What are you listening to?

[Frunobulax]

That's where it all started. Yes, the Chicago school electrified it, but it was Robert Johnson in the American context - and Django Reinhardt playing jazz in Europe (working with and being musically influenced by African diaspora musicians) - that basically invented lead guitar as we understand it today. Listening to Johnson, anything that really mattered about the blues and blues-based rock guitar since is either based on or fully developed on those old recordings. Outstanding stuff. I hope Johnson can somehow look down (or, if you believe that legend, up) on us now and see just how important he really is. He'll never get close to the same credit for it, but he's more important to modern music than the Beatles.



The Clash were unbeatable. Heroes.

Back in late 2018 / early 2019, the Museum of London had a mini-exhibition on the recording and release of London Calling. The centrepiece was the presence of that bass (now a part of the MoL's permanent collection). The wife eventually dragged me away when I'd worn a depression in the class case with my nose. I think I'd probably have eaten it if I'd gotten my hands on it.


Recently picked up a few Bob Dylan CDs. Having completed the collection of the studio albums to dated on vinyl, I've moved on to collecting the Bootleg Series and the live albums. On CD, this time... I'd love to have them all on vinyl, but I want to complete the sets in a single format (some of the vinyl LPs were doubles of what I already had on VD), and that gets prohibitively expensive with the later Bootleg series. In particular, I've just picked up Greenwich Village, Live November 1961. A very recent release of a latterly discovered recording of his first New York performance, complete with the famous "I kinda got lost, coming up here tonight..." schtick. It's lacking in his early, really well known numbers that were of course still ahead of him (his second album was to be the first one with a wholly original track listing), but there are already hints of who he was, and is, as a performer. Primarily his impish, playful side, which for me is often where he's at his best as a performer - especially with later number like Positively Fourth Street which hide some truly acidic, lyrical bile behind playful delivery and melody. Gutted that I've not been able to see him live since 2023. Post pandemic, it has become almost impossible to get tickets I can afford for his UK gigs with them all selling out within seconds of public release. I think a lot of people have discovered his value and are now rushing to see him while they still have the chance. Closing in on 85 now, I fear it won't bed than many more years before he decides to hang up his touring shoes. I feel privileged to have seen him as many times as I did.

I didn't get to see the Clash until they were on their last legs (1984). Still a good show, but heroes? I'm not much into worshipping entertainers, but they were a superb band.



Dylan, I believe, is best when he's challenged by his surrounding musicians. I've seen him twice. The first was solo and it was a toss-off. He played for about an hour and played like he was late for his other job.



But I was privileged to see the Dylan & The Dead tour at Akron's Rubber bowl in the late 80s. Tom Petty and the Heartbreakers were his backup band and that was a great show. He also sat in with Jerry and the boys for Little Red Rooster and It's All Over Now, Baby Blue. Helluva day.

 

[Edward]

I didn't get to see the Clash until they were on their last legs (1984). Still a good show, but heroes? I'm not much into worshipping entertainers, but they were a superb band.

I have been told by those who were there that that era was not as bad as it became fashionable to claim. Joe's lyrics were as good as they had been, though I always suspected that he lost a lot of heart after Mick was pushed out of the band. Frankly, I don't think Bernie's production on Cut the **** helped when he brought in the synths either... There's a guy on youtube has done a remix of the whole album with Joe's vocals backed by a new set of tracks that make it a guitar-based record that if not quite as good as the likes of Give Em Enough Rope certainly sounds much more like the Clash at their peak. This Is England (which was the standout track anyhow) is improved by it, and We Are The Clash , well... actually sounds like the Clash. Unlike the original cut, it has the ring of a number I could have imagined the boys opening a set with had Joe lived and they'd had a chance to reform. Not to do Bernie down, though, h was an important figure in the punk world behind the scenes, much less of a media presence, but probably more important by some measures than Malcom Mclaren. He did a lot for the young Clash and (along with Paul having grown up in a motorcycling family), was responsible for them being well steeped in a knowledge of youth cults and tribes that preceded them ,especially the rockers. Most likely why - for all the lip service they might have paid in '77 to the "Year Zero" philosophy the ******s espoused - rockabilly, as well as reggae and two tone, were identifiable influences on the Clash. (Of course the Pistosl themselves weren't fully purist there either, given their own musical loves, and the identifiable rockabilly hints in Jonesy's playing as well).


Despite being too young to catch onto them until 1989/90, the Clash were a very important band for me. They always were the more developed in their philosophy than the ******s' raging (for all they were important too; NMTB is one of the most important British albums of the twentieth century, if not the most important).

There's a world where Glen Matlock was recruited instead of Paul Simonon for bass duties in the Clash. (In our world, they wanted Glen but didn't think he'd leave the ******s quite when he did.) I'd love to have slipped an ear into that alternative timeline to hear whether and how that impacted the Clash, with a third songwriter of that level of talent on board. Also to see whether Glen's naturally affable nature could have smoothed things over and stopped Mick and Joe falling out - or if he walked faster for it having put up with a bothersome bandmate before, ha... Who's to know.

Dylan, I believe, is best when he's challenged by his surrounding musicians. I've seen him twice. The first was solo and it was a toss-off. He played for about an hour and played like he was late for his other job.



But I was privileged to see the Dylan & The Dead tour at Akron's Rubber bowl in the late 80s. Tom Petty and the Heartbreakers were his backup band and that was a great show. He also sat in with Jerry and the boys for Little Red Rooster and It's All Over Now, Baby Blue. Helluva day.

Dylan's nothing if not mercurial. I've seen him maybe a dozen times over the years, first time being in Belfast in early 1993, touring the Good as I been to you album. That tour was originally not planned to do a Belfast date, but when they realised a thousand of the Dublin tickets had sold to people north of the border, one soon materialised. Every single time I've seen him has been a very different show from the last. Sometimes the hits, sometimes not, sometimes he'd change the melody if he felt the audience were just there to see the funny novelty sixties man. I've been lucky, though, in that different as they were they were all great shows, even if he wasn't so much in a great mood. The band he's had in recent decades have definitely been great. Usually I think he's seemed at his best when there's a particular drive behind him musically. The Rough and Rowdy Ways show I did get to see was really something, though it was very apparent that on the last night of an intensive week of shows in the UK following a European tour and about to head home, he was clearly shattered by the end of it. I can see him a more tired performer now, with less harmonica, and he prefers to stick to keys (I gather he stopped playing guitar live about a decade or fifteen years ago due to the arthritis bothering him a bit).

The most surreal performance of ....Baby Blue I ever heard was not at a Dylan gig, but Hole covering it in 1999. Pretty decent job of it too. It did make me with Bob would do a covers album of songs by people he's covered. Pretty on the Inside from Hole. I'd adore to see him cover Blitzkrieg Bop, or maybe Beat on the Brat (apparently someone once played him the Ramones' cut of my back pages; when asked about the response, the insider simply replied "He smiled."). It'd have been interesting to see how he'd approach a Hendrix song, given that when I've seen him play All Along The Watchtower live, it owed much more to Jimi's rendition than his own original recording.

 

[The Shoe]

That's where it all started. Yes, the Chicago school electrified it, but it was Robert Johnson in the American context - and Django Reinhardt playing jazz in Europe (working with and being musically influenced by African diaspora musicians) - that basically invented lead guitar as we understand it today. Listening to Johnson, anything that really mattered about the blues and blues-based rock guitar since is either based on or fully developed on those old recordings. Outstanding stuff. I hope Johnson can somehow look down (or, if you believe that legend, up) on us now and see just how important he really is. He'll never get close to the same credit for it, but he's more important to modern music than the Beatles.

Yeah, I keep going back to his music probably more than any other blues musician. I’ve heard it lamented that the attention given to Johnson by people like Clapton and Richards took attention away from some of his brilliant contemporaries. I would argue differently. it was people like them (probably Clapton, in particular) who put me on to Johnson 40 odd years ago, but that only led me to delve into the other musicians from the era who I never would have heard of otherwise. The one I go back to the most after Johnson? Probably Bessie Smith.

I didn't get to see the Clash until they were on their last legs (1984). Still a good show, but heroes? I'm not much into worshipping entertainers, but they were a superb band.

Dylan, I believe, is best when he's challenged by his surrounding musicians. I've seen him twice. The first was solo and it was a toss-off. He played for about an hour and played like he was late for his other job.

But I was privileged to see the Dylan & The Dead tour at Akron's Rubber bowl in the late 80s. Tom Petty and the Heartbreakers were his backup band and that was a great show. He also sat in with Jerry and the boys for Little Red Rooster and It's All Over Now, Baby Blue. Helluva day.

I never got to see Dylan live. I had tickets to see him in London, but there was a big mess-up and I never got to see him. I think they had the wrong date on the add in the newspaper. My brother, who was living in London at the time asked if I wanted to go. He got the tickets without double checking the dates. It turned out that the concert was the day after I flew back to New Zealand. I was gutted. This would have been late eighties, maybe ‘87.
I do have the Dylan and the Dead LP. Unfortunately, I don’t think much of it. I guess from what you’re saying, that they were better live than on album together.

 

[Frunobulax]

Yeah, I keep going back to his music probably more than any other blues musician. I’ve heard it lamented that the attention given to Johnson by people like Clapton and Richards took attention away from some of his brilliant contemporaries. I would argue differently. it was people like them (probably Clapton, in particular) who put me on to Johnson 40 odd years ago, but that only led me to delve into the other musicians from the era who I never would have heard of otherwise. The one I go back to the most after Johnson? Probably Bessie Smith.

I never got to see Dylan live. I had tickets to see him in London, but there was a big mess-up and I never got to see him. I think they had the wrong date on the add in the newspaper. My brother, who was living in London at the time asked if I wanted to go. He got the tickets without double checking the dates. It turned out that the concert was the day after I flew back to New Zealand. I was gutted. This would have been late eighties, maybe ‘87.
I do have the Dylan and the Dead LP. Unfortunately, I don’t think much of it. I guess from what you’re saying, that they were better live than on album together.

Yeah, I have that too. Not a good representation of what I saw.

 

[Trenchfriend]

Still special and good.

 

[Tiki Tom]

One day more!
Do you hear the people sing?

Les Miserables 40th anniversary. What a musical! What A book!

https://www.westendtheatre.com/2963...40th-anniversary-everything-you-need-to-know/

 

[Trenchfriend]

R.I.P., Klaus Doldinger!

German National Anthem.

 

[Hurricane Jack]

Jorma Kaukonen and Janis Joplin on a homemade recording of "Nobody Knows You When You're Down and Out.".

Still writing & playing good songs. Long May he live.

 

[Trenchfriend]

Headphones!

 

[Trenchfriend]

 

[DogFacePonySoldier]

Perfect for this type O spooky season.. moohahahaha

 

[BobHufford]

 

[The Shoe]

Listening to Sinead O’Connor and this one came up. I couldn’t help thinking of @Blare. I’ve been around here for long enough now to know the story, but at first I often wondered why everyone was calling Blare Joe…or why Joe was Blare.

 

[Blare]

Listening to Sinead O’Connor and this one came up. I couldn’t help thinking of @Blare. I’ve been around here for long enough now to know the story, but at first I often wondered why everyone was calling Blare Joe…or why Joe was Blare.

cool. I never heard that song before.

 

[AHP91]

 

[Trenchfriend]

A touch of...

 

[Hurricane Jack]

 

[KeganThunder]

 

[BobHufford]

Peter Cetera’s first solo release, 1981. My wife picked this up in a flea market for the cover art. She was friends with John Nieto in her Santa Fe days.

Sounds like you would expect from 1981 Peter Cetera.

 

[tamoko]

And about 30K different artists in play list.