27 responses to “News & Links:
Sunday, February 4, 2024”

1. 

   johnthebasket

   02/06/2024

   It must be Monday because Trump got his ass kicked in yet another judicial proceeding at yet another level of the Federal Court System. But none of these songs is about Trump. One is a derivative murder ballad, one is about a guy who gets fired for fucking up as a ship's mate, and one of them is about — oh shit — another brutal murder. I guess they're all about Trump.

   After Bob Dylan forgot how to write songs, he teamed briefly with Jacques Levy and extended his writing career by a few months. The story about how Dylan stumbled across an itinerant violinist and made a couple terrific songs with her is another, longer story. Here is the Dylan Lite band (Dylan wasn't getting paid for the gig) playing and singing Hurricane.

   https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=voH11xV4AKI

   Here's the Jimi Hendrix Experience singing and playing a song without a writer or with too many writers. Many bands played this song in the day, but only Jimi used the dental approach. Hendrix performing Hey Joe.

   https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gUPifXX0foU

   And here are Brian Wilson and Al Jardine and a few of the real Beach Boys singing and playing one of the singles off an album that all four Beatles listened to the day it was dropped in England, Pet Sounds: Sloop John B.

   https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gx5PVjsRamk&list=RDOZ2RJwTwbzg&index=6

   jtb

   Reply
   1. 

      Doug Holland

      02/07/2024

      Being not a sailing man, I never 'got' the Sloop John B. Thought of it as one of their later, lesser hits like "Kokomo". Didn't know it was from Pet Sounds, and also very impressive seeing the old originals perform it for me. I begin to understand the song at last, perhaps.

      The other two ditties are catchy too, but it's the Sloop John B that kicked me in the keel.

      Reply
2. 

   johnthebasket

   02/07/2024

   I never got The Beach Boys and I was just the right age: 16 when Pet Sounds was released, and I never bought it. I didn't care about cars or surfing. I cared about girls, but that didn't qualify my as a rarity. I suspect the "Boys" were a victim of their label's (Capitol) P/R machine. Hell, only one of them surfed, and really only one of them wrote, and he didn't give a shit about cars. He cared about harmony and chord changes. Now I listen to Caroline No or God Only Knows, and I understand why the Beatles considered Brian "the competition" — not the Rolling Stones or any of the other BritPop groups. And the Beatles had George Martin blocking and tackling their label for them so they could focus on music. Brian had Brian: the boy genius who fought the world to create music for the ages and found mostly madness. Paulie must be his biggest fan: he tells anyone who will listen that he and John were writing their asses off just to keep up with a Californian they'd never met who sported a recording studio tan.

   John

   Reply
   1. 

      Doug Holland

      02/08/2024

      I have looked at these words twenty times, and they've terrified me. Several readings I couldn't understand, under my dementia. When it finally made sense, I still couldn't find a reply, and even now this is the best I can do.

      But jeez what a lifeline, thank you. It seriously helped drag me up out of the swamp.

      Reply
   2. 

      Claude Reigns

      02/09/2024

      This guy is deaf in one ear

      https://youtu.be/iZZ_9IPxyK8?si=MvMBSZmwOmzyvSQJ

      Reply
   3. 

      Claude Reigns

      02/09/2024

      https://youtu.be/2GhzpQ16h2M?si=5SEUxLAmn-EJyclm

      Reply
   4. 

      Claude Reigns

      02/09/2024

      https://youtu.be/R8KXFHm6nS0?si=RzfXly9NDvEcraEG

      Reply
   5. 

      Claude Reigns

      02/09/2024

      https://youtu.be/24PsUMkrrE0?si=Z9VT68dTddHKFJrL

      Reply
   6. 

      Claude Reigns

      02/09/2024

      https://youtu.be/AGvejZEf5cg?si=B_l4aNG1EUQuLbnR

      Reply
   7. 

      Claude Reigns

      02/09/2024

      https://youtu.be/aVis0FbvJsU?si=FnGFAO251fQpHblZ

      Reply
   8. 

      Claude Reigns

      02/09/2024

      https://youtu.be/eXZ_L6zJn1c?si=PQjV5qy7xKiTmSJs

      Reply
   9. 

      Claude Reigns

      02/09/2024

      https://youtu.be/S22a1CITgj0?si=q9w18vJnlh5jj7yx

      Reply
   10. 

       Claude Reigns

       02/09/2024

       https://youtu.be/4-3mBUCtzcs?si=1KAKkr8CQh051w-H

       Reply
   11. 

       Claude Reigns

       02/09/2024

       https://youtu.be/Gcwacfett_M?si=Fg_8-qigxow60oJ9

       Reply
   12. 

       Claude Reigns

       02/09/2024

       https://youtu.be/3Ma1HcZMPcI?si=F7AkadG8wkozrq4l

       Reply
   13. 

       Doug Holland

       02/09/2024

       "I'd love just once to see you in the nude" — definitely a surprise lyric, Am I a Beach Boy newbie?

       Reply
   14. 

       Doug Holland

       02/09/2024

       Lots here I hadn't heard before, thanks. "Midnight's Another Day" is the one my head and heart like best. Wow.

       Reply
   15. 

       Claude Reigns

       02/10/2024

       All the Beach Boys are wonderful singers – especially when harmonizing together – but Brian is THE MAN. A completely radical composer, combining folk, classic pop, exotica and experimental musics into something totally new and utterly sincere.

       A lot of hipster doofuses can't handle the "sincere" part of the equation, they think he's "corny." But hey, man, that's part of the American Story, that corniness. It's there in films like The Right Stuff, right next to the awe and mysteries, and that's why it's a necessary part of Wilson's songs, too. The dude believes what he says, when he talks about love and mercy and so on, all you have to do is look at any interviews with him: he's completely damaged, has no room for guile or deception. He wants his songs to heal people as well as entertain them.

       One of the most eccentric artists of the century, and one of the most misunderstood. It's like, imagine Stanley Kubrick, but Stanley Kubrick also had two dozen unreleased films as good or better than the big hits – that's Brian Wilson.

       Amazing he outlived both his younger brothers, and now his wife. Amazing he survived the 1970s, 400 lbs and bedridden, on every drug imaginable. Lotta people disparage Eugene Landy's influence on Brian, but without Landy, Brian would be dead and gone 40 years ago.

       Reply
   16. 

       Doug Holland

       02/10/2024

       The sincere part is the baseline of art.

       Reply
3. 

   johnthebasket

   02/10/2024

   Well put. As a kid, I though Brian was a little corny. As an adult, he seems a little like the musical Robert Frost. I don't agree with all of it, but I marvel at its beauty and clarity. This land was ours before we were the land's. God only knows what I'd be without you.

   John

   Reply
   1. 

      johnthebasket

      02/10/2024

      Imagine combining Phil Spector's Wall of Sound with Carol Kaye's Precision Bass jazz improv with Hal Blaine's eccentric and precise percussion with Glen Campbell's lovely acoustic guitar work with a dozen other Wrecking Crew geniuses, then overlaying six-part vocal, and doing it again and again, each time just a little differently. The idea of playing the bottom of the gravity-fed water cooler on "God Only Knows" just wouldn't come to anybody but Brian Wilson.

      John

      Reply
   2. 

      Doug Holland

      02/10/2024

      https://redirect.invidious.io/watch?v=QSFDewh-eN4

      Reply
4. 

   johnthebasket

   02/10/2024

   And for all the genius ascribed to Brian and Tony (and the Boys for their vocals) in the ensuing years, the album was a flop. That's a quote from Tony Asher (who, like Brian, is still with us) and it's deadly accurate. Yeah, the album reached number 10 briefly on a couple national "top 40" lists, but it dropped fast and faded away. It was too "adult" for AM radio, and too poppy for FM. It was poorly named and the cover art represented the name but not the music. What the fuck is a "pet sound"? Brian spent two thousand hours working on the album and couldn't spend two hours thinking up a catchy (or even appropriate) name. Capitol was only worried about recouping Brian's huge, gigantic (there isn't a big enough word) recording bill, and wanted to make the album universally accessible. They managed to lose the Beach Boys old audience without finding a new one (which was out there listening to the Beatles, Dylan, the Moody Blues, and others) but had never bothered with the Beach Boys. Most of the reviews missed the point of the album and were really about previous albums. Capitol should have thrown a giant rolling rollout party around the world, and did nothing, wanting to not throw good money after bad. Pet Sounds quickly became just another surfing disc by the guys in striped shirts. John and Paul knew better and said so, but they were going a thousand miles an hour with their own work and didn't have time to pimp for Brian and the Boys. There were rumors decades later that John and Paul told George Martin at the time that they couldn't have created Pet Sounds for any price. Private conversations in sound studios are hard to verify. Pet Sounds took thirty years to find its audience. Realistically, Capitol was giving the Boys more like thirty days. Whoever said life isn't fair should try his hand at the record business, where THAT shit is stunningly, staggeringly true.

   John

   Reply
   1. 

      Doug Holland

      02/11/2024

      The backstories of music don't much interest me unless told by you or Mr Reigns, in which case they're riveting.

      > What the fuck is a "pet sound"?

      Kinda love that line, and the whole piece built around it.

      Generally not a 'backstory' guy, myself, and I pray nobody ever tells my backstory, which is certainly not worth being told.

      Reply
   2. 

      johnthebasket

      02/12/2024

      Just an opinion, but the music is the slightly stale bread on the outside. The backstory is the mystery meat between the bread and the bread. The music is somebody else's. The backstory is us: our culture, what turns us on, the motive.

      John

      Reply
   3. 

      johnthebasket

      02/12/2024

      Doug, it's just before 4 in the AM and I just got home. I wrote that last reply hurriedly at my sister's, and upon rereading it sounds a little harsh. You get to choose what you like and what interests you. I stand by my comment, but I should have been more respectful.

      Hope you're feeling better. I've not seen any medical reports lately, and it's about damn time you got over this crappy illness. And I hope there's no longer crap involved.

      best,

      John

      Reply
   4. 

      Doug Holland

      02/12/2024

      Can't see anything to apologize for. As often happens, your "slightly stale bread" analogy is insightful and yummy.

      As for me, I'm mostly just weak and sleepy, taking a week off from life to rebuild myself. Tried writing about some slight cognitive issues, but they're so slight it felt like a complaint where I ought to be giving thanks.

      Reply

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