Sebastian Steudtner — a German pro surfer — rode a wave over 115 feet tall at Nazare, Portugal.
I’m not this tough. Or brave. Or talented…pic.twitter.com/b7p1RW8tTO
— Rex Chapman🏇🏼 (@RexChapman) September 7, 2020
Worth the Attention?
Goat’s Head Soup, recently given the full-reissue shebang, has its moments, but in ’73 it was a disappointment coming on the heels of the super-human Beggars Banquet through Exile on Main Street run. A recent review on Pitchfork sums up how I feel about it:
This would suggest Goats Head Soup’s true significance is that it marked the moment where a new Rolling Stones record ceased to be a game-changing cultural event, and more like a fresh pile of coal shoveled into the engine room to keep the show on the road.
Shit
There goes one of my boyhood crushes.
RIP
Simeon Coxe, age 82.
Found this video sometime after I posted about these guys last spring or whenever it was:
I’d never heard of The United States of America before seeing this.
Razzle In My Pocket
This hilarious encounter between a young London ragamuffin and a moralizing shopowner sort of comes off like 1970’s Charles Dickens . Still cracks me up after 40+ years.
More Pretenders
You all know this song, so I’m not sure why I’m posting this, other than it’s always seemed to me to be somewhat underrated. Yeah, it appears on “best of” compilations, and MTV did air this video some, but I don’t remember ever hearing it on the radio. It’s a great song, with brilliant guitar parts throughout, and a badass lead break at the end. Do I wish I’d seen them live? Hell yeah. Sadly, half of this line-up would be dead within a couple of years.
But wait, there’s more!
While we’re revisiting great covers…this one achieves the impossible by being better than the Kinks’ original, in my opinion. I doubt anyone else has ever bested the Kinks. Another Nick Lowe production.
Shit
Ok, maybe none of you bastards care about this, but you may find it interesting anyway. Leon Fleisher died of cancer two days ago at age 83. By age 30, maybe earlier, he was arguably the best pianist the U.S. has ever produced if you consider overall musicianship as well as technical perfection (he had both, but others have equaled or come close in the latter). As a pupil of Artur Schnabel, he was in a direct student/teacher line to Beethoven.
Unfortunately the 1950’s, when he came of age, was a real pressure cooker for a group of young American pianists who were given the acronym, OYAPS (Outstaning Young American Pianists). This was the height of the cold war, and there was huge pressure on them to be cultural ambassadors. They were expected to be powerful and precise, like Vladimir Horowitz, and to show uppity Europeans and especially Russia, a land of super-human pianists, that the U.S. was artistically on par with anyone (never mind we’d already proved that with jazz and emerging rock & roll, but those were treated as an embarrassent). As a result, Fleisher and the other OYAPS pushed themselves to the point of serious physical injury or emotional distress. By his mid-thirties, Fleisher’s right hand was useless for the piano due to an insane practice and performance schedule. After recovering from serious depression, he had a second career as a conductor, a much idolized teacher and an occasional performer of the limited one-handed repertoire. Miraculously, in the 90’s he underwent experimental botox injections which returned his hand to service. By the early 2000’s he was back in action, maybe not as much of a techincal powerhouse, but as good or maybe better artistically.
I was lucky to see him in a stunning recital in ’09. I also got to meet him briefly and get an autograph. For someone so lionized, he was very approachable and seemed down-to-earth. Resquiescat in pace.
Mea Culpa
Maybe it’s due to COVID or an orange troll (or both), but I’ve been enjoying these guys lately. One of my biggest problems with them was the relentless gloom and doom. They always struck me as Iggy Pop’s The Idiot (probably one of my top 5 favorite albums) without the humor, with a bit too much Jim Morrison for my taste. But those are persnickety reasons to reject a band, and they are perfect for these times. Anyway, take away the clinical depression, and you’re pretty much just left with U2, only with (in my opinion) more interesting musicians and a technically worse but more interesting (and less pretentious) singer. Not really fair to judge them for being who they were. I still think Ian Curtis had an under-developed melodic sense, but for some reason it all works.
The Jam at the 100 Club
For whatever reason (ignorance or senility) , I don’t recall ever seeing this clip of The Jam at their ’77 peak. It’s from the German Punk in London documentary. The whole documentary is available here, but I have a feeling this Jam performance is the highlight. Although some heavyweights are interviewed, the performance segments are mostly B-listers.