Musician humor at its finest.
Every Day Is Clash Day
Day late, dollar short. Happy belated International Clash Day!
This is anti-racist, and anti-fear. This is pro-solidarity, pro-unity, and pro-inclusion. This is a public service announcement with GUITARS.
This is International Clash Day 2019, and all day long, all across the globe, we’re celebrating music as a tool for social consciousness, a band that made it sound so damn good, and an iconic record that still changes lives 40 years later.
Check out the other great posters on the dang ol’ site.
Fuck Me, Don’t Tell A Soul Is 30
Released February 1, 1989. This makes me feel older than turning 50. To put it in perspective, this post is the equivalent of the 20-year-old me in 1989 talking about an album that came out in 1959.
Wiki-wiki-wikipedia says …
Don’t Tell a Soul marked the debut of Bob “Slim” Dunlap, who replaced founding guitarist Bob Stinson. The album was recorded at Cherokee Studios in Los Angeles and produced by Matt Wallace and the band. It was mixed by Chris Lord-Alge, who decided to give the record “a three-dimensional, radio-ready sound”. However, singer and guitarist Paul Westerberg was not satisfied with the new direction, commenting: “I thought the little things I’d cut in my basement were closer to what I wanted.”
To celebrate, let’s all take a moment and watch one of my favorite rock ‘n’ roll moments.
As explained by a lesser blog …
Before the show, they were told they needed to change the line, “We’re feeling good from the pills we took.” Well, fittingly, Westerberg did no such thing, and the censors were obviously ready for it, as the tape goes silent during that section of the song. What the censors at ABC didn’t anticipate was this: Near the conclusion of “Talent Show” the lyrics address the time when the band hits the stage and there’s no retreating: “It’s too late to turn back, here we go” is repeated twice on the album version, but here Westerberg has changed the line to “It’s too late to take pills, here we go”—ha! The censors missed it and they’ve pissed everyone off again! To add insult, the line is sung three times.
Progress?
I’ve now worked my way up to two Smiths songs that don’t trigger my gag reflex. Enjoy or don’t.
There Was A Light
Today on the Please Kill Me blargh, Bruce Eaton, author of Big Star’s Radio City (33 1/3 series) chats up Rich Tupica, author of There Was A Light: The Cosmic History of Chris Bell and the Rise of BIG STAR, the recent Chris Bell biography.
Check it out here!
Just as an aside, when social media first made me aware of the Chris Bell book, I didn’t make any plans to read it. The whole thing seemed rather sketchy, a paperback written by an author I wasn’t familiar with, published by HoZac Records. I wasn’t a huge fan of that cover (it’s growing on me), and besides, it was $40.00! For a paperback! When it sold out, I figured that was that.
But since then, all I’ve seen are glowing reviews. So when I read the PKM piece this morning, I checked the HoZac site for a status update. Second printing is shipping now, and I’ve got a birthday coming up.
After FIVE solid years of painstaking research and hard work, Rich Tupica’s epic tome on the deep end of the BIG STAR story is ready. At 400+ pages, There Was A Light is stocked with a wealth of previously-unseen color photos, personal ephemera from the Bell family’s archive, as well as everything Ardent Studios could jam in, it’s nothing short of breathtaking stuff! Starting with intense coverage of Bell’s childhood bands and continuing deep into his post-Big Star solo work, this book delves into the details beyond the documentary, distilling countless hours of minutiae into a riveting oral history of one of rock’n’roll’s most beloved cult bands, and a trip through Memphis underground music history like no other.
Happy birthday to me
Happy birthday to me
I look like a monkey
And snobby rock books ain’t free
The British Masters
Simonon seems like a good egg.
After Mark E Smith, Goldie, Liam Gallagher and John Lydon, Paul Simonon of The Clash joins host John Doran to be inducted as a British Master.
Originally known as the bass player in The Clash, a lifelong artist and style obsessive, Paul was one of the key architects of the aesthetics of punk. His obsession with dub and reggae helped broaden the sound of The Clash gloriously. We spoke to him in Damon Albarn’s West London Studio, where they were rehearsing for their upcoming tour as one half of The Good, The Bad & The Queen.
Give Out But Don’t Give Up
https://youtu.be/mpUVOVDy0iw
This is a BBC4 documentary about Primal Scream’s trip to Memphis to record an album that wouldn’t see the light of day for 25 years. (These mixes, anyway.) I love this shit.
This Is A Classic
How long can you take it?
All 70 tracks! It’s the full compilation of absolutely terrible, yet hilarious stage banter from Paul Stanley of KISS, who by the way, is absolutely, positively not a repressed gay man.
EDIT: I made it 11 minutes and 17 seconds.
The Names You Drop Are Second Hand
Say what you want about Sweet, this is a great fucking song.
Inside The Rapsody
Something to watch after you’ve stuffed your bastard faces tomorrow.