Shine A Light On Me

Did you bastards know there’s an official Midnight Special channel on YouTube releasing entire unedited episodes (as well as clips)? Holy shit, it’s a treasure trove!

Timestamped performances for this episode are here. I mostly just watched Sly and the Family Stone, obviously.

BONUS: Here’s another recently released episode with Mott the Hoople and The New York Dolls. Not sure who the guy is in the back playing the Thunderbird for the Dolls. Arthur Kane appears to be in a cast and is obviously miming …

Shit

My parents wouldn’t let me stay up to watch Starsky & Hutch, but I still get a thrill when I see an old Gran Torino.

Drinking Irish Whiskey On The Irish Sea

You Bastards still haven’t listened to this yet, have you? I only listened to three or four new records this year, but this one is up there with any of my all-time favorites by any artist.

Came across the trailer above in an interesting interview with Isbell talking about working on Killers of the Flower Moon, which he was very good in as well. Ok, I’ll stop now.

Power Pop Dictator

 

If you’ve gone to see a power pop band in recent years, you might have noticed that most fans are pretty old.  If you were ever in a band, went to clubs, spent time in an indie record store, or perused online fora, you might have noticed that some power pop devotees can be surly, limited, and intolerant.  To be fair, that’s probably true of any genre, but you might expect that all those hooks and harmonies would leave power pop fans happier.  Some people grow out of at least some of their intolerances.  Some don’t, and this video has a lot of fun with aging sourpuss power poppers.  Your mileage may vary, but I found the whole thing hilarious.

The Smoke

The Smoke seemed destined to be the greatest British band of the 60’s.  Read on for their sad tale of record industry greed, radio station indifference, distribution mishaps, managerial exploitation, personal tragedy, substance abuse, mental instability, and an apathetic, capricious and philistine public…

Just kidding!  They seem to be a classic 60’s case of one-hit wonders.  I’d never heard this song until it popped up in my YouTube feed the other day.  It became a big hit in Germany in ’67 (the year I moved, so I never heard it), but in England its progress up the charts was knee-capped by the BBC for drug references (the BBC did such a great job keeping young Brits off drugs).  The most remarkable thing about this band is that not one of them did anything noteworthy before or after this song.  Usually when you look into British bands with a hit during this period, you’ll find that at least one or two of them before or after played with someone you’ve heard of.  But not these guys.  Anyway, it’s a pretty good song and worth hearing.

Forgotten Gem

Probably my favorite EJ song.  It’s the second half of a medley that opens Goodbye Yellow Brick Road.  It (along with the opening song, the instrumental Funeral For a Friend) got quite a bit of airplay on FM radio when the album was released.  This was the glory days of FM, when stations played deep tracks.  You never heard it on AM, which stuck to singles.  It gets left out of “best of” compilations, and many EJ fans don’t know it.  I don’t get why.  This song has everything going for it, including a killer bass line.  It’s one of the songs I used to teach myself bass when I got one in 10th grade.

Don’t Ask Me What I Want It For

I know it’s probably verging on blasphemy for some when I say I’m really digging Giles Martin’s new stereo mix of Revolver. Thinking very seriously of grabbing it on vinyl.

This Was Quite A Ride

… experiencing it as it happened, and now watching this.

Some solid tunes amidst the abhorrent soft rock. Boney M was in here two or three times and I swear I’ve never heard of them.

Zillow Finds

My house went on the market yesterday. My office (that I never use and I threw a bunch of old hifi stuff and a midi controller I had laying around into to stage) has now flicked off almost 2,000 people on Zillow.

God Bless the Mats