustic flat-top), Fender Esquire)

Robbie Robertson (in the mid-Sixties with Dylan and The Band, a Tele; by the mid-Seventies, a Strat, among others)

Roy Clark (Heritage double cutaway semi-hollow body H-535; Roy Clark Signature model Heratige)
Ben Watt (British Issue Leo-era Stratocaster)

Robert Cray (Strat)

Richard Thompson ((see also recent club gig photos) (Strat))

Merle Haggard (Telecaster (including signature model) and Strat)

Ray Davies (Strat)

Ry Cooder (Strat)
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And on and on -- what do you think?