Pink Lady and Jeff: Japan’s Biggest Pop Musicians Star in One of America’s Worst-Reviewed TV Shows (1980)

in History, Music, Television | August 23rd, 2022

In 1963, Kyu Sakamo­to’s “Sukiya­ki” proved that a song sung in Japan­ese could top the charts in the Unit­ed States. Not that the Amer­i­can record­ing indus­try was quick to inter­nal­ize it: anoth­er Japan­ese sin­gle would­n’t break the Bill­board Top 40 for six­teen years, and even then it did so in Eng­lish. The song was “Kiss in the Dark” by Pink Lady, a pop duo con­sist­ing of Mit­suyo Nemo­to and Keiko Masu­da, bet­ter known as Mie and Kei. In 1978 they’d been the biggest pop-cul­tur­al phe­nom­e­non in their native coun­try, but the fol­low­ing year their star had begun unmis­tak­ably to fall. And so, like many passé West­ern acts who become “big in Japan,” Pink Lady attempt­ed to cross the Pacif­ic.

Mie and Kei made their Amer­i­can tele­vi­sion debut per­form­ing “Kiss in the Dark” on Leif Gar­ret­t’s CBS spe­cial in May 1979. Accounts dif­fer about what hap­pened next, but less than a year lat­er they had their own prime­time vari­ety show on NBC. Offi­cial­ly titled Pink Lady, it tends to be referred to these four decades lat­er as Pink Lady and Jeff. This owes to the role of its host, ris­ing (and NBC-con­tract­ed) young come­di­an Jeff Alt­man, who brought to the table not just his com­ic tim­ing and skill with impres­sions, but also his com­mand of the Eng­lish lan­guage. That last hap­pened not to be pos­sessed to any sig­nif­i­cant degree by Mie or Kei, who had to deliv­er both their songs and their jokes pho­net­i­cal­ly.

In the video at the top of the post, you can see a com­pi­la­tion of the high­lights of Pink Lady and Jeff’s entire run. Then again, “high­lights” may not be quite the word for a TV show now remem­bered as one of the worst ever aired. “Pink Lady and Jeff rep­re­sents an unpalat­able com­bi­na­tion of insti­tu­tions that were on their way out, like vari­ety shows, dis­co, and the tele­vi­sion empire of cre­ators and pup­peteers Sid and Mar­ty Krofft,” writes the AV Club’s Nathan Rabin. The Krofft broth­ers, cre­ators of H.R. Pufn­stuf and Land of the Lost, tell of hav­ing been tapped to devel­op a pro­gram around Mie and Kei by NBC pres­i­dent Fred Sil­ver­man, who’d hap­pened to see footage of one of their sta­di­um-fill­ing Tokyo con­certs on the news.

Sid Krofft remem­bers declar­ing his ambi­tion to make Pink Lady “the strangest thing that’s ever been on tele­vi­sion.” The star­tled Sil­ver­man’s response: “Let’s do Don­ny and Marie.” Don­ny Osmond him­self end­ed up being one of the show’s high-pro­file guest stars, a line­up that also includ­ed Blondie, Alice Coop­er, Sid Cae­sar, Ted­dy Pen­der­grass, Roy Orbi­son, Jer­ry Lewis, and even Lar­ry Hag­man just a week before the epochal shoot­ing of his char­ac­ter on Dal­las. None of them helped Pink Lady find enough of an audi­ence to sur­vive beyond its ini­tial six episodes (all avail­able to watch on Youtube), a dis­com­fit­ing mélange of gener­ic com­e­dy sketch­es, unsuit­able musi­cal per­for­mances (with pre­cious few excep­tions, Mie and Kei weren’t per­mit­ted to sing their own Japan­ese songs), and broad ref­er­ences to sushi, samu­rai, and sumo.

The main prob­lem, Alt­man said in a more recent inter­view, was that “the vari­ety show had run the gaunt­let already, and real­ly was not a for­mat that was going to live in the hearts and homes of peo­ple across Amer­i­ca any­more.” Not only had that long and earnest tele­vi­sion tra­di­tion come to its igno­min­ious end, it would soon be replaced by the iron­ic, ultra-satir­i­cal sen­si­bil­i­ty of Alt­man’s col­league in com­e­dy David Let­ter­man. But here in the twen­ty-first cen­tu­ry, Alt­man guess­es, the time may be ripe “for a vari­ety-type show to come back.” We live in an era, after all, when a piece of for­got­ten eight­ies Japan­ese pop can become a glob­al phe­nom­e­non. And how­ev­er dim the prospects of the vari­ety show as a form, Mie and Kie them­selves have since man­aged more come­backs than all but their most die-hard fans can count.

Relat­ed con­tent:

David Bowie and Cher Sing Duet of “Young Amer­i­cans” and Oth­er Songs on 1975 Vari­ety Show

Famed Art Crit­ic Robert Hugh­es Hosts the Pre­miere of 20/20, Where Tabloid TV News Began (1978)

Andy Warhol’s 15 Min­utes: Dis­cov­er the Post­mod­ern MTV Vari­ety Show That Made Warhol a Star in the Tele­vi­sion Age (1985–87)

How Youtube’s Algo­rithm Turned an Obscure 1980s Japan­ese Song Into an Enor­mous­ly Pop­u­lar Hit: Dis­cov­er Mariya Takeuchi’s “Plas­tic Love”

Based in Seoul, Col­in Mar­shall writes and broad­casts on cities, lan­guage, and cul­ture. His projects include the Sub­stack newslet­ter Books on Cities, the book The State­less City: a Walk through 21st-Cen­tu­ry Los Ange­les and the video series The City in Cin­e­ma. Fol­low him on Twit­ter at @colinmarshall, on Face­book, or on Insta­gram.

by | Permalink | Make a Comment ( 2 ) |

Dolly Parton’s Imagination Library Has Given Away 186 Million Free Books to Kids, Boosting Literacy Worldwide

in Books, Education, Music, Video - Arts & Culture | August 19th, 2022

Dol­ly Par­ton cre­at­ed her Imag­i­na­tion Library, a non-prof­it which gives books to mil­lions of chil­dren every month, with her father, Robert Lee Par­ton, in mind.

“I always thought that if Dad­dy had an edu­ca­tion, there’s no telling what he could have been,” she mused in her 2020 book, Songteller: My Life in Lyrics:

Because he knew how to barter, he knew how to bar­gain. He knew how to make every­thing work, and he knew how to count mon­ey. He knew exact­ly what every­thing was worth, how much he was going to make from that tobac­co crop, what he could trade, and how he could make it all work

Despite his busi­ness acu­men, Parton’s father nev­er learned to read or write, a source of shame.

Par­ton explains how there was a time when school­ing was nev­er con­sid­ered a giv­en for chil­dren in the moun­tains of East Ten­nessee, par­tic­u­lar­ly for those like her father, who came from a fam­i­ly of 15:

Kids had to go to work in the fields to help feed the fam­i­ly. Because of the weath­er and because of con­di­tions, a lot of kids couldn’t go to school.

I told him, “Dad­dy, there are prob­a­bly mil­lions of peo­ple in this world who don’t know how to read and write, who didn’t get the oppor­tu­ni­ty. Don’t be ashamed of that. Let’s do some­thing spe­cial.”

Par­ton is con­vinced that her father, whose pride in her musi­cal accom­plish­ments was so great he drove over with a buck­et of soapy water to clean the bronze stat­ue her home­town erect­ed in her hon­or, was proud­er still of a nick­name bestowed on her by the Imag­i­na­tion Library’s child ben­e­fi­cia­ries — the Book Lady.

Togeth­er with the com­mu­ni­ty part­ners who secure fund­ing for postage and non-admin­is­tra­tive costs, the Book Lady has giv­en away some 186,680,000 books since the project launched in 1995.

Orig­i­nal­ly lim­it­ed to chil­dren resid­ing in Sevi­er Coun­ty, Ten­nessee, the pro­gram has expand­ed to serve over 2,000,000 kids in the US, UK, Aus­tralia, Cana­da and the Repub­lic of Ire­land.

Par­tic­i­pa­tion can start well before a child is old enough to attempt their ABCs. Par­ents and guardians are encour­aged to enroll them at birth.

The Imag­i­na­tion Library’s lit­tlest par­tic­i­pants’ love of books is fos­tered with col­or­ful illus­tra­tions and sim­ple texts, often rhymes hav­ing to do with ani­mals or bed­time.

By the time a read­er hits their final year of the pro­gram at age 5, the focus will have shift­ed to school readi­ness, with sub­jects includ­ing sci­ence, folk­tales, and poet­ry.

The books — all Pen­guin Ran­dom House titles — are cho­sen by a pan­el of ear­ly child­hood lit­er­a­cy experts. 

This year’s selec­tion includes such old favorites as The Tale of Peter Rab­bit, Good Night, Goril­la, and The Snowy Day, as well as Parton’s own Coat of Many Col­ors, based on the song in which she famous­ly paid trib­ute to her moth­er’s ten­der resource­ful­ness:

Back through the years

I go won­derin’ once again

Back to the sea­sons of my youth

I recall a box of rags that some­one gave us

And how my mom­ma put the rags to use

There were rags of many col­ors

Every piece was small

And I did­n’t have a coat

And it was way down in the fall

Mom­ma sewed the rags togeth­er

Sewin’ every piece with love

She made my coat of many col­ors

That I was so proud of

The Imag­i­na­tion Library is clear­ly a boon to chil­dren liv­ing, as Par­ton once did, in pover­ty, but par­tic­i­pa­tion is open to any­one under age 5 liv­ing in an area served by an Imag­i­na­tion Library affil­i­ate.

Pro­mot­ing ear­ly engage­ment with books in such a sig­nif­i­cant way has also helped Par­ton to reduce some of the stig­ma sur­round­ing illit­er­a­cy:

You don’t real­ly real­ize how many peo­ple can’t read and write. Me telling the sto­ry about my dad­dy instilled some pride in peo­ple who felt like they had to keep it hid­den like a secret. I get so many let­ters from peo­ple say­ing, “I would nev­er had admit­ted it’ or “I was always ashamed.”

Learn more about Dol­ly Parton’s Imag­i­na­tion Library, which wel­comes dona­tions and inquiries from those who would like to start an affil­i­ate pro­gram in their area, here.

- Ayun Hal­l­i­day is the Chief Pri­ma­tol­o­gist of the East Vil­lage Inky zine and author, most recent­ly, of Cre­ative, Not Famous: The Small Pota­to Man­i­festo.  Fol­low her @AyunHalliday.

by | Permalink | Make a Comment ( 5 ) |

What Does a $275,000 Classical Guitar Sound Like?

in Music | August 12th, 2022

The high­est qual­i­ty clas­si­cal gui­tars hand­made in the 21st cen­tu­ry can run into the tens of thou­sands of dol­lars. This is no friv­o­lous expense for a pro­fes­sion­al play­er. Put such an instru­ment in the hands of an ama­teur and you may not hear much dif­fer­ence between it and a $150 fac­to­ry-made bud­get mod­el. In the hands of a sea­soned play­er, a high-end gui­tar tru­ly sings. Tone resides in the fin­gers — or 90% of it any­way — but a skilled gui­tarist knows how to dis­cov­er and make use of all an instru­men­t’s best qual­i­ties. For a musi­cian who makes a liv­ing doing so, spend­ing the cost of a car on a gui­tar makes eco­nom­ic sense (as does a good insur­ance pol­i­cy).

The tonal qual­i­ties of the instru­ment below, a hand­made clas­si­cal gui­tar from 1888, are clear­ly abun­dant; it’s also clear that gui­tarist Bran­don Ack­er — who has appeared in many of our pre­vi­ous posts on the gui­tar — knows how to exploit them. At times, he brings out such rich res­o­nance, the instru­ment sounds like a piano; at oth­ers, it is almost harp-like. We have a con­flu­ence of rar­i­ty: a high­ly skilled play­er with deep knowl­edge of clas­si­cal stringed instru­ments, and an instru­ment like no oth­er — so rare, in fact, that it’s val­ued at over a quar­ter of a mil­lion dol­lars, rough­ly the aver­age cost of a mod­er­ate­ly-priced house in the U.S., the largest invest­ment most peo­ple make in their life­time.

To under­stand why the instru­ment car­ries such a high price tag, see Ack­er and YouTu­ber and gui­tarist Rob Scal­lon vis­it with father-and-son luthi­er team R.E. and M.E. Bruné at their shops in Illi­nois in the video at the top. The Brunés are spe­cial­ists in clas­si­cal and fla­men­co gui­tars. (The elder Bruné tells a charm­ing sto­ry of mak­ing his first fla­men­co gui­tar for him­self from his par­ents’ first din­ing room table.) In their shop’s stor­age area, they have ready access to some of the rarest gui­tars in the world, and they give us a live­ly tour — start­ing with a “bit of a let­down,” the “low-end,” 1967 Daniel Friederich con­cert mod­el val­ued at $50,000.

In Ack­er’s hands, each gui­tar deliv­ers the full poten­tial of its sus­tain and res­o­nance. Final­ly, at 16:00, we come to the 1888 Anto­nio de Tor­res gui­tar val­ued at $275,000. There are many old­er gui­tars in exis­tence, even gui­tars made by Anto­nio Stradi­vari and his heirs. But it was this gui­tar, or one of the few oth­ers made by the leg­endary Tor­res around the same time, that rev­o­lu­tion­ized what a gui­tar looked and sound­ed like. When Andrés Segovia arrived on stages play­ing his Tor­res, the Brunés tell us, gui­tarists around the world decid­ed that the old style, small-bod­ied gui­tars in use for cen­turies were obso­lete.

There are per­haps 90 to 100 of the Tor­res clas­si­cal gui­tars in exis­tence, and this extrav­a­gant­ly-priced num­ber 124 is “as close as you’re going to get to orig­i­nal,” says the elder Bruné, while his son makes the fas­ci­nat­ing obser­va­tion, “old­er instru­ments that have been played a lot, espe­cial­ly by great play­ers… learn the music.” Ack­er express­es his sur­prise at the “sweet­ness” of the very touch of the gui­tar.

If you had attend­ed the 2016 Gui­tar Foun­da­tion of Amer­i­ca con­fer­ence in Den­ver, where M.E. Bruné exhib­it­ed sev­er­al of his shop’s rare gui­tars, you would have been able to play the Tor­res your­self — or even pur­chase it for the less­er price of $235,000.

In the video inter­view above from the GFA con­fer­ence, M.E. Bruné describes the year plus-long restora­tion process on the gui­tar, one that involved some dis­as­sem­bly, extra brac­ing, and a replace­ment fin­ger­board, but pre­served the beau­ti­ful spruce and bird­s­eye maple of the gui­tar, wood that “does­n’t grow on trees like this any­where” these days, says Bruné. It is, he says, “the best-sound­ing Tor­res” he’s ever heard. Com­ing from some­one who has heard, and restored, the sweet­est-sound­ing gui­tars in exis­tence, that’s say­ing a lot. $275,000 worth? Maybe. Or maybe it’s impos­si­bly arbi­trary to put any price on such an arti­fact.

Relat­ed Con­tent: 

Hear Musi­cians Play the Only Playable Stradi­var­ius Gui­tar in the World: The “Sabionari”

The His­to­ry of the Gui­tar: See the Evo­lu­tion of the Gui­tar in 7 Instru­ments

The Art of Mak­ing a Fla­men­co Gui­tar: 299 Hours of Blood, Sweat & Tears Expe­ri­enced in 3 Min­utes

Encore! Encore! An Hour of the World’s Most Beau­ti­ful Clas­si­cal Gui­tar

Josh Jones is a writer and musi­cian based in Durham, NC. Fol­low him at @jdmagness

by | Permalink | Make a Comment ( 1 ) |

Olivia Newton-John (RIP) Reunites with Grease Co-Star John Travolta to Sing “You’re The One That I Want” (2002)

in Film, Music | August 12th, 2022

Amer­i­can nos­tal­gia as we know it was invent­ed in the nine­teen-sev­en­ties. Con­sid­er that decade’s pre­pon­der­ance of back­ward-look­ing pop-cul­tur­al phe­nom­e­na: Sha Na Na; Hap­py Days; “Yes­ter­day Once More”; Amer­i­can Graf­fi­ti, whose tagline asked “Where were you in ’62?”, a time just eleven years before the release of the pic­ture itself. But no piece of work stands more icon­i­cal­ly for the sev­en­ties revival of the late fifties and ear­ly six­ties than Grease. First pro­duced as a stage musi­cal in Chica­go in 1971, it grad­u­at­ed to Broad­way the next year. But Grease would­n’t take its most endur­ing form until 1978, the year that brought Ran­dal Kleis­er’s film adap­ta­tion star­ring John Tra­vol­ta and the late Olivia New­ton-John.

A 28-year-old Aus­tralian might have seemed an uncon­ven­tion­al choice for the part of Sandy Dom­brows­ki, the new girl at mid­west­ern Rydell High School. But after the alter­ation of a few details in the char­ac­ter and sto­ry, she made the role entire­ly her own. “It was Newton-John’s dul­cet inti­ma­cy as a singer that set her up per­fect­ly to play the naïve Sandy onscreen,” writes the New York­er’s Rachel Syme.

Her “squeaky prud­ish­ness and moony inno­cence as she wails ‘Hope­less­ly Devot­ed to You’ stands in such sharp, sil­ly con­trast to her vampy fall­en-woman per­sona at the end of the film that the whole thing feels like a camp com­men­tary on the pow­er of cos­tum­ing and col­lec­tive fan­ta­sy (not to men­tion a good perm).”

It did­n’t hurt that New­ton-John was already estab­lished as a singer: she’d rep­re­sent­ed the Unit­ed King­dom in 1974’s Euro­vi­sion Song Con­test (los­ing, ulti­mate­ly, to ABBA), and that very same year scored coun­try hits in the Unit­ed States. Her skills did much not just to make the Grease sound­track Amer­i­ca’s sec­ond-best-sell­ing album of 1978 (sec­ond to the sound­track of Tra­volta’s own vehi­cle Sat­ur­day Night Fever), but to keep it endur­ing­ly pop­u­lar through­out the decades since. At Grease’s 2002 DVD release par­ty, New­ton-John and Tra­vol­ta reunit­ed onstage to sing “You’re the One That I Want,” much to the delight of the audi­ence — all of whom must still remem­ber where they were in ’02, at least for those three min­utes.

Relat­ed con­tent:

The Pow­er of Pulp Fic­tion’s Dance Scene, Explained by Chore­o­g­ra­phers and Even John Tra­vol­ta Him­self

Watch Simon & Gar­funkel Sing “The Sound of Silence” 45 Years After Its Release, and Just Get Haunt­ing­ly Bet­ter with Time

Jim­my Page and Robert Plant Reunite in Exot­ic Mar­rakesh, 1994

In Touch­ing Video, Artist Mari­na Abramović & For­mer Lover Ulay Reunite After 22 Years Apart

The “West Side Sto­ry” Sto­ry — Pret­ty Much Pop: A Cul­ture Pod­cast #114

Based in Seoul, Col­in Mar­shall writes and broad­casts on cities, lan­guage, and cul­ture. His projects include the Sub­stack newslet­ter Books on Cities, the book The State­less City: a Walk through 21st-Cen­tu­ry Los Ange­les and the video series The City in Cin­e­ma. Fol­low him on Twit­ter at @colinmarshall, on Face­book, or on Insta­gram.

by | Permalink | Make a Comment ( 3 ) |

All the Music Played on MTV’s 120 Minutes: A 2,500-Video Youtube Playlist

in Music, Television | August 11th, 2022

The mid-nine­teen-nineties was not a time with­out irony. You may recall that, back then, “alter­na­tive” rock had not only gone main­stream, but, in cer­tain regions, had even become the most pop­u­lar genre of music on the radio. That was cer­tain­ly true in the Seat­tle area, where I grew up. And if you want­ed to start a rock band there, as writer Adam Cadre remem­bers, you knew what steps you had to take: “get a record deal, make a video, get it on 120 Min­utes, have it become a Buzz Clip, won­der why mas­sive suc­cess does­n’t ease the aching void inside.”

If you got into bands like 10,000 Mani­acs, Smash­ing Pump­kins, R.E.M., The Replace­ments, the Pix­ies, the Off­spring, or Son­ic Youth in the mid-nineties (to say noth­ing of a cer­tain trio called Nir­vana), chances are — sta­tis­ti­cal­ly speak­ing, at least — that you first saw them on 120 Min­utes.

At the peak of its pop­u­lar­i­ty on MTV, the show defined the alter­na­tive-rock zeit­geist, intro­duc­ing new bands as well as bring­ing new waves of lis­ten­ers to exist­ing ones. Though most strong­ly asso­ci­at­ed with the nineties, it pre­miered in 1986, host­ed by three of the first MTV VJs, J. J. Jack­son, Martha Quinn, and Alan Hunter. 36 years lat­er, you can relive the entire­ty of 120 Min­utes’ sev­en­teen-year run (with a brief revival in the twen­ty-tens) on Youtube.

A user named Chris Reynolds has cre­at­ed a playlist that appears to con­tain every song ever aired on 120 Min­utes. (Those have been doc­u­ment­ed by The 120 Min­utes Archive, pre­vi­ous­ly fea­tured here on Open Cul­ture.) Among the playlist’s more than 2,500 videos are songs — Vio­lent Femmes’ “Kiss Off,” The Psy­che­del­ic Furs’ “Love My Way,” Pearl Jam’s “Alive,” Fish­bone’s “Every­day Sun­shine,” R.E.M.‘s “Stand” — that will take you back to the pop-cul­tur­al eras 120 Min­utes spanned. But there are even more — Man­u­fac­ture’s “As the End Draws Near,” Lloyd Cole and the Com­mo­tions’ “Jen­nifer She Said,” Hel­met’s “Mil­que­toast,” Cause and Effec­t’s “You Think You Know Her” — that you may well have missed, even if you rocked your way through the eight­ies and nineties.

via Brook­lyn Veg­an

Relat­ed con­tent:

The 120 Min­utes Archive Com­piles Clips & Playlists from 956 Episodes of MTV’s Alter­na­tive Music Show (1986–2013)

Watch the First Two Hours of MTV’s Inau­gur­al Broad­cast (August 1, 1981)

Watch Nir­vana Go Through Rehearsals for Their Famous MTV Unplugged Ses­sions: “Pol­ly,” “The Man Who Sold the World” & More (1993)

Nir­vana Refus­es to Mime Along to “Smells Like Teen Spir­it” on Top of the Pops (1991)

William S. Bur­roughs — Alter­na­tive Rock Star — Sings with Kurt Cobain, Tom Waits, REM & More

Based in Seoul, Col­in Mar­shall writes and broad­casts on cities, lan­guage, and cul­ture. His projects include the Sub­stack newslet­ter Books on Cities, the book The State­less City: a Walk through 21st-Cen­tu­ry Los Ange­les and the video series The City in Cin­e­ma. Fol­low him on Twit­ter at @colinmarshall, on Face­book, or on Insta­gram.

by | Permalink | Make a Comment ( None ) |

13 Glorious Minutes of The Ramones in Kansas City, Captured on a Super‑8 Camera (1978)

in Music | August 8th, 2022

Thir­teen min­utes was an awful long time for The Ramones, since they could play an entire album of songs in a quar­ter of an hour. Thus, when Ramones fan Mark Gilman snuck a Super‑8 sound cam­era into the Grena­da The­ater in Kansas City in July of 1978 to secret­ly film the band, he man­aged to cap­ture an awful lot of The Ramones on film before he was forced to shut it down. The band, as you can see above, was in top form.

I exag­ger­ate a lit­tle.… Ramones albums are longer than this film clip. Their self-titled 1976 debut is over twice the length at 29 min­utes, which is still three or four min­utes shy of the short­est LPs of the time (back when albums only meant vinyl). Into that almost-half-hour, the ulti­mate 70s New York punk band crammed 14 songs, at an aver­age of two min­utes each: no solos, no filler, no extend­ed intros, out­ros, or remix­es.…

That’s exact­ly what we see above: mops of hair and a sweaty, leather-and-den­im-clad wall of pure, dumb rock ’n’ roll, played blis­ter­ing­ly fast with max­i­mum atti­tude. It’s qual­i­ty, audi­ence-lev­el footage of about half a clas­sic Ramones show, which usu­al­ly spanned around 30 min­utes: no ban­ter, chat­ter, tun­ing up, requests, or encores. This is what you came for, and this — full-on assault of bub­blegum melodies, thud­ding chants of “I wan­na” and “I don’t wan­na” played with chain­saw pre­ci­sion — is what you get.

They seemed ful­ly-formed, walk­ing and talk­ing right of the womb when they hit stages out­side the New York clubs that nur­tured them. But four years ear­li­er, their first audi­ences did­n’t see a dis­ci­plined rock ’n’ roll machine; they saw a sham­bling mess. Ryan Bray describes the impres­sions of long­time tour man­ag­er Monte Mel­nick on first see­ing them in 1974:

Musi­cal­ly, songs like “Now I Wan­na Sniff Some Glue” were already in the band’s reper­toire, but the songs were plagued by errat­ic tem­pos, blown notes, and oth­er sort­ed son­ic mis­cues. Between-song bick­er­ing also marred the band’s ear­li­est shows. For a sec­ond, Dee Dee and Tom­my seem like they’re almost ready to come to blows when they can’t agree on what song to play next.

“I did­n’t like them at all,” Mel­nick remem­bers. “It was pret­ty raw. They were stop­ping and start­ing and fight­ing. They could bare­ly play.” They did­n’t meet a dev­il at a cross­roads in the years between these ear­ly gigs and their 1978 live album It’s Alive (record­ed at Lon­don’s Rain­bow The­atre on the last day of the year as the band fin­ished a 1977 UK tour). They played a hell of a lot of gigs, and pushed them­selves hard for a rock star­dom they’d nev­er real­ly achieve until their found­ing mem­bers died.

All­mu­sic’s Mark Dem­ing describes the band in 1978 as “relent­less.… a big-block hot rod thrown in to fifth gear” and calls their live album of the time “one of the best and most effec­tive live albums in the rock canon.” Watch them play “I Wan­na Be Well” at the Rain­bow The­atre, just above, and catch a rare bit of stage ban­ter from Joey regard­ing the pre­vi­ous night’s chick­en vin­daloo.

via Boing Boing

Relat­ed Con­tent: 

Dave Grohl & Greg Kurstin Cov­er The Ramones “Blitzkrieg Bop” to Cel­e­brate Han­nukah: Hey! Oy! Let’s Goy!

Talk­ing Heads Per­form The Ramones’ “I Wan­na Be Your Boyfriend” Live in 1977 (and How the Bands Got Their Start Togeth­er)

CBGB’s Hey­day: Watch The Ramones, The Dead Boys, Bad Brains, Talk­ing Heads & Blondie Per­form Live (1974–1982)

Josh Jones is a writer and musi­cian based in Durham, NC. Fol­low him at @jdmagness

by | Permalink | Make a Comment ( 2 ) |

Watch the Full Set of Joni Mitchell’s Amazing Comeback Performance at the Newport Folk Festival

in Music | August 4th, 2022

“She’s doing some­thing very, very brave right now for you guys. This is a trust fall, and she picked the right peo­ple to do this with.” — Bran­di Carlile intro­duc­ing Joni Mitchell at the New­port Folk Fes­ti­val, 2022

Come­back queen Joni Mitchell stunned fans with her recent appear­ance at the New­port Folk Fes­ti­val this sum­mer, her first full pub­lic con­cert since 2000. In New­port tra­di­tion, sur­prise stars make an appear­ance every year. For­mer guests have includ­ed Dol­ly Par­ton, Cha­ka Khan, and Mitchel­l’s friend David Cros­by. Mitchel­l’s arrival this year was a rev­e­la­tion. She appeared out of the blue, when most peo­ple rea­son­ably assumed she’d nev­er per­form again after suf­fer­ing a debil­i­tat­ing brain aneurysm in 2015 that left her unable to speak or walk.

Yet, as we point­ed out in an ear­li­er post, Mitchel­l’s return to the stage has been years in the mak­ing. Since her aneurysm, she has con­found­ed even the neu­ro­sur­geons with her recov­ery, teach­ing her­self to play gui­tar again by watch­ing online videos and learn­ing to sing again not long after she re-learned how to get out of bed. When Mitchel­l’s long­time friend Bran­di Carlile announced her arrival on the stage with, “This scene shall for­ev­er be known hence­forth as the Joni Jam!,” Carlile referred to years of recent musi­cal get-togeth­ers in Mitchel­l’s liv­ing room.

The “Joni Jams” at Mitchel­l’s Los Ange­les home includ­ed “a very spe­cial cir­cle of friends,” music writer and radio host Aim­sel Pon­ti notes, includ­ing “Her­bie Han­cock, Paul McCart­ney, Elton John and Bon­nie Raitt. Most­ly, from the way Carlile described it, Joni would crack jokes and take it all in rather than par­tic­i­pate all that much.” But she was lis­ten­ing, learn­ing, and becom­ing inspired by her peers and the younger artists who joined her onstage: Carlile, Wynon­na Judd, Mar­cus Mum­ford, and oth­ers. As Carlile fin­ished her own New­port set, the stage filled with cush­iony chairs and couch­es, and sev­er­al more musi­cians.

“We’re here to invite you into the liv­ing room,” Carlile says in her pas­sion­ate intro­duc­tion (above), while the audi­ence holds their breath await­ing the announce­ment of her spe­cial guest. Then Carlile “told us about all of Joni’s pets and her many orchids and the hid­den door to the bath­room,” writes Pon­ti. “Then she told us how it does­n’t feel com­plete with­out Joni there to crack jokes and nod with approval.” Then her hero took the stage to gasps, in a blue beret and sun­glass­es, and hun­dreds of fans born too late to see her in her glo­ry days wept as she joined with Carlile on the first song, “Carey.” The New York Times’ Lind­say Zoladz describes the moment:

When Mitchell first came out onstage, she seemed a tad over­whelmed, cling­ing to her cane and back­ing up Carlile, who took the lead on a breezy, cel­e­bra­to­ry “Carey.” But over the course of that song, a vis­i­ble change came over Mitchell. Her shoul­ders loos­ened. She began to shim­my. And all at once she seemed to regain her voice — her voice, sonorous and light, seem­ing to dance over those bal­let­ic melodies at a jazzy tem­po all her own.

The first time Mitchell took the stage at New­port in 1967, she came at the behest of Judy Collins. She was a young unknown, about to become a folk god­dess. When she returned to New­port in 1969, she was a star in her own right. Over the decades, she has left fans with mem­o­ries of her per­for­mances that they have guard­ed like trea­sures as they’ve aged with her. (The Guardian has col­lect­ed a few of these poignant rem­i­nisces.) Now she’s an inspi­ra­tion to an entire­ly new young gen­er­a­tion and, one hopes, to old­er artists who might feel they have lit­tle left to con­tribute.

“The 78-year-old Mitchel­l’s per­for­mance,” Kirthana Ramiset­ti writes at Salon, “show­cased an artist tran­scend­ing the chal­lenges of aging and seri­ous health issues.… To hear music writ­ten in the full blos­som of her youth, yet per­formed with a weight­i­ness and know­ing per­spec­tive from hav­ing weath­ered so much in her life, arguably gave these songs a greater pow­er than when they were first record­ed.”

Such is often the case with artists as they mature beyond youth­ful sen­ti­ments and grow into their youth­ful pre­coc­i­ty. (It has been so for Paul Simon, whose own reap­pear­ance at New­port this year seems over­shad­owed by Mitchel­l’s come­back.)  Ramiset­ti quotes Mitchel­l’s “The Cir­cle Game,” with which she closed out her sur­prise set — “We’re cap­tive on the carousel of time / We can’t return, we can only look behind from where we came.”

Watch Mitchel­l’s full live New­port set (in jum­bled order) at the top of the post (or on this playlist), and see the setlist of orig­i­nals and clas­sic cov­ers from her his­toric per­for­mance just below.

Carey

Come in From the Cold

Help Me

Case of You

Big Yel­low Taxi

Just Like This Train

Why Do Fools Fall in Love

Amelia

Love Potion #9

Shine

Sum­mer­time

Both Sides Now

The Cir­cle Game

Relat­ed Con­tent: 

How Joni Mitchell Learned to Play Gui­tar Again After a 2015 Brain Aneurysm–and Made It Back to the New­port Folk Fes­ti­val

Joni Mitchell Sings “Both Sides Now” at the New­port Folk Fes­ti­val: Watch Clips from Her First Full Con­cert Since 2002

Hear Demos & Out­takes of Joni Mitchell’s Blue on the 50th Anniver­sary of the Clas­sic Album

Josh Jones is a writer and musi­cian based in Durham, NC. Fol­low him at @jdmagness.

by | Permalink | Make a Comment ( 1 ) |

How Paul Simon Wrote “The Boxer”

in Music | August 4th, 2022

The word­less cho­rus has become a gim­mick in sing-along bal­ladry and throw­away pop. Done bad­ly, it sounds like lazy song­writ­ing or — to take a phrase from Som­er­set Maugh­am — “unearned emo­tion.” At its best, a word­less cho­rus is a moment of sub­lim­i­ty, express­ing beau­ty or tragedy before which lan­guage fails. Either way, it usu­al­ly starts as a place­hold­er, in brack­ets. (As in, “we’ll put some­thing bet­ter here when we get around to it.”) Only lat­er in the song­writ­ing process does it become a choice.

In what may be one of the great­est choic­es of word­less cho­rus­es on record, Simon and Gar­funkel’s “The Box­er” chan­nels its raw pow­er in only two repeat­ed syl­la­bles (and pos­si­bly a word?): “Lie-la-lie, Lie-la-lie-lie-lie-lie-lie.…” The cho­rus of Paul Simon’s hit from 1970’s Bridge Over Trou­bled Water needs no more elab­o­ra­tion than the “arrest­ing whipcrack of a snare drum” (played by wreck­ing crew drum­mer Hal Blaine), Dan Einav writes at Finan­cial Times:

[The Box­er] was the result of a painstak­ing and pro­tract­ed record­ing process that took more than 100 hours, used numer­ous back­ing musi­cians and even spanned a num­ber of loca­tions — from Nashville, to St Paul’s Chapel at Colum­bia Uni­ver­si­ty, to the some­what less ethe­re­al set­ting of a hall­way abut­ting an echoey ele­va­tor shaft at one of Colum­bia Records’ New York stu­dios.

Simon’s epic nar­ra­tive song was hard­ly like “the unvar­nished, home­spun records that were per­haps more close­ly asso­ci­at­ed with folk music at the time,” and that was exact­ly the idea.

Some saw the “lie-la-lie” as a dig at Bob Dylan’s inau­then­tic pre­sen­ta­tion as a Woody Guthrie-like fig­ure. Simon debunked the the­o­ry in a 1984 inter­view quot­ed in the Poly­phon­ic video at the top. “I think the song was about me: every­body’s beat­ing me up.” He explained the theme of the beat­en but unbowed con­tender as com­ing out of the fig­u­ra­tive drub­bing he and Art Gar­funkel had tak­en from the crit­ics:

For the first few years, it was just praise. It took two or three years for peo­ple to real­ize that we weren’t strange crea­tures that emerged from Eng­land but just two guys from Queens who used to sing rock ‘n’ roll. And maybe we weren’t real folkies at all! May we weren’t even hip­pies!”

He wise­ly steered the song away from a nar­ra­tive about a guy who wasn’t even a hip­pie. And being a guy from Queens, he could tell a New York Sto­ry like few oth­ers could. Simon ref­er­ences his frus­tra­tion at being mis­un­der­stood, but his pro­tag­o­nist’s strug­gle to make it in the big city is far more uni­ver­sal than a song­writer’s angst.

The box­er is an “arche­typ­al char­ac­ter rep­re­sen­ta­tive of the strug­gle and lone­li­ness that can come with work­ing class life,” notes Poly­phon­ic. “The sec­ond verse is a care­ful por­trait of this exis­tence, depict­ing the box­er as a young man try­ing to find his foot­ing in a harsh world.”

When I left my home and my fam­i­ly
I was no more than a boy
In the com­pa­ny of strangers
In the qui­et of the rail­way sta­tion
Run­ning scared
Lay­ing low, seek­ing out the poor­er quar­ters
Where the ragged peo­ple go
Look­ing for the places
Only they would know

The mid­dle-class Simon did­n’t live this char­ac­ter’s life, nor did he pur­sue a box­ing career. But his abil­i­ty to imag­ine the lives of oth­ers through sto­ry-songs like “The Box­er” has been one of his great­est strengths as a writer. Simon’s nar­ra­tive gift served him well over and over in his career, and has served his fans. We can feel the feel­ings of Simon’s school­yard delin­quent, his frus­trat­ed lover look­ing for a way out, and his bit­ter, down-and-out trag­ic hero try­ing to make it in the big city, whether or not we’ve been there our­selves.

In the videos above, you can learn more about the writ­ing of this clas­sic cry of des­per­a­tion and strug­gle from Poly­phon­ic; and, learn about the record­ing from musi­cians who played on it, includ­ing drum­mer Hal Blaine. Then, see Simon and Gar­funkel fill out the song’s melody with their time­less har­monies live in Cen­tral Park, and, just above, see Simon by him­self in 2020, play­ing a solo ver­sion ded­i­cat­ed to his fel­low New York­ers com­bat­ing the fear and suf­fer­ing of COVID dur­ing lock­down.

Relat­ed Con­tent: 

Watch Simon & Gar­funkel Sing “The Sound of Silence” 45 Years After Its Release, and Just Get Haunt­ing­ly Bet­ter with Time

Paul Simon Tells the Sto­ry of How He Wrote “Bridge Over Trou­bled Water” (1970)

Paul Simon Decon­structs “Mrs. Robin­son” (1970)

Josh Jones is a writer and musi­cian based in Durham, NC. Fol­low him at @jdmagness.

by | Permalink | Make a Comment ( None ) |

« Go Back — More in this category... »
Quantcast