Paul would have only been 37 when this song came out...just 6 months before I was born. Happy birthday Sir Paul.
Basement Party 2
Showing posts with label Tribute. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Tribute. Show all posts
Monday, June 18, 2012
Happy 70th Macca!
In honor of Paul McCartney's 70th birthday today, I'm going to post the video for his song "Arrow Through Me," from 1979's Back to the Egg album by Wings. I always love hidden gems in the vast discographies of some of my favorite acts, and had never heard this particular song until a few years ago. This is an example of an overly blow-dried Macca mixing some disco-flavored funk up (in the style of his buddy Stevie Wonder, as evidenced by the keyboards).
Paul would have only been 37 when this song came out...just 6 months before I was born. Happy birthday Sir Paul.
Paul would have only been 37 when this song came out...just 6 months before I was born. Happy birthday Sir Paul.
Sunday, May 20, 2012
Robin Gibb - 1949-2012
I just learned of the passing of one of the Bee Gees, Robin Gibb. He sang lead on many of their songs, and sadly after his death there's only one Bee Gee left, Barry. Here's a clip of him from the early days. We will miss you Robin.
Friday, May 11, 2012
Happy b-day to an ANIMAL
I just learned that Eric Burdon (singer for the Animals and War) turned 71 today. Holy crap I didn't realize he was that old, but if you do the math I guess it all adds up. I dig all of his stuff with the Animals but I think this is my favorite performance of his...enjoy.
Saturday, April 21, 2012
More Dick!
After last night's post honoring the life of American Bandstand host Dick Clark, I found myself perusing clips of that show on the website www.slicingupeyeballs.com. The clips they posted showcased the various synth pop and new wave bands who had appeared, and I saw excellent performances by OMD, Berlin, Adam & the Ants, and a handful of others. One clip I watched was simply so awesome I had to put it up here as an addendum to last night's tribute. The band? Public Image Ltd. (featuring the infamous Johnny Rotten, ex-Sex Pistols).
Last time I saw this clip was in high school, and the sheer anarchy of it has always stuck with me. Johnny Rotten, wearing a white suit foreshadowing the style of "Miami Vice," wanders through the audience with abandon. Lip syncing be damned, he begins pulling girls up on stage to dance around the band. The band members barely pretend to play, swap instruments, and look unmoved by their surroundings.
The story goes that Dick Clark had a verbal altercation with one of the members backstage before taping and asked their tour manager "What can I expect from this asshole?" It went a little something like this:
Last time I saw this clip was in high school, and the sheer anarchy of it has always stuck with me. Johnny Rotten, wearing a white suit foreshadowing the style of "Miami Vice," wanders through the audience with abandon. Lip syncing be damned, he begins pulling girls up on stage to dance around the band. The band members barely pretend to play, swap instruments, and look unmoved by their surroundings.
The story goes that Dick Clark had a verbal altercation with one of the members backstage before taping and asked their tour manager "What can I expect from this asshole?" It went a little something like this:
Friday, April 20, 2012
Dick and Levon
Sorry for the recent paucity of posts lately. My free time has been a bit scarce lately, for various reasons. Fear not, I have some cool ideas jotted down and plan on getting to them when the time is available. However, I did feel it incumbent upon myself to post short tributes to America's oldest teenager Dick Clark and singer/drummer Levon Helms, who both passed away this week.
Dick Clark
Dick is best known for being the host of American Bandstand. While he still hosted the show until I was 9 years old, I never saw it as a child. I do remember him being omnipresent in my early years though, hosting the $25,000 Pyramid and TV's Bloopers & Practical Jokes, not to mention ABC's New Year's Rockin' Eve. When I was in high school I saw reruns of American Bandstand on VH1. The episodes were plucked from the late '70s and early '80s, and featured either disco dancing or new wave acts lip syncing their latest hits.
I have a few clips to showcase Dick in action with various rock legends, the first of which is a personal favorite as it shows him interviewing the Syd Barrett-era Pink Floyd in 1968 after a "performance" (Syd couldn't be bothered to convincingly lip-sync). I love the contrast of the button-downed showmanship of Dick Clark vs. the scruffy, Carnaby street style of the Floyd:
The next clip is from roughly 13 years later, with Dick interviewing the Go Gos. He winds up getting their names confused, perhaps due to being transfixed by their beauty. I of course look for any excuse to showcase the lovely Jane Wiedlin...I had my hair cut by a girl who looked just like her recently. Best haircut EVER:
Levon Helm
I first heard a song by the Band on a commercial back in the early '90s...I can't remember what the product was, maybe beer? The commercial featured perhaps their best known song, "The Weight," and to me the harmonies and honky tonk piano sounded as close to what music in the old west must have sounded like as I could imagine. Over the subsequent years I heard more songs by them and became impressed with their talent, especially drummer/singer Levon Helms. To drum and sing at the same time takes some skills, and this guy had them to spare. The Band (along with CCR) ushered in the era of roots rock, which provided a nice counterpoint to the psychedelic experimentation going on elsewhere in music at that time.
This clip is of the swampy, funky, "Up On Cripple Creek," as performed in the concert film "The Last Waltz" in 1976:
Two more go to Rock and Roll Heaven...I'm afraid to ask who's next?
Dick Clark
Dick is best known for being the host of American Bandstand. While he still hosted the show until I was 9 years old, I never saw it as a child. I do remember him being omnipresent in my early years though, hosting the $25,000 Pyramid and TV's Bloopers & Practical Jokes, not to mention ABC's New Year's Rockin' Eve. When I was in high school I saw reruns of American Bandstand on VH1. The episodes were plucked from the late '70s and early '80s, and featured either disco dancing or new wave acts lip syncing their latest hits.
I have a few clips to showcase Dick in action with various rock legends, the first of which is a personal favorite as it shows him interviewing the Syd Barrett-era Pink Floyd in 1968 after a "performance" (Syd couldn't be bothered to convincingly lip-sync). I love the contrast of the button-downed showmanship of Dick Clark vs. the scruffy, Carnaby street style of the Floyd:
The next clip is from roughly 13 years later, with Dick interviewing the Go Gos. He winds up getting their names confused, perhaps due to being transfixed by their beauty. I of course look for any excuse to showcase the lovely Jane Wiedlin...I had my hair cut by a girl who looked just like her recently. Best haircut EVER:
Levon Helm
I first heard a song by the Band on a commercial back in the early '90s...I can't remember what the product was, maybe beer? The commercial featured perhaps their best known song, "The Weight," and to me the harmonies and honky tonk piano sounded as close to what music in the old west must have sounded like as I could imagine. Over the subsequent years I heard more songs by them and became impressed with their talent, especially drummer/singer Levon Helms. To drum and sing at the same time takes some skills, and this guy had them to spare. The Band (along with CCR) ushered in the era of roots rock, which provided a nice counterpoint to the psychedelic experimentation going on elsewhere in music at that time.
This clip is of the swampy, funky, "Up On Cripple Creek," as performed in the concert film "The Last Waltz" in 1976:
Two more go to Rock and Roll Heaven...I'm afraid to ask who's next?
Thursday, April 5, 2012
Has it been 18 years already?
I remember hearing about the passing of Kurt Cobain on a sunny April day in 1994. I was in 8th grade and had been a Nirvana fan for two and a half years, ever since they gained mainstream attention with their "Nevermind" album in Sept. 1991. This is my favorite Kurt performance, and the song remains as haunting and beautiful as ever.
Here's another clip from a 1992 episode of SNL I still remember watching live, and would have been the first time I ever saw footage of the band. At age 12, they were unlike anything I had ever seen before. I now know how my dad must have felt when he saw the Beatles for the first time...it's the closest moment my generation will have to that bellwether moment in time.
Loudwire has a list of the top 5 live performances by Nirvana...St. Andrew's Hall in Detroit was one of them!
Rest easy Kurt...your daughter has grown up beautiful, your bass player is now into politics, and your drummer is doing pretty well with his new band.
Here's another clip from a 1992 episode of SNL I still remember watching live, and would have been the first time I ever saw footage of the band. At age 12, they were unlike anything I had ever seen before. I now know how my dad must have felt when he saw the Beatles for the first time...it's the closest moment my generation will have to that bellwether moment in time.
Loudwire has a list of the top 5 live performances by Nirvana...St. Andrew's Hall in Detroit was one of them!
Rest easy Kurt...your daughter has grown up beautiful, your bass player is now into politics, and your drummer is doing pretty well with his new band.
Wednesday, February 29, 2012
For the love of Davy
We interrupt our regularly scheduled episode of "Bedroom In the Basement" (today's installment was going to discuss the new Van Halen single) to pay tribute to a guy even shorter than me, Davy Jones, who died suddenly today at the age of 66.
It's hard to recall my earliest memory of the Monkees, but I believe it was sometime back in 1986 when I saw a rerun of their show while at a hotel (possibly on "Nick at Nite?"). The catchy songs and madcap antics of the characters appealed to me, and I remember my parents taking notice of my enjoyment of them. They may have been the first band my dad and I bonded over, as he was a fan of them in his teenage years. This was an excellent example of how the music of the '60s bridged the generation gap. My dad said he had all of the Monkees records, and when we got back home he looked through an old, musty box in the basement to find them for me to listen to. Alas, they were nowhere to be found.
It turns out the Monkee records, along with my dad's Beatles collection (and possibly a copy of Pink Floyd's "Dark Side of the Moon"), were loaned out to a short-haired, bespectacled babysitter of mine named Janet. She had wanted to record them onto cassette for her brother, and never returned them. In the meantime my family moved to a town 45 minutes away, putting the final nail in the coffin as far as ever getting them back.
Despite this setback, I continued to enjoy the music of the Monkees over the next 25+ years, and saw many a reunion occur between them. I remember it being a big deal in 1996 when all four members got back together, as Mike Nesmith had often been the lone hold-out for a full fledged reunion. I saw Davy appear as himself on a rerun of "The Brady Bunch," and watched him reprise this role in 1995's "Brady Bunch Movie."
As I got older, I noticed that the Monkees were deeper than I had been led to believe. This was evident after watching their feature film, 1968's 'Head," which was a tripped-out satire. I later discovered that some of their deeper cuts were early examples of the "country rock" style popularized in the late '60s by bands like The Byrds and Poco.
A lot of people slagged them for being actors pretending to be a band, but Mike Nesmith and Peter Tork were accomplished musicians prior to joining (Stephen Stills had recommended Peter Tork for the band after his own failed audition).
So, remembering Davy, I offer my favorite performance of his. The video is a scene from the movie "Head" featuring Davy dancing while singing "Daddy's Song." It spotlights some innovative choreography and cinematography, but what I enjoy the most about it is that it's a happy song with lyrics that are sad.
David Thomas Jones, 1945-2012
It's hard to recall my earliest memory of the Monkees, but I believe it was sometime back in 1986 when I saw a rerun of their show while at a hotel (possibly on "Nick at Nite?"). The catchy songs and madcap antics of the characters appealed to me, and I remember my parents taking notice of my enjoyment of them. They may have been the first band my dad and I bonded over, as he was a fan of them in his teenage years. This was an excellent example of how the music of the '60s bridged the generation gap. My dad said he had all of the Monkees records, and when we got back home he looked through an old, musty box in the basement to find them for me to listen to. Alas, they were nowhere to be found.
It turns out the Monkee records, along with my dad's Beatles collection (and possibly a copy of Pink Floyd's "Dark Side of the Moon"), were loaned out to a short-haired, bespectacled babysitter of mine named Janet. She had wanted to record them onto cassette for her brother, and never returned them. In the meantime my family moved to a town 45 minutes away, putting the final nail in the coffin as far as ever getting them back.
Despite this setback, I continued to enjoy the music of the Monkees over the next 25+ years, and saw many a reunion occur between them. I remember it being a big deal in 1996 when all four members got back together, as Mike Nesmith had often been the lone hold-out for a full fledged reunion. I saw Davy appear as himself on a rerun of "The Brady Bunch," and watched him reprise this role in 1995's "Brady Bunch Movie."
As I got older, I noticed that the Monkees were deeper than I had been led to believe. This was evident after watching their feature film, 1968's 'Head," which was a tripped-out satire. I later discovered that some of their deeper cuts were early examples of the "country rock" style popularized in the late '60s by bands like The Byrds and Poco.
A lot of people slagged them for being actors pretending to be a band, but Mike Nesmith and Peter Tork were accomplished musicians prior to joining (Stephen Stills had recommended Peter Tork for the band after his own failed audition).
So, remembering Davy, I offer my favorite performance of his. The video is a scene from the movie "Head" featuring Davy dancing while singing "Daddy's Song." It spotlights some innovative choreography and cinematography, but what I enjoy the most about it is that it's a happy song with lyrics that are sad.
David Thomas Jones, 1945-2012
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