R.E.M. frontman Michael Stipe on “CBS This Morning.”
Among other things he says it’s unlikely that R.E.M. will ever reunite. “That will never happen,” he says.
I bet they do.
And he talks about how shy he was when the band first got famous and it sounds like he’ll do a solo album at some point.
“I think I’ll sing again,” he says. “Not soon.”
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[I just published my rock ‘n’ roll novel, True Love Scars.” Rolling Stone has a great review of my book in a recent issue. Read it here. There’s info about True Love Scars here.]
T Bone Burnett has produced Rhiannon Giddens’ debut solo album Tomorrow Is My Turn< ,/em> which is set for a February 10, 2015 release.
Giddens, of course, is a member of the New Basement Tapes band, and was a major contributor to Lost On The River: The New Basement Tapes.
I like her version of “Shake Sugaree,” and “Black is the Color” is interesting.
Joan Baez, of course, recorded “Black is the Color” in the ’60s, and Bob Dylan had the line “Where black is the color, where none is the number” in “A Hard Rain’s A-Gonna Fall.”
I’m looking forward to hearing what Giddens does with Geeshie Wiley’s amazing “Last Kind Words.”
Check out three songs off the album.
“Black is the Color”:
“Don’t Let It Trouble Your Mind”:
“Shake Sugaree”:
Album track listing:
1
Last Kind Words (Geeshie Wiley)
4:14
2
Don’t Let It Trouble Your Mind (Dolly Parton)
3:45
3
Waterboy (Jacques Wolfe)
3:45
4
She’s Got You (Hank Cochran)
4:17
5
Up Above My Head (Sister Rosetta Tharpe)
3:09
6
Tomorrow Is My Turn (Charles Aznavour/Marcel Stellman/Yves Stéphane)
4:38
7
Black Is the Color (Traditional, arr. Rhiannon Giddens)
3:47
8
Round About the Mountain (Traditional, arr. Roland Hayes)
3:29
9
Shake Sugaree (Elizabeth Cotten)
4:25
10
O Love Is Teasin’ (Traditional, arr. Rhiannon Giddens)
4:31
11
Angel City (Rhiannon Giddens)
3:52
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[I just published my rock ‘n’ roll novel, True Love Scars.” Rolling Stone has a great review of my book in a recent issue. Read it here. There’s info about True Love Scars here.]
Yesterday afternoon, Saturday December 13, 2104, I read from my novel, True Love Scars, as the acclaimed, Grammy-winning experimental guitarist Henry Kaiser improvised. And then Henry did a short, brilliant instrumental. The reading took place at Down Home Music in El Cerrito, CA.
I called the event a “post-beat happening.”
It was thrilling to read as Henry’s music lit up the room. When you’re on a stage and you’re in the groove, and the music, music you’ve never heard before, is exactly right for what you’re doing, you levitate.
Two sections I read were about how Bob Dylan’s music changed the narrator’s life. I’ve included both of those and then another excerpt which is the first few pages of the novel. Plus an instrumental improvisation by Henry that concluded the reading.
Down Home Music was an incredible environment for a reading. A room filled with CDs and vinyl and a wall of music books and music posters on the walls and incredibly knowledgeable folks running the place.
Where else is an impulse buy going to be a Roscoe Holcomb DVD?
Yep, I now own that DVD.
There was a nice write-up in advance of the reading in the East Bay Express and that brought a great group of folks into the store to hear me and Henry do our thing.
I read about 30 minutes while Henry utilized a guitar, a whammy bar and more than a dozen pedals to create a sonic backdrop for my words. Actually, it was more than a backdrop, as you’ll see if you listen to the first excerpt, below.
1) The impact of “Like A Rolling Stone”:
2) “It was Dylan, man!”:
3) How the book begins:
4) Henry’s concluding instrumental:
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[I just published my rock ‘n’ roll novel, True Love Scars.” Rolling Stone has a great review of my book in a recent issue. Read it here. There’s info about True Love Scars here.]
In November Fredrik Wikingsson got a private Bob Dylan mini-concert at Philadelphia’s Academy of Music.
Lucky Wikingsson had been picked for an episode of a Swedish film series called “Experiment Ensam” where, according to Rolling Stone, “a lone person takes part in events that are usually reserved for large crowds.”
Dylan and his band perform a cover of Buddy Holly’s “Heartbeat,” a beautiful downbeat version of Fats Domino’s “Blueberry Hill” and Chuck Wills’ “It’s Too Late (She’s Gone).” The mini-concert ends with the blues standard, “Key to the Highway.”
[I just published my rock ‘n’ roll novel, True Love Scars.” Rolling Stone has a great review of my book in a recent issue. Read it here. There’s info about True Love Scars here.]
Jenny Eliscu talks to Elvis Costello and others about The New Basement Tapes album. Includes an unreleased version of “Hidee Hidee Ho” that ELvis sings.
The New Basement Tapes – Live on the Sirius XM, November 14, 2014.
Recorded on November 14, 2014 in Hollywood, CA. Featuring:
Elvis Costello – piano, Rhiannon Giddens – fiddle, vocals, Taylor Goldsmith – bass, vocals, Jim James – guitar, vocals, Marcus Mumford – guitar, vocals, Jay Bellerose – drums, Griffin Goldsmith – drums. Setlist:
00:00 intro
02:01 Diamond Ring (Goldsmith)
05:48 interview 1
10:37 Hidee Hidee Ho – “bootleg volume 2 version” (Costello)
12:25 interview 2
16:00 Down On The Bottom (James)
20:44 interview 3
29:31When I Get My Hands On You (Mumford)
32:53 interview 4
38:27 Lost On The River #20 (Giddens)
42:50 outro
Plus on November 12, 2014 the group did this radio performance:
00:00 Married To My Hack (Costello)
02:41 When I Get My Hands On You (Mumford)
05:48 Florida Key (Goldsmith)
10:01 Spanish Mary (Giddens)
15:27 Down On The Bottom (James)
19:42 Kansas City (Mumford)
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[I just published my rock ‘n’ roll novel, True Love Scars.” Rolling Stone has a great review of my book in a recent issue. Read it here. There’s info about True Love Scars here.]
Here’s Bob Dylan singing “Yestersay” with George Harrison on guitar.
This was recorded May 1, 1970 at Columbia Studios in New York.
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[I just published my rock ‘n’ roll novel, True Love Scars.” Rolling Stone has a great review of my book in a recent issue. Read it here. There’s info about True Love Scars here.]
Earlier this year Juliana Hatfield let it be known that she had regrouped her mid-90s trio, The Juliana Hatfield Three, the group that made the excellent 1993 album Become What You Are.
The song is off a new crowdfunded album, Whatever, My Love, and it will be released early next year.
Here’s a note from Hatfield that she posted on the Pledgemusic page for the crowdfunding of the album:
Todd, Dean, and I have just begun recording with the lovely and talented Tom Beaujour (who worked with me and Matthew [Caws] on the Minor Alps album) at the Nuthouse in Hoboken, New Jersey, and so far it is going great. Some of you may have previously heard some version of some of the songs we are working on. For example, one of the songs we are exploring is “If I Could”. We have always loved this song but there have only ever been demos of it; it has never been properly finished or produced. There are multiple attempted versions of it but the nut has never been quite cracked, and this has always sort of haunted me. Now I feel like I finally have the chance to get it right with Todd and Dean.
We are also exploring electricized band versions of a couple of the punchier acoustic home-recorded songs from my last album, “Wild Animals”. And there will be some other surprises.
Stay tuned for updates – we will keep in touch during the recording and mixing and in-between processes with photos, videos, and music.
Thank you so very much for being here with us to help us and encourage us and support us.
JH3 2014
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[I just published my rock ‘n’ roll novel, True Love Scars.” Rolling Stone has a great review of my book in a recent issue. Read it here. There’s info about True Love Scars here.]
Last night, December 10, 2014, playing a gig at Toronto’s Horseshoe Tavern, The Hold Steady covered Neil Young’s classic “Don’t Let It Bring You Down.”
The clip also includes the group’s own “Constructive Summer.”
Plus a clip of “Knuckles”:
And two songs – “Spinners” and a cover of Kiss’ “Hard Luck Woman” – from Collective Arts Black Box Sessions:
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[I just published my rock ‘n’ roll novel, True Love Scars.” Rolling Stone has a great review of my book in a recent issue. Read it here. There’s info about True Love Scars here.]
Now that we know the songs that will be on Bob Dylan’s next album, Shadows In The Night, all of which are best known for Frank Sinatra’s recordings of them in the 1940s, 1950s and 1960s. I thought it would be fun to hear Sinatra’s versions, along with versions of three of them by Dylan.
In addition to Dylan’s version of “Full Moon And Empty Arms,” which was officially made available online last May, I’ve included a live version of “Stay With Me” from one of the Beacon Theater shows, and two versions of “That Lucky Old Sun,” one with Tom Petty and The Heartbreakers backing Dylan.
In a statement Bob Dylan said this about the upcoming album: “It was a real privilege to make this album. I’ve wanted to do something like this for a long time but was never brave enough to approach 30-piece complicated arrangements and refine them down for a 5-piece band. That’s the key to all these performances. We knew these songs extremely well. It was all done live. Maybe one or two takes. No overdubbing. No vocal booths. No headphones. No separate tracking, and, for the most part, mixed as it was recorded. I don’t see myself as covering these songs in any way. They’ve been covered enough. Buried, as a matter a fact. What me and my band are basically doing is uncovering them. Lifting them out of the grave and bringing them into the light of day.”
Enjoy.
Frank Sinatra, “I’m A Fool To Love You”:
Frank Sinatra, “The Night We Called It A Day”:
Frank Sinatra, “Stay WIth Me”:
Bob Dylan, “Stay With Me,” live at the Beacon Theater, NYC, Nov. 29, 2014:
Frank Sinatra, “Autumn Leaves”:
Frank Sinatra, “Why Try To Change Me Now”:
Frank Sinatra, “Some Enchanted Evening”:
Frank Sinatra, “Full Moon And Empty Arms”:
Bob Dylan, “Full Moon And Empty Arms”:
Frank Sinatra, “Where Are You?:
Frank Sinatra, “What’ll I Do”:
Frank Sinatra, “That Lucky Old Sun”:
Bob Dylan & Tom Petty & The Heartbreakers, live, True Confessions Tour, 1986:
Bob Dylan, “That Lucky Old Sun,” live, Irvine Meadows Amphitheate, Irvine, CA, June 29, 2000:
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[I just published my rock ‘n’ roll novel, True Love Scars.” Rolling Stone has a great review of my book in a recent issue. Read it here. There’s info about True Love Scars here.]
