Danielle Howle and Friends

Just for fun, here’s a clip from March of Danielle Howle at the Windjammer in Charleston, singing the Faces “Ooh La La” with Mac Leaphart and Mark Bryan (of Hootie and the Blowfish).

Jimmy Page at the Olympics

So, Led Zeppelin was everybody’s favorite band in high school, but did you happen to see Jimmy Page at the closing ceremonies of the Olympics tonight? Not sure that was the most classic moment in his career, Olympics or not, and whoever that chick singing was, I just wasn’t feeling it like I would have had it been Robert Plant.

Here’s the funniest thing about it: almost before it was over, I found the following clip online which somebody posted by videotaping their television while this travesty of musical histrionics was taking place–the title’s not in English, and there are a couple people talking over most of it, also in a non-English language…somehow it reminded me of those Mystery Science Theater episodes with the guys down front making comments on horrible sci-fi clips. I wish I could understand what was being said in the background.

(Update: Sorry, but this embed no longer works, YouTube has taken all clips of this performance down at the request of the copyright holders–NBC, I suppose.)

Gary Lee Conner Singing, Not Screaming

Two coincidental events convinced me I needed to post this tonight–first, I noticed in the birthdays list in today’s paper that it was the birthday of Gary Lee Conner, who was in one of the best bands of the Seattle grunge era, The Screaming Trees. Second, when looking around for what Conner might be up to these days, I found this 1985 acoustic demo from Gary Lee which was just posted on YouTube today. It’s a pretty cool tune that foreshadows the swirling gothic grunge rock of the Trees early work, even without the gutteral vocals of Mark Lanegan.

Turns out Gary Lee is now living in Texas with his family and still writing and playing music a bit. He even has a brand new Myspace profile which is linked in that video’s information notes.

Here’s a Screaming Trees clip for good measure, of my favorite song from them, “Dollar Bill”.

“My Baby, She’s Alright”

One of my personal favorite bands from the 1980s was Boston group Scruffy The Cat. Sort of retro, sort of rockabilly, kind of twangy, with some very catchy tunes, the band was a WUSC favorite around that time, too. In 1986, the same night REM played the Township Auditorium, Scruffy was set to open a show at Rockafellas for an REM-like band from Athens, Dreams So Real. A group of us from WUSC that went to the REM show actually left early so we wouldn’t miss Scruffy’s set–I’ve never regretted it. Here’s a video of the single from their Tiny Days album, “My Baby, She’s Alright”:

While Scruffy is no more, singer-guitarist-songwriter Charlie Chesterman is still kicking, playing and recording a number of solo albums that are mellower takes on the same simple rock ‘n’ roll riffs of his original band.

Scruffy The Cat Website
Charlie Chesterman Myspace

New Grooves from Groovelily

The jazz-pop trio Groovelily has been a favorite of ours for many years now, so it is with great excitement and anticipation that we can pass along news of new music from the band. Their newly revamped website, http://www.groovelily.com (based on the same WordPress platform as this blog, incidentally) has lots of neat stuff for fans of the band and new converts alike, so check it out.

Groovelily first got my attention as an amazing live duo of Brendan Milburn on piano and Valerie Vigoda on electric violin. They added percussionist/drummer Gene Lewin years ago to fill out the sound, and the trio has made a string of albums full of songs that are emotionally uplifting, sometimes realistically harrowing, and often hilarious.

Milburn’s piano style is full-tilt, barrelhouse boogie-woogie sometimes, and beautiful, rolling chords other times, while Vigoda’s violin has backed up the likes of Cyndi Lauper and Joe Jackson on tour, so it’s no wonder they refer to themselves as “just your typical violin/piano/drums theatrical power trio.”

In recent years they have branched out successfully into writing musical plays featuring their own songs, including the Christmas production Striking 12 and a musical remake of A Midsummer Night’s Dream. Their wit is put to good use in these endeavors, and many of the songs are good enough to stand on their own outside the programs.

The big news this week which prompted me to write about them here is that they are getting ready for a new musical production, Long Story Short, to debut in the fall, and are posting demos of the songs to the new website at the rate of one per week. “Rocking Chairs” is the first one up, and it’s a classic Milburn-style piano-based tune, with Vigoda trading off lines in character alongside Milburn’s. Go to the site and you can either stream the song online for free or download it for a small fee.

http://www.groovelily.com

Springsteen Live In North Charleston 8-16-08

(There are already videos of several songs from this concert on Youtube, they will not allow reposting into other sites so I’ve included direct links for three of them)

For his first concert with the E Street Band in the Charleston, SC area since 1978, Bruce Springsteen did not disappoint. Playing to the locals from the start, the show kicked off with a spirited take on the Swinging Medallions’ “Double Shot Of My Baby’s Love,” introducing the song as, “A little beach music.”

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NXnU_ewmCLg

From there, Bruce and the band tore through classics old and new, from “Radio Nowhere” to “Out In the Street” and a lot more inbetween. Much of the main set turned into a request hour, with Springsteen collecting posters from the audience which he showed to the band before launching into whatever song it was written on each one. The crowd was treated to a few rarities and early cuts in this manner, including “Janey (Don’t You Lose Heart)” and “Growin’ Up.” The latter was played as a birthday request for a fifteen-year-old, to which Springsteen commented wryly, “This song was written twenty-five years before you were born–but I wrote it just for you.”
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HbdAmC2bUjM
The band was visibly loose on the less familiar numbers, to the point where they had to search for a way to end “Janey” and took two tries to shut it down effectively. When you have as unpredictable a set list as Springsteen, however, moments like that are to be expected.

After a two hour show, the encore ran nearly an hour itself, including lengthy numbers “Jungleland” and “Rosalita” helping the minutes add up. At this point the band appeared to be having a blast, even extending the encore one more song with a rousing rendition of, “Twist and Shout” that left the audience exhausted but still yelling for more even as the lights came up and the roadies began tearing down the stage.

Springsteen himself said it best when he commented on the exuberance of the crowd, saying, “We gotta get down here more often.” I’m sure there are 12,000 of your fans who were there Saturday night that feel the same way, Bruce.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FbEHLbCRjqI

Roy Orbison’s Black and White Night

(This is the third in a short series of Bruce Springsteen-related posts leading up to his concert this Saturday night in North Charleston, SC)

One of my favorite Bruce moments is this 1998 music video, a concert film shot in a stylish black and white, that paired the legendary Roy Orbison up with a batch of big-name admirers as a backing band. Look closely, and in addition to Springsteen trading guitar licks with Orbison, there’s Elvis Costello, Tom Waits, Jackson Browne, James Burton, and more on stage with him.

Springsteen once famously commented when asked about his inspiration for Born To Run that he wanted to sing like Roy Orbison and make a wall of sound with his band like Phil Spector’s 60’s productions. I can only imagine how much fun he was having on this particular night, playing lead guitar alongside one of his musical heroes. Courtesy of YouTube, here’s “Pretty Woman” from Black and White Night.

Does This Bus Stop at 82nd Street?

(Second in my short series of Bruce-related posts leading up to Saturday’s show in North Charleston, SC)

Long one of my favorite Bruce Springsteen songs, this odd little tune is not one of his better known songs, and it is not a concert staple like the big hits. Part of his early writing stage where the words are just tripping over themselves, dripping with imagery, and pretty much just a jumble of energy, emotion, and attitude. Early on, Springsteen drew a lot of Bob Dylan and Van Morrison comparisons, something that came from songs like this one.

It’s a special song for me in another way, too, as it is one of two songs I recorded in the late 1990s for Springsteen tribute compilations put together by fans on the late, great Luckytown email digest run by Kevin Kinder. In 1998, I talked an old friend, Mark Bryan of Hootie & the Blowfish, into playing guitar for me and putting a recording of this song together for that year’s Greetings From Luckytown collection. After listening to the CD version a few times to get the chords and the tempo down, we recorded the song in about two takes, live in his bedroom studio here in Columbia (When he still lived over in the Shandon area), with me singing and Mark playing acoustic guitar. We tried singing it together the first time, but Mark’s voice was so much louder than mine he decided to just let me go it alone. Listening to it again, ten years later, I’m still pleased with how it turned out.

To hear how Springsteen does the song these days, click on the video below–a version of the song from a show in Boston a couple weeks ago.

A Long Walk Home

(This is the first in a short series of posts leading up to the Springsteen concert in North Charleston, South Carolina this Saturday.)

“Long Walk Home,” from Bruce Springsteen’s 2007 album Magic, has become a favorite for me in the almost year since the album’s release. In the mold of “My Hometown” without the dirge-like tempo, it’s a song that speaks directly of Freehold, the small central New Jersey town where Springsteen grew up. As I’ve mentioned previously, it’s also where my own parents spent most of their younger days, and I have fond memories of summer vacations at my grandparent’s house on East George Street.

In “Long Walk Home,” then, when Bruce sings about the Veterans Hall, or South Street, these are places that I’ve seen in person. The image of the flag on the courthouse may be a common one to many small American towns, but for me, it’s about being there for many years on the Fourth of July and watching the parade roll through the heart of town and right past it.
Springsteen has often been hailed as an All-American kind of rock ‘n’ roller, and his roots in Freehold, however tortured back then, are what made that result possible. So when he sings,

My father said “Son, we’re lucky in this town
It’s a beautiful place to be born
It just wraps its arms around you
Nobody crowds you, nobody goes it alone.
That you know flag flying over the courthouse
Means certain things are set in stone
Who we are, what we’ll do and what we won’t.”

Many listeners may think he’s singing of an ideal that can’t be reached any more in America, but I think it is still possible, in Freehold and many other towns where “Everybody has a neighbor, everybody has a friend, everybody has a reason to begin again.”

Magic is in many ways an album about new beginnings, but that restart would be impossible, Springsteen knows, without the support of those who have been with him from the start, like the E Street Band members, his family, and those in and around Freehold he still calls friends and neighbors. It may be a long walk home, but what’s there is always worth the wait, especially if there are others to share it with.

Long Walk Home, Bruce Springsteen

Isaac Hayes, R.I.P.: Black Moses Finally Reaches the Promised Land

Black Moses album cover

The thing that always disappointed me about the Biblical story of Moses was that despite his hard work and all the crap he had to put up with from the Israelites for forty years in the Wilderness, he never got to set foot in the Promised Land before he died. The music world lost Isaac Hayes today, a unique artist who once released an album called Black Moses (with a gatefold double-album sleeve that unfolded to the shape of a cross), but the big difference (other than the obvious stuff) is that Hayes was truly revered by his peers for the body of work he produced.

From Shaft to Hot Buttered Soul, Hayes created his own version of funk, soul, and groove; the world has been trying to catch up ever since. One listen to his epic recreation of Jimmy Webb’s “By The Time I Get To Phoenix” is all it takes to know that Hayes operated without much regard for rules or conventions. One thing’s for sure–by the time he gets to heaven, they’ll be grooving.