Seeds Documentary!

Not sure how a doc about some of my favorite proto-punks got past me.  This goes straight to the top of my list if it’s available anywhere.

Pod Save Us

The next step in my slouch toward senility is being a pedant with AI-based customer service. The above: me trying to interact with Xfinity as my home wi-fi goes rogue. Pretty sure it’s not a real person anymore, but a bland descendant of HAL-9000.

The phrase is “please rest assured” NOT NOT NOT
“please be rest assured.”

Old man yells at Chat-GPT server.

Pop-Punk Candy

Mrs. Renfield put me on to this sugar rush of an album (really more like a longish EP).  Many tracks are one-idea songs, but who cares when the hook’s good and they don’t belabor the idea: all but one are under two minutes.  It so happens this band/person/whatever played Gonerfest last week, although it was an afternoon slot on a 90-degree-plus day, so can’t say I’m sorry I missed them.  But this stuff hits my sweet spot.  Good hooks throughout.  Here’s another:

Gerhardt Leigh Ludvig!

Thanks to G for mentioning this album in the Nashville Teens comments, which got me to finally listen to it.  If you haven’t heard it, it’s a smoker.  Jerry Lee’s in top form, and the Nashville Teens are red-hot.

There’s something funny about Germans going apeshit over Jerry Lee Lewis.

Many Memphians have Jerry Lee stories.  Mine might be unique, as it does not involve sex, drugs, or guns (maybe because I never encountered him personally).  Anyway, back in the mid-80’s I dated a girl for a while who lived downtown at the Waterford, which overlooks the Mississippi.  Her apartment was a couple of stories down from the penthouse, where JL was living at the time.  I never saw him (although said girl claimed he hit on her in the elevator a couple of times–he was in his 50’s and she was 19 or 20), but sometimes we could hear him playing.  On nice evenings we’d hang out on her balcony.  He must have had his balcony door open to catch the river breeze, because we could very clearly hear him practicing and noodling around.  So I have this sort of magical memory of our lounging on the balcony, drinking beer, watching the sunset over the river, enjoying the breeze, and eavesdropping on the great JL playing the piano.  A good time for sure.

Splice or Error?

In his In The Midnight Hour episode, Andrew Hickey tells a great story about the recording of Mustang Sally.  While the tape was rewinding after recording in one take, the capstan flew of the recorder, shredding the tape into fragments and sending them flying all over the room.  The volatile Wilson Pickett was about to explode, when Tom Dowd told everyone to calm down and take a 30-minute break.  Dowd then spliced the fragments, a total of 40 splices, an average of one every three or four seconds.  Hickey plays a 30-second sample containing the only possible splice he can hear (it’s at 2:22) but thinks it’s more likely a drumming error.  Nah, that’s a splice.

I can’t hear the other 39.  Tom Dowd was a badass.