YouTube Sightings
Can:
1) Mushroom Head (1972) Video. Is this made by the band? A friend? It seems to be from 72 and is incredible. Even the Guru was impressed, and she's no krautrock fan.
2) Paper House (197?) This is live from TV with Damo dancing maniacally and spurting out his broken words. Another winner.
3) Vertical Equinox (1975) Damo has gone, but the band sounds awesome and still experimental with Karoli sounding particularly awesome in this live tv performance.
4) Don't Say No (1977) Another live TV performance, and latter Can is much smoother, with a nice funky bottom supplied by some really cool looking cat on bass.
Summary: It has been an absolute joy watching Can performances from the 70s, especially the early stuff with Damo. Awesome band, awesome videos.
CSN & Y: Down By the River on the David Steinberg show circa 71. Great live performance with the band actually living up to their potential. Neil and Stills particularly shine. Who's a thunk???
William Shatner: Rocket Man - I canNOT get enough of William Shatner. I was laughing through the whole video...I mean, I was in deep contemplative mode with William's interpretation bringing new and insightful meanings to the original lyric.
Bob Dylan: Love Sick - This was a strange one! A small studio crowd dressed in black grooving to this song, with Bob acting particularly cool. [aside: Time Out of Mind is a classic to me *****, with Love and Theft a disappointment (I don't see why so many critics consider this a classic, it's a *** at most). The new one, Modern Times (2006) sounds fantastic. Blows away Love and Theft.]
***The Residents: The Third Reich 'n' Roll (1976) I remember seeing the video from this album many decades ago and it blew away my virginal eyes. I saw it again a couple of weeks ago, and it still blows me away. Of course, I had to get the album, and it is currently melting my mind
intofrothy ice creamlayersof possibilitiesand creativity.Eyeballs need love too!!!!!***
YouTube MusingsI've been getting trapped up in the YouTube phenomenon. It really is pretty fucking great!!!
Here's some awesome shit I've seen.
Bob Dylan doing "Old Man" from 2002. Fucking fantastic! Great version...great song for Bob. If you're a Dylan fan, or a fan of the song...go, go now and view it. Go on you...get.
Derek and the Dominos doing "It's Too Late" (unfortunately without Duane, but still...), sounding great on the Johnny Cash show, who then wanders out with his guitar and you know what's coming. No you don't, cause they also pull out Carl Perkins and The Dominos and Cash / Perkins rock out on "Matchbox".
I really don't know what to say about the next one.
It brought tears to my eyes
thoughts to my brain
a lump to the throat
contemplation...deepness...philosophy...
extremely fucking P S Y C H E D E L I C
William Shatner doing a brilliant version of "Taxi" and revealing layers that Harry Chapin could never have imagined.
This is classic.
Serge Gainsbourg & Brigette Bardot in the video for "Bonnie & Clyde". I'm not entirely sold on Gainsbourg, but this is a great song, and the video is very dramatic.
Bonnie & Cl-i-de.
A real find ---- The Parliaments doing "What Is Soul?" in all their freaky glory from 1969. I've looked for old Funkadelic, and it's not that easy to find, so this was awesome. Fuzzy Haskins sounds awesome and the whole band...well, it don't get no fucking cooler than this!!
Almost 10 minutes of Moby Grape doing 3 songs. It starts off with a couple of tv performances...strong and great.
Then...let the acid kick in and
feedback roars,
guitars blare and there's some kind of movie going on in the background of the performance. Wild.
GG Allin yelling at people.
Acid Motherfucking Temple - 2 3 minute live snippets. One was Pink Lady Lemonade. Absolutely gorgeous and transcendent. Takes me away every fucking time. The other was the opposite extreme. Loud, abrasive, chaos, guitars flying, hair flying...Awesome.
***
Random New Listening, Thoughts
I've been working on adding some class to the collection, so I've added Bill Withers "Just As I Am" (1971) and Al Green's "Let's Stay Together" (1972). Needless to say, they are both brilliant, and more more more is needed!!!
I didn't think The Pseudo-Velvets "Squeeze" (1973) album sounded as bad as the legend would have you believe.
I heard Dylan in his born-again phase from 1980 at Massey Hall in good old T.O, and found it very interesting.
What the hell was going on with Dylan at this time?
Is he serious? There's certainly an energy there that I find very intriguing.
Beck's "Mellow Gold" (1994) finally converted me over to Beck's side. I'm not sure what took me so long, but I thought this album was pretty awesome.
Help Yourself: Strange Affair (1972) is very enjoyable / interesting. Gotta find out more about these guys.
Finally...I picked up The Velvet Underground: 1969 Live Volume 2 (1974) and was enthralled listening to this masterpiece once again. There's lots of live Velvets out there now (aside: Quine's bootleg series is in-fucking-credible), but back in the day when I had this on vinyl it was the only decent live Velvets out there.
The Bevis Frond: New River Head (1971) was great. Another guy to look into.***
Ghost: Second Time Around (1992)
This is the second time around for me listening to this, so...only appropriate to talk about it.
beautiful
transcendent
mystical
illuminating
in a forest...at peace
at ease
at one with nature
the music of the forest
the music of animals
Ghost is an appropriate name
I am insanely glad that I have delved into the world
of noise
of extremes
embracing beauty and ugliness
Second Time Around is beauty
I can see the leaves fluttering
and sheets of ghost
engulf the
inner mystical mind,
music touches
inside and heals
and I feel better than I did 48:21 ago....
I have also listened to Damon & Naomi with Ghost (2000) and thought it sounded great!
Here's a couple of Ghost links: Spirits in the Sky: The Almighty Japanese progrock of Ghost by Erik Davis and for those who speak Japanese Ghost's official web site, and AMG's Ghost page.
***
At Peace
The wind blows through the trees,
I zip up my coat to keep out the breeze,
kicking stones, looking at the ground,
ignoring the traffic bellowing in the streets,
I'm at peace, I don't hear a sound,
except for the wind, blowing through the trees.
Caressing the peace I recently found,
not bothering to cover up
the peace bulging in my pants,
I don't care what others think today,
today's my day, with the breeze blowing through the trees,
me, the wind, the trees, walking together through the streets.
By: John Harvey (oh gosh..1984?)
***
There was a bear in our backyard last week.
How cool is that??!!
Especially since we're all still alive
...no Timothy Treadwell story here...we watched him from inside.
We also had Trouble and Poobah to protect us.
Unfortunately, the Guru's camera is STILL at Future Shop...Future Shop's customer service is incredibly incompetent!
***
It's sorta cool getting high and turning on Windows Media Player to fullscreen and stare at those awesome visualizations while you got great tunes blaring into your skull.
I suppose...* cough cough * ... what would I know about that????***
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