Thursday, August 5, 2004

Oakland Downtown YMCA: the 6 am Soundtrack The place was full, the music was strong, we are in shape, sort of. 8 more classes before I move to Los Angeles and leave it all behind... 1. I Can Understand It, Bobby Womack 2. Rock Steady, Aretha Franklin 3. Le Freak, Chic 4. The Boogie That B, Black Eyed Peas 5. A Change Is Gonna Come, Aretha Franklin 6. Take Me To The River, Al Green 7. I Can`t Help Myself (Sugar Pie Honey Bunch), The Four Tops 8, It's The Same Old Song, The Four Tops 9. Angel, Aretha Franklin 10. The Ghetto, Too $hort 11. Redemption Song (Live), Bob Marley posted by TommyT @ Thursday, August 5, 2004 | Permanent link

Wednesday, August 4, 2004

The Man can't bust our music Even when the music in question is Eminem's piss-wet, scraped-off-the-sidewalk joint "Stan," about the fan from hell who needed something special from Em and didn't get it. A "Stan" fan in England pumped up the volume and wouldn't turn it down; what happened next is under investigation, but someone dropped a few pence and called the gendarmes: Next thing you know, The Man arrived to bust our music. You know what Joe Hill used to say: first "Stan," then Barry McGuire's "Eve Of Destruction." I found the lyrics: "Yeah, my blood's so mad, feels like coagulatin'/ I'm sittin' here, just contemplatin'...when human respect is disintegratin'/ this whole crazy world is just too frustratin'/ and you tell me over and over and over again my friend/ ah, you don't believe we're on the eve of destruction." I dug out my copy of the song, listened, and then overdosed on chip butties, to show solidarity with the British sister. Should anyone want to hear a cover of "Eve Of Destruction" so malignant that it will cause dawn to break, follow instructions, then slide under your desk, and wait for the rapture. Or the Screaming Lord Sutch reunion tour, whichever comes first. posted by TommyT @ Wednesday, August 4, 2004 | Permanent link

Johnny Paycheck Could've Kicked Your Ass The last time the late country singer Johnny Paycheck went to jail was for shooting a guy in a bar fight - and here I should mention that if he were still alive, I wouldn't be telling this story because he had a temper, and besides, I'm not sure if it's 100% true (although Kurt Wolf who is a former colleague who knows so much about country music that he wrote a book on it, not THE book, but still not bad; anyway he told the story to me and he believes it, so that's something. So the story goes that some guy who was kind of a fan of Paycheck met him in an Ohio bar in 1985 and asked the singer if he wanted to go back to his place where there was going to be a barbecue. Paycheck asked what they were going to barbecue, and the guy told him they were going to cook up some turtle meat. That pissed Paycheck off, so he shot the guy. It's one of those stories that when you hear it you think that there's got to be more to it. Or else that there's something bad about turtle meat the news of which didn't make it out West where I live. Anyway, Johnny Paycheck was a serious fuck-up who could sing his ass off and he cut a ton of great records, the best of which - if you ask me, and to paraphrase taxi driver #1 Travis Bickel, you gotta be asking me, because there ain't nobody else here to ask - is The Soul & the Edge: The Best of Johnny Paycheck. Get that, and then expand your horizons a bit by checking out what a great songwriter Paycheck was on Touch My Heart, a tribute to the guy who gave us the blue collar anthem, "Take This Job And Shove It," by a gang of artists including the very cool Neko Case, who can sing her ass off. posted by TommyT @ Wednesday, August 4, 2004 | Permanent link