Bally produced 17,000 of these things back in 1979. Nowadays, median asking price is $2,550.
Fat Elvis, you need one.
You Are Forgiven
Fucking finally, an official copy of this amazing footage on YouTube. (As of six days ago!) No more take-downs.
According to the sometimes-reliable Wikipedia …
The Rolling Stones Rock and Roll Circus was a concert show organised by the Rolling Stones on 11 December 1968. The show was filmed on a makeshift circus stage with Jethro Tull, the Who, Taj Mahal, Marianne Faithfull, and the Rolling Stones. John Lennon and his fiancee Yoko Ono also performed as part of a one-shot supergroup called the Dirty Mac, featuring Eric Clapton, Mitch Mitchell, and Keith Richards … It was meant to be aired on the BBC, but instead the Rolling Stones withheld it. The Rolling Stones contended they did so because of their substandard performance, clearly exhausted after 15 hours (and some indulgence in drugs) … Some speculate that another reason for not releasing the film was that the Who, who were fresh off a concert tour, seemingly upstaged the Stones on their own production.
No question.
Eventually released in 1996. Enjoy or don’t, you dirty bastards.
Just Gonna Leave This Here
Union Row
THIS IS HUGE! An epic, historic game-changer for Memphis, one requiring all the stars to align for a project of this magnitude to even be considered. According to The Daily Memphian …
Supporters believe Union Row, the massive, $950-million office, retail and residential project in downtown Memphis’s blighted east edge will be a catalyst for enormous additional investment.
“That’s a Cinderella story,” Mark Billingsley said in December after he and fellow Shelby County Commissioners voted to pump $100 million into the project.
Developers contend Union Row will create 4,300 jobs and generate $16 million in annual property, sales and hotel taxes. If all phases are completed, the project will be among the largest, if not the largest “mixed-use’’ real estate development in Memphis history.
The project will be built in stages. Phase One, with a construction price tag of about $512 million, represents about half of the overall $950-million venture.
Developers spent $25 million this year — much of it with cash — snatching up an array of parcels where Phase One will rise: Collectively, a 10.8-acre site roughly bounded by Union on the north, Danny Thomas on the east, Beale on the south and Fourth on the west.
Developer J. Kevin Adams believes Union Row will reshape downtown.
“This is the gateway to our downtown,’’ he told a gathering in April at East Memphis’ Crescent Club. “And it’s been blighted for a long time.’’
The site is in decay. Vacant or overgrown lots surrounded by razor wire line the streets amid bits of broken glass. Now out-of-place businesses have agreed to move, including auto repair shop Powerhouse Motors and Lit Restaurant Supply, housed in a repurposed car dealership first opened in 1935.
Demolition is set to begin in October or late fall.
Full article here.
Hornsey Road?
A new stage show produced by Beatle expert Mark Lewisohn sheds some light on a story we thought we knew. From The Guardian …
They’ve wrapped up the recording of Abbey Road, which would turn out to be their last studio album, and are awaiting its release in two weeks’ time. Ringo Starr is in hospital, undergoing tests for an intestinal complaint. In his absence, John Lennon, Paul McCartney and George Harrison convene at Apple’s HQ in Savile Row. John has brought a portable tape recorder. He puts it on the table, switches it on and says: “Ringo – you can’t be here, but this is so you can hear what we’re discussing.”
What they talk about is the plan to make another album – and perhaps a single for release in time for Christmas, a commercial strategy going back to the earliest days of Beatlemania. “It’s a revelation,” Lewisohn says. “The books have always told us that they knew Abbey Road was their last album and they wanted to go out on an artistic high. But no – they’re discussing the next album. And you think that John is the one who wanted to break them up but, when you hear this, he isn’t. Doesn’t that rewrite pretty much everything we thought we knew?”
Full article here, including a link to tour dates for a show I would kill to see.
Fame…
https://youtu.be/_PkFOL2Pq4Q
A new documentary about Bowie called “Finding Fame” is out on Showtime. Mrs. Droogie and I stumbled on it the other night. I’m a big David Bowie fan, so I’m a bit biased, but I loved it. A lot of what’s covered in this happened before my time and when I was just a wee Droog, so it’s nice to hear the story of how he became popular. Dude was ahead of his time for sure. Check out the trailer here…
Some of his really early songs were crap, and then he somehow pulled Space Oddity out of nowhere.
Get Stuckmannized
I recently discovered this guy on YouTube. His movie reviews are excellent!
In fact, I can’t argue with a single thing he says in this review of The Phantom Menace. See what you think …
How William Gibson’s Long-Lost Alien 3 Script Became 2019’s Most Intriguing Audio Drama
I’m intrigued enough that I will be making a purchase very shortly. From The Verge …
Audible Studios’ new audio drama Alien III by William Gibson offers one of those alternate paths for the Alien series. Gibson, the author of Neuromancer and Mona Lisa Overdrive, has his own vision of what happened after Ripley, Hicks, Bishop, and Newt nuked LV-426 from orbit in Aliens. What was once a discarded draft has, in the hands of writer and director Dirk Maggs, become a fleshed-out audio production featuring Aliens stars Michael Biehn (as Hicks, the Marine who showed Sigourney Weaver’s Ripley how to fire a high-powered gun in Aliens) and Lance Henriksen (as Bishop, the “artificial person” who changes Ripley’s mind about working with synthetic life forms). Close your eyes, and it’s like slipping into an alternate universe in which this is the third Alien film, rather than the one we know.
You can pick it up here.