Let’s see what happens when your host (me) has nothing to say, and instead it’s open mike night. Step right up, speak your mind, tell a story, sing a song, whatever.
5/3/2025
Anything goes #26
39 responses to “Anything goes #26”
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I hope pathetic life hasn’t been cancelled. I’ve been enjoying the re-read.
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Dude, it was cancelled thirty years ago!
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Cancelled once, but reruns forever!
It’s been a busy few days so I’ve slipped behind, but there’ll be a fresh rerun later tonight…
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I might have posted this a few years ago, but some of the kids on the site have grown up since then and are more prepared to hear Lou Reed and Luciano Pavarotti singing “Perfect Day”, and less prepared to walk on the wild side, despite the attractions. Volume up.
John
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Yup, it’s a fine performance of a great song. Here it is without some fucking company’s logo in the corner. I also have complaints about the unnecessary and distracting swoopy drone camerawork, but absolutely it’s a fine performance of a great song.
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Here’s Leonard Cohen singing “Anthem” a couple of years before he died. I think he managed to describe both his time and ours. There is a crack in everything — that’s how the light gets in.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=c8-BT6y_wYg
jtb
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Being slightly sick in the head, I’m wondering what present-day mega-talents like Taylor Swift and Kendrick Lamar could do, reinterpreting “Anthem” as a pop-hit duet for 2025.
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I don’t think they could do it. I think neither is mega-talented and I think they both lack the soul. I’d rather hear Isaac Hayes cover it from the grave.
jtb
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I honestly wonder whether they could actually understand the meaning of the lyrics. Perhaps intellectually, but from the heart and gut?
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I suppose this will be a self-answering question, but my last two comments didn’t make it to the site. ¿Porque?
Gracias,
Juan-
I see two comments before this one. Holler if something’s missing.
Haven’t listened to the links yet, but you can bet your sweet bippy I will, soon.
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My bippy as well as my comments seem to have recovered. They were all missing for literally hours and then made the long journey from the outskirts back to the underskirts. They are now having a jamboree at Petticoat Junction.
John
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Doug,
Yeah, these were the missing two. It took over a half hour for them to show up, and I assumed that that was enough time to call Customer Service. Sometime later they popped up. I don’t care why or when or where, so I won’t open a DougTicket. 150 years ago I would have had to send a buggy to your flat to notify you that my attempted postings were lost in translation. Now there are no buggies available.
jtb
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No bippies, no buggies. Peculiar that you should mention Petticoat Junction. I recently wrote a full page, handwritten, ruminating on the hotel, and the train, and the town, and Sam Drucker’s general store, and the ickiness of three grown women bathing in the water tower. And then deleted what I’d written, thank cripes.
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Dougles, there are some fine looking women of a certain age, and the idea of three of them bathing in anybody’s water tower makes the world seem bright and gay. The “no sagging allowed” meme deprives us of the kind of beauty that comes from experience. If it’s not to everybody’s taste, that’s the way of the world, but I assert that they’re missing out on something tasty.
jtb
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‘Saggy’ women power all my dreams.
I was more concerned that the bathing ladies’ soap and grime and stray pubic hairs are in the town’s drinking water.
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You did, I assume, refresh the page, and reboot your system, and uninstall and reinstall Windows 95?
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I don’t think my bippy has been sweet for half a century, but I appreciate the courtesy that assumes that at one time it was.
jtb
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It’s time to stop all the narrative about the man deported wrongly to El Salvador. It doesn’t matter if he’s the father of the year or a serial killer. It’s not about him, it’s about us as a country. We either abide by our own laws or we don’t. It’s just that simple. We are supposed to be a nation of laws. If the government starts deciding which laws it will or won’t obey, then we are no longer anything close to what the founders intended. Kilmar Abrego Garcia needs to be brought back to finish the legal process. That’s all there is to it; the rest is all noise.
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It’s the “He’s no angel” trope. We’re not supposed to speak up for victims of police or police state violence, unless they’re completely virtuous. “He was no angel,” is what the monsters and monsterlovers say when it’s discovered that the man beaten to death by cops had pot or cocaine in his bloodstream, or had an arrest record. Fuck that jive.
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Summer Surprise
It’s not so easy finding a healthy woman today
although the drunk crazy addicts are ready to play
The last one had just gotten out of a shelter
looking for peace and a man who won’t belt her
My friend set us up and it was hard to believe
here was this shining goddess right beside me
Our host said don’t be yourself and it’ll be fine
can’t you just be cool for the very first time?
I gave her my card which she tucked in her brassiere
that was a flirty message which was very clear
When the tasty dinner was done we glided out the door
into the parking lot where the flying squirrels soared
I held the tall hippie mamma’s body close
and she said the sweet words I’d been longing for most
“Would you like to stop by for a cuppa tea?”
I couldn’t believe this was happening to me!
I followed her down the mountain to her sweet little home
we smoked kissed and cuddled and my hungry hands roamed
We sat on the couch, talked for hours about life
when we were tired she invited me for the night
For the first couple weeks she was delightfully mine
this sweetheart survivor liked it anywhere anytime
We made out constantly on the couch every day
then into the bedroom where we got naked to play
She liked me to undress her, the impulse sublime
I hung her bra and panties on me like fruit on a vine
She chirped, squealed, screamed and bucked when she came
I almost lost a couple teeth with this exuberant flame
It was very exciting to watch her climaxing
I found out how she liked it by frankly asking
I covered the basics in my thirst for connection
higher? lower? faster? slower? was my sex education
I felt like a sex god and gave her lustful pleasures
those hot summer scenes were erotic treasures
With her ecstatic multiples feeling so god-given
her smiles said some E D was quickly forgiven
In private my cuddling was a thing to behold
but when shy in public she said I was going cold
She chain-smoked weed, drank strong coffee all day
when there was beer or wine she guzzled without delay
Her rotten mom shot their father in front of the kids
later the gangster raped her and that’s how she lived
At fourteen she flew with drugs and her bank account grew
four years later she was locked up in prison for two
She came west to trim weed and then stayed to grow
and finally hauled loads of great smoke to Ohio
When she lost her job and cabin I invited her in
the pressure was mounting when we were living in sin
Let’s talk about the future she sometimes said
we just met, can’t we enjoy ourselves instead?
With any slight conflict she lost it and packed
and drove away each week but always came back
She disrupted my routine and made me wonder
I asked her for some space and that was a blunder
She felt rejected out in the guest house that night
and appeared in the morning still very uptight
With her frantic mood changes the question I asked
would I rather have peace at home or piece of ass?
She said she loved me and drove off to the eclipse
life is tranquil now but that darling is missed-
Fuck Homer — *that* is an epic poem. Anyone can understand it without studying ancient Greek, get the point without writing a thesis about it, and get a few smiles along the way. You’ve done a poet’s work, sir.
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Penn Jillette said he cried three times: when his parents died and when Lou Reed died. This clip from commercial TV is part of the reason . . .
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MIWdsUnrWNA
jtb
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Fresh.
Which is impressive. How do you make a standard, a song we all have memorized, fresh? By saying fuck you to the original arrangement and instrumentation and doing it … fresh.
Do you know who’s plucking the strings at the end?
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Lou Reed formed 20 or 30 “bands” that lasted anywhere from one gig to a regional tour. I don’t recognize the guitarist in question, but every guitarist except Skunk Baxter looks very different at different ages. If Lou could play guitar like this guy, he would.
But look at the setup he has: I think there are three guitars and a bass, but the camera angles are tricky. The backup singers are marvelous. And the drummer has a HUGE kit, maybe 10 surfaces, and he’s only brushing on snare. It’s Lou alright: part art, part rock.
jtb
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A little more information on the Lou Reed piece. . . There ARE three six string guitars and a bass, and on that bass (blonde guy standing right in front of that huge drum kit) is Will Lee who is actually from Letterman’s regular band led by Paul Shaffer. (I posted a video of Mr Lee playing and singing McArthur Park a month or so ago.) This is the NBC version of the Letterman show, so the band is officially called “The World’s Most Dangerous Band”. When Letterman switched to CBS the band name changed to “The CBS Orchestra”.
Mr Lee, a genius on the bass, is actually playing two simultaneous bass lines behind Mr Reed. His left hand is playing the primary bass line, but his right hand sneaks up the neck from time to time to play a second bass line. You have to watch closely, but you CAN see it. It’s rather remarkable. It’s also easy, even for a seasoned player, to fuck it up. It took some balls for Mr Lee to attempt this (and succeed) when the camera was going to be on him a lot because of where he stood behind Mr Reed. I really like it when a musician who doesn’t have anything left to prove takes a risk on national TV.
In any case, Mr Lee was part of Mr Reed’s band for that night only. That might have been true of the rest of the band as well. It matters to me and nobody else, but the end of the Rock Age was less than 20 years away, and people were starting to sign each other’s yearbooks on the way out. In a song where the bass is crucial, that was Mr Lee giving 150% for Mr Reed when 100% would have sounded just fine.
John
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You are a man of knowledge and rock’n’roll insight, and I loved “starting to sign each other’s yearbooks on the way out.”
Will Lee also has the world’s finest cover band.
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It might also be the world’s largest cover band. They did side 2 of Abbey Road and they had about 20 players including the horns. (They might have done Sgt Pepper, but harpist Sheila Bromberg was unavailable.) I agree it’s the world’s finest.
John
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You know what else is the world’s finest?
You, man.
Yes, I am stoned — why do you ask? — but also I mean it.
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It’s possible that the world’s finest is David Bromberg at 74, playing with his band in his home studio: Diamond Lil.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XI_70tYJ71w
John
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This is a cover? Someone else sang this? Hand to envision. Dude definitely makes it feel like it’s his story.
Those kids might make it some day.
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Nope, David wrote this song and recorded it on his second album, Demon in Disguise, in 1972. He and various incarnations of his band recorded 19 albums — he’s semi-officially retired now. And yeah, you can tell that the guys have all spent time in a recording studio before.
jtb
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Ah, so it’s David Bromberg doing a cover of an old David Bromberg song. Like Taylor Swift only without the goal of making extra millions of dollars.
If my sarcasm above splatters off target, lemme clarify that it was aimed at Swift specifically, not Bromberg, who eternally rocks.
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Yeah, it’s David Bromberg and a few of his late-career friends covering a song David wrote and recorded 50 years ago, just before he became part of Dylan’s touring band. It’s only his second album out of about 20, but I think it’s his best. A couple times a year I kick back in my recliner and listen to it and think, “Man, NOBODY’S making albums this good anymore.”
After David retired the first time, about 25 years ago, he moved to Wilmington, Delaware, and he and his wife opened a violin sales and repair shop, David Bromberg Fine Violins. He still played an occasional concert and still donated revenue from the business and the concerts to build and maintain a performance center in Wilmington.
He has been a class act in a business that isn’t always classy for 65 of his 79 years.
John
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THIS is a cover, sort of. After college, Bromberg’s first semi-steady job was touring with Jerry Jeff Walker. Night after night, they played Mr. Bojangles (written by Jerry Jeff), so that when Bromberg went out on his own, he began playing a seven minute cover of Mr. Bojangles, complete with the story of how Jerry Jeff came to write it. He included the cover on his previously mentioned second album, Demon In Disguise.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hhLiDgW42vI
John
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Please stand by. I’m techno-tweaking the file to make it louder than my bedroom fan. Recommended: https://online-video-cutter.com/volume.
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Yeah, way better than my covers, and my covers are fake sheepskin. Dude knows how to make music.
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Fuck Homer?
Wow, that’s my Pulitzer, baby…-
My rule is, no kind words when kind words aren’t deserved. Deserved.
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