Thurston Moore and his new supergroup, which includes Sonic Youth’s Steve Shelly and My Bloody Valentine’s Debbie Googe, performed at Belgium’s Pukkelpop festival this past weekend.
Moore’s got a new album called The Best Day due October 21, 2014.
Here is Moore and his band performing a song off the new album, “Forevermore.”
Thirteen minutes worth!
Plus here’s an old Sonic Youth track, “Climbers & Creepers,” that you might not have heard. This was part of Peter Coffin’s”Music For Plants” series.
[I just published my rock ‘n’ roll novel, True Love Scars.” I’ve got a Goodreads. book giveaway going right now. Click here and enter.]
A year ago, on August 26 in Europe, and on August 27 in the U.S., a masterpiece comprised of recordings Bob Dylan made in 1969, 1970 and 1971 was released.
It was such a joy to hear the songs on Another Self Portrait, (1969-1971) – The Bootleg Series Vol. 10, which included an amazing version of the old folk song, “Pretty Saro,” wonderful demos of “I Went To See The Gypsy” and “When I Paint My Masterpiece,” and so many more.
While I always liked the original Self Portrait, Another Self Portrait is the better album. Of the songs that appeared on Self Portrait, for Another Self Portrait the Nashville overdubs were removed. Overall, what we get are much more intimate versions of those songs, plus many songs that Dylan chose not to release on Self Portrait. Plus a previously unreleased (officially, anyway) ‘Basement Tapes’ gem, “Minstrel Boy.”
But really, we don’t have to choose between those albums, as they both now exist.
I wrote a lengthy review of Another Self Portrait which you can read here.
For me, “Pretty Saro” remains the standout track because of both how Dylan’s voice sounds, and the way he sings the song.
“Pretty Saro”:
Below is a very cool 11 minute mini-documentary on the making of Another Self Portrait. If you haven’t yet seen it, now is the time.
Jack White with new short haircut in San Francisco.
At his show last night, Jack White covered some of Beck’s “Devil’s Haircut” during “Sixteen Saltines.”
The show took place at the Bill Graham Civic Auditorium, San Francisco, CA.
Skip to the 11 minute mark to hear “Devil’s Haircut,” or better yet, enjoy all 11-plus minutes which includes some of a”Lazaretto,” “Steady As She Goes,” and “Sixteen Saltines”/”Devil’s Haricut.”
More of the show:
“Fell In Love With A Girl”:
“Just One Drink”:
“Bead Leaves and the Dirty Ground”:
“Temporary Ground”:
“Love Interruption”:
“Hotel Yorba”:
Theremin Madness with guitar:
“Top Yourself”:
“You Know That I Know”:
More “You Know That I Know”:
“Hypocritical Kiss”:
“I’m Slowly Turning Into You”:
“Ball and Biscuit”:
“High Ball Stepper”:
“Seven Nation Army”:
[I just published my rock ‘n’ roll novel, True Love Scars.” I’ve got a Goodreads. book giveaway going right now. Click here and enter.]
OK, so I’ve posted this landmark set before, but someone just uploaded most of it again yesterday so why not give it another listen.
This never gets old for me.
This was Bob Dylan’s first public electric performance (OK, of course he played rock ‘n’ roll as a teenager, but after he started making records as a folk singer, this was the first electric show).
This took place on Sunday, July 25, 1965.
Here’s audio for the set opener, “Maggie’s Farm”:
This clip is the audio with the exception of “Maggie’s Farm.”
0:00 – Pre-show/Intro
2:20 – Maggie’s Farm (BLOCKED – Can be seen in “The Other Side of the Mirror”)
8:07 – Like a Rolling Stone
14:39 – Phantom Engineer (It Takes a lot to Laugh, It Takes a Train to Cry)
18:00 – Intermission/Intro
22:04 – It’s all Over Now, Baby Blue
29:34 – Mr. Tambourine Man
Here’s some of the video but no audio:
[I just published my rock ‘n’ roll novel, True Love Scars.” I’ve got a Goodreads. book giveaway going right now. Click here and enter.]
There I am, reading at Book Passage. Photo by Sam Barry.
Last night (August 21, 2014) I read from my rock ‘n’ roll novel, True Love Scars, for the first time in public.
Use the player below to hear the entire reading which consists of me being introduced to the audience, my brief intro about the novel, me reading for about 30 minutes, and then a question and answer session.
The reading took place at Book Passage, a fantastic book store located in Marin County.
I had quite a large audience and it was a great crowd. There were old friends, new friends and folks who I guess read about the reading in the Marin Independent Journal.
Dana Kelly, who works at Book Passage introduced me, and it was quite an introduction, You can hear it in the audio clip above. Dana really made things easy for me.
It’s quite an experience to stand in front of an audience, folks who have no idea what they’re about to hear, and start reading. I could not have gotten a better response. People laughed at the funny parts, got quiet during the section of the final sex scene that concludes the book that I read, and applauded when I finished reading.
Who could ask for more?
Questions were asked during the Q/A part of the reading, and many books were bought.
You can see some of the audience in this photo. Photo by Jeanne Lavin.
I was surprised and pleased that John Goddard showed up. All during my youth John owned the best record store in the world, Village Music in Mill Valley. I first heard Billie Holiday and Bessie Smith and many others in John’s store.
Me and my friends would hang out there and it was always an education. My openness to new music to some extent comes from hanging out at Village Music and hearing so much “new” to me music as a teenager.
John and his store are mentioned in my novel. It meant so much to me that John showed up.
That’s John waiting while I write something in his copy of my book. Photo by Jeanne Lavin.
The folks at Book Passage were fantastic. From the first time I contacted them, right through last night’s reading, they made everything so easy. Book Passage is an excellent store. I’ve bought many books there and if you’re in Marin, or passing through, they’re just off 101 in Corte Madera and I highly recommend you stop in. In addition to books, and readings almost every night, they have a cafe where you can get food and/or a glass of wine.
And they’re got autographed copies of True Love Scars for sale.
I’ve got a Goodreads. book giveaway going right now. Click here and enter.]
Copy of the handwritten lyrics to ‘Nothing To It.’
Last year a box of lyrics that Bob Dylan had written during the summer of 1967 for songs that he never wrote music for, or recorded, was given to producer T Bone Burnett.
Now, for the first time, we get to see what the original page on which Dylan wrote the lyrics to one of the songs that will appear on the Burnett-produced album Lost On The River: The New Basement Tapes, looks like.
That song, “Nothing To It,” was released as a lyric video the other day.
Examining Dylan’s page of lyrics, we can see how Jim James rearranged the order of the verses and chorus for his version of the song.
The lyrics, as written by Bob Dylan:
You don’t have to turn your pockets inside out
But I’m sure you can give me something
You don’t have to go into your bank account
but I’m sure you don’t have to give me nothing
I knew that I was young enough
And I knew there was nothing to it
for I’d already seen it done enough
And I knew there was nothing to it
There was no organization I wanted to join
So I stayed by myself and took out a coin
There I saw sat in with my eyes in my hand –
contemplating killing a man – for
Greed was one thing I just couldn’t stand
If I was you, I’d put back what I took
A guilty man has got a guilty look
Heads I will and tails I won’t
So the decision wouldn’t be my own
The lyrics as sung by Jim James:
Well I knew I was young enough
And I knew there was nothing to it
‘Cause I’d already seen it done enough
And I knew there was nothing to it
There was no organization I wanted to join
So I stayed by myself and took out a coin
There I sat with my eyes in my hand –
just contemplating killing a man – for
Greed was one thing I just couldn’t stand
If I was you, I’d put back what I took
A guilty man’s got a guilty look
Heads I will and tails I won’t
Long as the call wouldn’t be my own
Well you don’t have to turn your pockets inside out
But I’m sure you can give me something
Well you don’t have to go into your bank account
but I’m sure you can give me something
Well I knew I was young enough
And I knew there was nothing to it
‘Cause I’d already seen it done enough
And I knew there was nothing to it
Well I knew I was young enough
And I knew there was nothing to it
‘Cause I’d already seen it done enough
And I knew there was nothing to it
And I knew there was nothing to it
And I knew there was nothing to it
And I knew there was nothing to it
And I knew there was nothing to it
So the changes Jim James made amount to starting the song with the chorus, then singing what follows after the chorus, then singing what for Dylan is the first verse, and then a return to the chorus.
And there’s one other change.
As Dylan wrote it, the first verse ends with the line:
but I’m sure you don’t have to give me nothing
But James repeats the second line of the first verse instead:
but I’m sure you can give me something
Check it out:
I’m looking forward to seeing what Burnett and his crew did with the rest of the lyrics. This one is an auspicious first song.
[I just published my rock ‘n’ roll novel, True Love Scars.” I’ve got a Goodreads. book giveaway going right now. Click here and enter.]
Producer T Bone Burnett and the New Basement Tapes band.
Last November we first learned that a batch of song lyrics that Bob Dylan had written during the summer of 1967, had been turned over to producer T Bone Burnett so that Burnett could record them for an album. Dylan wrote the lyrics while the recordings that became known as the ‘Basement Tapes’ were made at the house known as ‘Big Pink.’
Since then I’ve wondered how this was going to work.
Were these lyrics finished? If not, who would have the balls to finish them? Or would the lyrics be sung as written, even if they weren’t complete?
Burnett invited Elvis Costello, Rhiannon Giddens (Carolina Chocolate Drops), Taylor Goldsmith (Dawes), Jim James (My Morning Jacket) and Marcus Mumford to be involved in writing music for the lyrics and recording the completed songs.
The album is called Lost On the River: The New Basement Tapes and it will be released on November 20, 2014.
In March of this year, Burnett said this to the L. A. Times:
“These are not B-level Dylan lyrics. They’re lyrics he just never got around to finishing.”
Aha! So the lyrics weren’t finished, I thought. Well then who was going to finish them? Or were Costello and the others musicians going to sing these unfinished lyrics, and how would that work?
As it turns out, most of the lyrics were completed by Dylan at the time he wrote them.
“When T Bone gave that quote,” said Larry Jenkins, who is involved with the project, “the context was that Dylan never got around to finishing them as full songs (with music) or recording them.”
Well it turns out that, according to both Jenkins and a second source, in some cases the musicians who wrote music to the songs also added their own words.
“In some instances, the lyrics were used verbatim,” said my second source.,”In other ones, folks have added to them.”
“Most of the lyrics appeared to be complete and were sung by the artists as they were written on the page by Bob in 1967 (maybe with a small word change here or there),” Jenkins said. “Some lyrics were unfinished and were fair game for the artists to complete if they wanted to.”
So far, I haven’t been able to get specifics regarding which songs had additional lyrics added to them, but stay tuned.
But think about what that means. Who has the guts to add their words to a Bob Dylan song? What if Dylan doesn’t like the words that were added?
“I will tell you that ‘Nothing To It’ is word-for-word as Bob wrote it on the page,” Jenkins said.
Check out this post, which contains a copy of Dylan’s hand-written lyrics for “Nothing To It.”
So give another listen to this great new Dylan song, “Nothing To It,” sung by Jim James with help from Elvis Costello and Marcus Mumford.
[I just published my rock ‘n’ roll novel, True Love Scars.” I’ve got a Goodreads. book giveaway going right now. Click here and enter.]
This could be the album cover, although it could be changed according to myplaydirect.com where various versions of the ‘deluxe’ album are being advertised.
Slowly but surely we’re getting an idea of what the album that T Bone Burnett made using a sheaf of lyrics that Bob Dylan wrote during the summer of 1967, while the infamous “Basement Tapes” sessions took place, will be like.
A ‘deluxe’ version of the album, titled Lost On The River: the New Basement Tapes, will include 20 songs and be released on November 20, 2014.
The project began when T Bone Burnett got those lyrics from a Dylan representative.
Burnett wrote an article about it that ran in England’s The Guardian.
Last autumn, I received a message from Bob Dylan’s publisher telling me a box of lyrics had been found, all handwritten by Dylan in 1967, during the time of the original Basement Tapes recordings. The question to me was: “Would you like to do something with these?”
Shocked, I asked if Dylan was into this. Having been told he was, I asked no more questions, but set out to come up with something that would do justice to Dylan and be true to the spirit in which the lyrics were originally written.
“These are not B-level Dylan lyrics,” Burnett told the L.A.Times in March of this year while still recording of the album. “They’re lyrics he just never got around to finishing.”
The ‘Lost On The River’ band with producer Burnett in the back ground.
Burnett invited Elvis Costello, Rhiannon Giddens (Carolina Chocolate Drops), Taylor Goldsmith (Dawes), Jim James (My Morning Jacket) and Marcus Mumford to be involved in writing music for the lyrics and recording the completed songs.
Burnett:
We sent 16 lyrics to each artist ahead of time, and they all showed up at Capitol Studios in the basement of the Capitol Records building in Hollywood in March of this year. Some had written a melody or two, others had written a dozen, but a couple of days before the sessions started, an additional eight lyrics from that same period showed up. Those lyrics, which no one had time to think about, led to some of the freest recordings.
Elvis Costello played a bunch of the recordings to the British writer, Richard Williams who wrote about it for The Guardian.
Elvis Costello leaned forward in his chair to address the small gathering in a West London recording studio on the subject of a bunch of hitherto unknown Bob Dylan lyrics dating from 1967. “One of them,” he said, “has a line that goes ‘A thousand doors couldn’t hold me back from you.’ If you wrote a line like that, you wouldn’t keep it in a drawer for 47 years – unless you were Bob Dylan.”
After listening to 11 songs once (the deluxe version of the album includes 20 songs) Williams wrote:
At this stage, even the most optimistic Dylanologist would not expect their hero to have a bunch of forgotten “Desolation Rows” or “I Shall Be Releaseds” mouldering in the attic, and the lyrics he passed on to Burnett are unlikely to provoke a radical reconsideration of his artistic development. There are indeed some nice lines, like these from the title track, which Costello set to a tune featuring a very un-Dylanish chromatic melody, teamed with a country-soul chorus that would not be out of place on a James Carr or Percy Sledge record: “Tears of loneliness hidden within/ As he goes from one woman to the next … Then falls in love with one/ It’s hard but true/ But it’s so much harder when the woman is you.”
Songs that stuck in the memory after a single listening included James’s “Down on the Bottom,” whose howling slow-motion rockabilly guitars and sepulchral echo cry out for the appearance of Roy Orbison; the sitting-on-a-barbed-wire-fence mood of Costello’s “Married to My Hack”; Giddens’s “Spanish Mary” and “Duncan and Jimmy,” with their banjo and fiddle and keening lead vocals; and Mumford’s sweet, ardent “Kansas City.”
We’ll all have a chance to hear the songs on November 20, and maybe sooner, if some or all are previewed.
For now, check out Jim James singing “Nothing To It” with help from Elvis Costello and Marcus Mumford.
1. Down On The Bottom
2. Married To My Hack
3. Kansas City
4. Spanish Mary
5. Liberty Street
6. Nothing To It
7. Golden Tom – Silver Judas
8. When I Get My Hands On You
9. Duncan and Jimmy
10. Florida Key
11. Hidee Hidee Ho #11
12. Lost On The River #12
13. Stranger
14. Card Shark
15. Quick Like A Flash
16. Hidee Hidee Ho #16
17. Diamond Ring
18. The Whistle Is Blowing
19. Six Months In Kansas City (Liberty Street)
20. Lost On The River #20
[I just published my rock ‘n’ roll novel, True Love Scars.” I’ve got a Goodreads. book giveaway going right now. Click here and enter.]
