Classic Albums In Six Words: And You Can Play Too!

Oh yeah, I didn’t make up this whole “six words” thing, but I do have a blog so I’ll do what I want, thanks. Today’s game/assignment: sum up your favourite classic (or significant) album in six words. I’ll just start by giving y’all a few of my own.

The Beatles: The Beatles (The “White” Album) “Married Too Long In Separate Beds”

Led Zeppelin: Led Zeppelin II “White Young English Black And Blue”

Joni Mitchell: Blue “Stark And Naked Poetry Simply Adorned”

XTC: Drums And Wires “Goodbye Punks We’ve Invented New Ways”

Talking Heads: Remain In Light “Art School Nerds Find The Funk”

Nirvana: Nevermind “Sonic Waves Ripple Through Puget Sound”

Radiohead: OK Computer “The New Floyd Creep No More”

Elvis Costello & The Attractions: This Year’s Model “Pumped Up, Pills And Bile, Electricity”

Todd Rundgren: Something/Anything? “One Man Band With Helping Hands”

The Who: Live At Leeds “Keith, Pete, Roger, Ox, Magic Captured”

Rolling Stones: Exile On Main St. “Strung Out, Stretched Out, Stoned Again”

Neil Young: After The Gold Rush “Frail Majesty, Cracked Elegance, Pure Neil”

The Kinks: Are The Village Green Preservation Society “Gap Tooth Grin; Ray Of Hope”

THESE WERE DASHED OFF, QUICKLY, OFF THE TOP OF MY HEAD.

NOW IT’S YOUR TURN: SEND ME YOUR LISTS OF “SIX WORDS” SUMMING UP YOUR FAVOURITE ALBUMS, THEY CAN BE CLASSIC OR JUST SIGNIFICANT ALBUMS. SEND THEM TO THE COMMENTS SECTION BELOW, AND THANKS AS ALWAYS FOR CHECKING IN TO THE PULMYEARS MUSIC BLOG.

TV ’77: Scenes From A Televised Punk Revolution

The other day, I was trolling YouTube when it dawned on me that so many of the great moments in punk and new wave were caught on tape…

Maybe it was because the whole thing was inherently media made, or a least media-ready, but there can be no doubt that, unlike most epoch shifting musical moments the punk and new wave experience came to TV ready for its close-up. Still, the most exciting moments, for me, were those initial leaks trickling through the mainstream dam, when established programs began to broadcast the first shaky steps of the new wave. Here’s a few that stand out to me.

SO IT GOES – Hosted by TONY WILSON (Granada TV, UK)

I can only imagine what it was like up in the Northern UK in 1976, when those in the Manchester area tuned into a late night Granada TV program called So It Goes (named after the phrase popularized by Kurt Vonnegut) host by the notorious Tony Wilson (who would, a short time later, found Factory Records and The Haçienda nightclub and eventually end up having his life portrayed by Steve Coogan in the film, 24 Hour Party People).

So It Goes, which Wilson co-hosted with Clive James, was the first place that The Sex Pistols ever played on TV, and other guests included Patti Smith, comedian Peter Cook, The Jam, The Clash, The Buzzcocks, The Stranglers, Siouxsie and The Banshees plus Iggy Pop, whose stage banter, not safe for television, managed to get Wilson’s whole show cancelled. So it goes… Still, by then, the damage had been done, and between July 3, 1976 and December 11, 1977, Wilson managed to present a who’s who of punk, new wave and what we now blanketly call “alternative” artists, in addition to a wider array of non-mainstream guests including Tom Waits, Kevin Ayers, album cover artist Roger Dean, Marianne Faithfull, Eddie and the Hot Rods, Adam West, Be-Bop Deluxe, Soft Machine, Kate and Anna McGarrigle, John Cooper Clarke, Elvis Costello, Alberto Y Los Trios Paranoias, Ian Dury, Nick Lowe, Cherry Vanilla, Johnny Thunders and The Heartbreakers, The Tom Robinson Band, Mink DeVille, The Pirates, XTC and Steel Pulse.

After Iggy’s exhortation to “Clap your fucking hands” was clearly audible to the viewers, Granada pulled the plug but years later, in an NME interview from May 1986, Wilson spoke fondly of his “wild” experiment: “Basically,” said Wilson, “I got into it because all the way through the summer of ’77 I would wake up in a sweat, thinking: someone else is going to realize this is great stuff. I can’t believe it’s so wonderful, it’s gotta be on television. I remember going to see the producer Mike Appleton, an absolutely sweet guy, God bless him, and I asked, ‘Why can’t we have more punk bands?’. He said, ‘Because music is about technical excellence, and if they’re technically proficient I’ll put them on’. To this I replied, ‘Mr Appleton, you are completely and utterly wrong’. But that’s what it was like then.”

MARC – Hosted by MARC BOLAN (Granada TV, UK)

Who would have guessed that the torch would have been both picked up by, and passed on by, a faded glam rock superstar who was on the comeback trail, unaware that he himself would be dead in three months from a tragic car crash?  Yet, Marc Bolan’s Granada summer series, Marc, was both the final hurrah for the T Rex singer and the first taste of British national TV exposure for some of the new breed. The series ran only six weeks, beginning August 24, 1977, and up until Bolan’s death on September 16 (the final episode had been taped nine days prior to the accident). Often appearing slightly high or drunk, Bolan nonetheless was excited to present the new bands like Billy Idol’s Generation X, The Jam and the forgotten Eddie and the Hot Rods. He would also perform a few numbers with T. Rex and a fateful duet with David Bowie where Bolan lost his footing on a  mic cable. Bowie, perhaps not fathoming the seriousness of Bolan’s fall, is said to have called out, jokingly, “Could we have a wooden box for Marc [to stand on]?”

Here’s a clip of Marc and Bowie, Marc himself seems out of it, and the number isn’t complete in the clip…

Marc, is somewhat rare over here, but I have heard that some of the T. Rex numbers only were released on DVD in the UK in 2005, and in Japan in 2007.

Thanks to Wikipedia, I can report that, in addition to the T. Rex songs, Marc presented The Jam, doing “All Around The World I’ve Been Looking”, The Boomtown Rats (with Bob Geldof) doing “Looking After Number One”  Gen X doing “Your Generation” and Eddie and The Hot Rods performing “Do Anything you Want To Do,” in addition to other high profile acts like Bowie (doing “Heroes”), Thin Lizzy, Hawkwind, Bay City Rollers and Roger Taylor of Queen doing a rare solo number.

Over here in North America, a lot of us got our first close up look at the new breed not from The Midnight Special or Don Kirshner’s Rock Concert but from an bushy eyebrowed, chain smoking broadcast news throwback with an irresistible laugh…

TOMORROW – Hosted by TOM SNYDER (NBC TV, USA)

Tomorrow, NBC’s 12:35 time slot precursor to Late Night with David Letterman, debuted in 1973 and ran until 1982, and was something like appointment television for people who had been out at night but were too drunk or stoned to sleep when they got home. And kids like me who just stared in amazement at the unadorned set – there was no audience and no house band – as veteran former newsman Snyder, who often smoked on camera, conducted huffingly guileless conversations (you couldn’t call them interviews, they were too loose and in the moment) with such prominent cultural mavericks Paul McCartney, John Lennon (separately, this was after the Beatles break up), Ayn Rand, Ken Kesey. Through a Marlboro haze, Snyder often played to the technical crew with veiled off-camera, and off colour, in-jokes and the muffled laughter from the wings was a frequent part of ambient soundtrack. Before Snyder left the show, in 1982, he had memorably, an unintentionally, snagged John Lennon’s final TV interview, which was taped and aired in 1975 but re-broadcast shortly after the singer’s assassination in December of 1980. While that was compelling enough, perhaps my most vivid memories of the show were his fascinatingly uncomfortable interviews with folks like John Lydon, Elvis Costello, Patti Smith, The Ramones, Iggy Pop, Joan Jett (with Kim Fowley), The Plasmatics and Paul Weller with The Jam and this bit with The Clash.

One of my prized possessions is the DVD that I have depicted above, The Tomorrow Show with Tom Snyder: Punk & New Wave, which was released by Shout! Factory a few years back. This 2 disc set presents some of the most exciting moments from the show; the October 1977 punk “round table” with Jett, Fowley and Weller squaring off with more established music scenesters like San Francisco promoter Bill Graham and L.A. rock critic Robert Hillburn, the May 1978 Patti Smith interview where the giggling poet admits that she always wanted a career in comedy.

There’s also the February 1981 appearance by Elvis Costello and the Attractions, promoting their just released Trust album, which was the first time I’d heard “New Lace Sleeves” and “Watch Your Step”  (I seem to remember he also did “Shot With His Own Gun” but it’s not on the DVD). There’s also the February 1981 Iggy Pop episode,

the May 1981 show with Wendy O. Williams and her band The Plasmatics, (who, very punkily, blew up an automobile for Tom), the June 1980 show with John Lydon and a practically silent Keith Levene “discussing” PiL.

There’s the September 1981 appearance by The Ramones as well as The Jam‘s 1981 appearance, where they perform “Pretty Green” and “Funeral Pyre”

As a good Canadian boy from Toronto, honourable mention should go to…

THE NEW MUSIC – (Various Hosts, CityTV Canada)

I also remember a local Toronto music show, which later went to all of Canada, called The New Music, which was hosted at various times by Jeanne Beker, John “J.D.” Roberts (now with CNN), Laurie Brown, Daniel Richler, later hosts included filmmaker Avi Lewis (husband of writer Naomi Klein) and George Stroumboulopoulos who currently the host of a popular evening program on CBC. Here’s a segment featuring Devo…

The New Music wasn’t slick at all, in those days, as you can see by this ripped-out-seat-of-the-pants segment with Beker after a riotous performance by The Clash in Toronto (excuse the graphic “Vinyl Kosmo” under Clash manager Cosmo Vinyl.

Toronto people of, ahem, a certain age, will attest to the importance of The New Music for being some of the first TV exposure for not only the most exciting acts from New York and The UK, but from other disparate regions of Canada (this was the first place a Toronto boy like me ever got to see Vancouver punk and new wave acts like D.O.A., The Pointed Sticks and The Payolas, on my homescreen).

Dancing About Architecture – Books About Music

The quote, “Writing about music is like dancing about architecture”, has been attributed to everyone from Elvis Costello, to Frank Zappa and Hunter S. Thompson – I think I even heard Laurie Anderson say it one time. It’s one of my most beloved quotes, however, because it speaks to the inherent impotence of speech and verbal language in the face of what I feel is a superior art form, music.

Of course, the reason it comes up from time to time is that, in addition to my ongoing life education as a songwriter and guitarist, I frequently attempt (with varying efficacy) to write about music. That is, I seek to convey with words, the impact and scope of songs, albums, musical performances and the people who make said music, and then put it into some kind of coherent context. Only, I’m doomed from the start but frankly once you do start, there’s generally no turning back. And hey, I have some heroes who have come before me, and who are out there now, who have done such an excellent job of getting it down on the page, that I am at once humbled, inspired and intimidated by the challenge. Today I’m gonna talk about some of the books that inspire me, or that I haven’t read yet but want to.

Full disclosure, this topic comes up as I prepare for the release of my third book, A Wizard A True Star: Todd Rundgren In The Studio, which will be published by Jawbone Press on October 1st 2010, and as the publication date nears, I will be promoting the book with bonus material, bonus content that had to be edited out of the print edition and exclusive stories and context about the interviews, which I will post every Tuesday (Todd Tuesdays?) Or maybe Wednesdays (Wizard Wednesdays?) Anyway, I’ll let you know so keep checking in for an announcement. At right, is an early design for the book jacket, which is very close to what the final cover will look like.

You know, for a guy who writes, I’m a surprisingly infrequent reader. I have friends like Blair Packham who read everything (that’s good) and I always feel like I’m missing really great books. Here though, are a few music books I did read that I absolutely loved…

Fargo Rock City: A Heavy Metal Odyssey In Rural Nörth Daköta by Chuck Klosterman

This book was initially recommended to me by Tyler from Barenaked Ladies, who told me that Chuck makes a case for the kind of rock that I considered at the time an embarrassment, i.e. the hair metal and L.A. glam rock of the Poison and Ratt variety. Yeah right! But sure enough, Ty was right, and Klosterman’s trick was to finally treat “midwestern dirt bag” rock with the kind of hipster cred that journalists usually only bestow upon the likes of Morrissey, Pavement or Brian Eno. His argument was that this music reached a lot of people and was just as “valid” as any Pitchfork flavour of the month (week). It could have been mere reactionary faux populism, but Klosterman knew both worlds so well that he made a lot of sense and while it may not have moved me to throw on any more Mötley Crüe records,  it did make me understand their power and perceived value. Hopefully it also chipped away at my veneer of snobbish insularity.
The Nearest Faraway Place: Brian Wilson, The Beach Boys and The Southern California Experience by Timothy White

When I first moved down here, to Northern California, in 1997, I was still discovering the deep cuts of Brian Wilson via some of the mid-nineties CD box sets issued by Capitol, notably Good Vibrations and The Pet Sounds Sessions (Smile wouldn’t be finished and released until the next decade). As my brother was still living in Southern California, we had an excuse to make frequent runs to Los Angeles and every trip would include a short drive through Bel Air or down Sunset Blvd toward the locations where Brian had lived and worked. A chief source of inspiration was this book by (the late) Timothy White, who had also written the excellent Catch A Fire about Bob Marley. Although The Nearest Faraway Place had come out in 1994, the paperback edition made it to my eager hands in ’96, so it was fresh and exciting to me, a welcoming guidebook to the world of cars, guitars, beaches, palm trees and orange crate art and other assorted Wilsonia. What made the book more valuable to me was that it didn’t just talk about the recording sessions or the chart positions, it described – in more detail than I thought I needed, at the time – the history of the region. We learn of the Okie roots of the Wilson and Love families as they migrated to the newly planted orange groves with the promise of new life and new jobs, the word “new” comes up a lot. This section of the book (with it’s muddy Grapes Of Wrath overtones) sets up the rest of the story perfectly. We learn about surfing, and why cars were so central to Southern California life. We learn about Murry Wilson, the cycloptic father of Brian, Carl and Dennis, also their manager and fabled cruelly jealous tormentor. We also learn about how the Hollywood orchestra scene and the Los Angeles jazz community intersected with the emerging Van Dyke Parks and Randy Newman world and into things like The Wrecking Crew, the session team who played on Pet Sounds. White’s ability to set scenes and to tie up seeming loose ends has been an abiding influence on my own work, notably on my 2007 book about the London blues scene of the early 60’s, It Ain’t Easy, and I think I had it in mind when working last year on the Todd book. The Southern California experience laid out in White’s book inspired me to also check out:

Riot On Sunset Strip: Rock’n’roll’s Last Stand In Hollywood by Domenic Priore (with a Foreword by Arthur Lee)                     I have long been trying to get my Derek Taylor biography sold to someone who would dare to let me do it, but until I do this book really sets the scene on the last flaming days of the Sixties on Sunset Strip (1965 and 1966) before the hippies fled to Monterey. Thus we see Dylan sitting in with The Byrds at Ciro’s and a cast that inclues The Doors, Arthur Lee’s band Love, Buffalo Springfield, Frank  Zappa, Captain Beefheart, The Turtles and even Johnny Rivers or The Bobby Fuller Four. What a time. Meanwhile in the hills above Sunset, the folk rock scene beckoned, as documented in…

Laurel Canyon: The Inside Story of Rock-And-Roll’s Legendary Neighborhood by Michael Walker

Slightly romanticized, but always compelling, this is a great antidote to the turmoil down in the flats, and I loved hearing the tales of innocent experimentation, which often lead to terrible consequences, but more often than not forged a sound and a vibe, yes vibe is the word, that placed in a perfectly fragile moment in time. Joni shares the “Our House” house with Graham Nash, Mama Cass Elliott is in everyone’s business and pot smoke rings through the idyllic forests. Frank Zappa is nearby, but he’s a workaholic family man so he’s not having of it. Of course, Manson murders put an end to it all, like the parents coming down to the den to break up the kids stoner party. Still, nothing was going to harsh their mellow and by the end of it, these blissed out rich kids ended up defining the peaceful easy feeling of the seventies, for good or ill.  Over in England, an American was defining the folk rock scene…

White Bicycles: Making Music In The 1960s by Joe Boyd

As the founder of Hannibal Records and his Witchseason company, Joe Boyd was responsible for legendary careers of Nick Drake, Fairport Convention, Sandy Denny, Richard and Linda Thompson and The Incredible String Band, but he’s done so much more. Starting as an early importer of American Jazz and Blues to the UK, he eventually started working with Elektra Records. He was also behind the legendary UFO club psych shows by The Pink Floyd and Roy Wood and Jeff Lynne‘s band, The Move. He’s the Zelig of UK prog. And there’s more, he was the stage manager for Judas. Well, he worked The Newport Folk Festival when Dylan plugged in a, gasp, electric guitar! So he’s been there done that, done it all actually, so why should you read this book? Because, lucky for you dear reader, Boyd is a compelling story teller and a gifted writer who knows how to unravel the tale so you’re always curious about what happens next. And there’s lots of “next” here.

The seventies and eighties, and all the greed that these decades imply, seems well represented in

Hit Men: Power Brokers and Fast Money Inside the Music Business by Frederic Dannen

Essentially a tell-all about the gangsterism rampant in the music business,  disputed (selectively) by its central character, Columbia’s Walter Yetnikoff. When I first read this, it blew my mind, and I couldn’t listen to Pink Floyd’s The Wall again without thinking of the backroom machinations and clandestine dealings that helped it (as good as it arguably was) to become the crazy Multi-Diamond award album it became. Critic Robert Christgau, writing in the New York Times Book Review, called it an “entertaining… collection of anecdotes about an uproariously unsavory subculture of egomaniacs, sybarites, goniffs, and music-lovers as any greed fan could wish. Exploiting sources that range from trial records, confidential interviews, and other journalists’ notes to People and the trades (all documented in a meticulous 40-page appendix), Dannen has a knack for the telling quote and a healthy appetite for the juicy story: supermanager Irving Azoff sending a rival with a strong-willed wife a boa constrictor and a note that says “Now you have two of them!,” or industry toastmaster Joe Smith reading from Clive Davis’s “official biography”: “Clive was born in a manger in Bethlehem . . .” Dannen understands such crucial economic issues as corporate centralization and the extortionate “recoupable” expenses artists are stuck with. And while most of the crime reporting that justifies Hit Men’s blatantly ambiguous title is public record, it’s convenient to have it all in one place.”

But beware, as Christgau reminds us, Dannen comes from the world of high finance and not music, so his musical history is sometimes sketchier than his fluency in the matters of corporate power. “Too much of his scant musical detail is erroneous,” adds Christgau, “the so-called ‘old blues song’ “Piece of My Heart” was written by biz music-lovers Jerry Ragovoy and Bert Berns; Wilson Pickett is of a later generation than Ray Charles and was never produced by Ahmet Ertegun; Barry Manilow’s “Mandy” isn’t based on Looking Glass’s “Brandy”…. what interests him about today’s music business isn’t the music. It’s the bottom line…”

and before I go, undying big ups to a few essential Beatle books I’ve read and a couple I sorta want to…

The Beatles Anthology by the horses mouth, A Day In The Life by Mark Hertsgaard and Revolution In The Head by Ian Macdonald (I’ve yet to crack Bob Spitz’s big The Beatles: The Biography and I only got a third into Jonathan Gould’s Can’t Buy Me Love: The Beatles, Britain and America – that could just be due to my old nemesis/ pal ADHD, though.

and the funniest fantasy autobiography you’ll ever read,

X-Ray: The Unauthorized Autobiography by Ray Davies of the Kinks.

This is not a definitive list and these are just the ones I always recommend without even thinking, and there are TONS of great music biography books out there, so now I’m gonna hand the mic over to you…

AUDIENCE PARTICIPATION TIME: ROCK BIOGRAPHIES (BOOKS) EDITION
TELL ME YOUR ROCK BIOGRAPHIES AND OR AUTOBIOGRAPHIES, AND BRIEFLY DESCRIBE WHY THEY DESERVE MENTION, IN THE COMMENTS SECTION BELOW.

THANKS FOR READING THE PULMYEARS MUSIC BLOG, SOMEWHERE AN ANGEL IS SMILING ON YOU.

PAUL.

Gilded By Association: Does The Golden Touch Rub Off?

I was just sent a video, attached to a fan letter, from a Boston area songwriter named Corin Ashley. He says he enjoys The Pulmyears Music Blog, so we automatically have that in common (ha!). His video was for a song he’d recorded called “Badfinger Bridge” and if I’d known about it sooner, it would have fit in nicely with last weeks posts about songs with the names of other artists or people in the title, but that’s not why I’m posting it here. His video celebrates the sessions for the song, recorded in the historic EMI Abbey Road Studio Two, which featured guests Ed Ball (from Television Personalities), Martin Carr and Rob Cieka from the late, great Boo Radleys along with Ken Stringfellow from the (now recording again!) Posies, who also played in Big Star and plays in his own band The Disciplines.

This got me thinking, we’ve got the Badfinger reference in the title, the mid-90’s Liverpool reference in the Radleys, the Memphis pop reference in having a Big Star member who also lends an early 90’s Seattle blessing on the thing which is recorded at the Vatican of the Beatles Church. In an age where pop eats itself (and I’m certainly not knocking the concept, I probably do it more often than not in my own songwriting) it seems to me that articles of faith (borrowed Beatle basses or vintage Mellotrons) and retracing the steps of the giants (location, location, location) plays a big role in lending an air of authenticity to our work.

Here’s Sigur Rós recording “Ara Batur” with a 67-piece orchestra and boy’s choir, at Abbey Road…

I can recall a few events from my own life which spoke to me about this phenomenon. One was when I was in my second  teenage band and my drummer/singer friend, Mark Pallin had enrolled in a recording course which worked out of Phase One Studios in the suburbs of Toronto, where I grew up. Mark had volunteered our band to act as the guinea pig for a student session (I’ll bet a lot of people have had similar circumstances surrounding their first recordings) so here we were in a 24-track studio with actual Gold Records on the wall. Phase One’s most famous client at the time was, if I recall, the Canadian prog-pop rock group Saga (who were also big in Germany, of course !?!?) and I’ll never forget seeing their “Saga” logo stenciled onto their roadcases, which were stacked by the loading doors, as we loaded in. “We’re recording in the same place that Saga is recording. Just a matter of time before we’ll be big in Germany too”. A later band of mine had the fortune to record in United Media Studios in Richmond Hill, Ontario, where not only was Kim Mitchell (local guitar god of my childhood) rehearsing his road band in the adjacent complex, but the recording console was the same Neve board that other local legends Rush (and later Klaatu) producer Terry Brown had used when the board had been over at Toronto Sound. You can never underestimate the cool factor of having one’s signal pass through the same channel strips that may have at one time had the name “Alex Lifeson” scrawled below it in wax pencil.

Westlake Audio's Studio A

Also, I once stood for a second in the vocal booth at Hollywood’s Westlake Audio’s Studio A, where Michael Jackson had sung for Quincy Jones on the Thriller sessions.

But back to Abbey Road. On his blog, Corin Ashley describes his emotions and motivations in great detail:

Thursday, April 10, 2008: …Studio 2, where it all went down. I got a bit light headed for a second, just taking it all in. First off, it’s huge. 30 foot high ceilings. I had seen it in photos so many times that…I felt like I had been there a hundred times before, knew exactly where everything would be. Martin [Carr] and I kept smiling at each other…Producer Charlie [Francis (REM, Robyn Hitchcock, High Llamas)] was up the famous stairs and came down with a couple of assistants from Abbey Road to say hello. And then, in all his splendor and magnificence, I finally met Ed Ball…also a major, major Beatles geek and there was some concern that if the three of us (Martin, Ed and myself) got together at Abbey Road that our heads might actually explode. Ed… immediately sits down at the Steinway Baby grand, the one used on “A Day In The Life” and starts playing my song…

…we troop up the stairs to the control room, which is small but comfy. There’s a ginormous Neve desk and, on the side, looking out the window a gorgeous old EMI TG mixing desk from around the Dark Side Of the Moon session. It was actually the desk George Martin used when he worked on the Anthology series. Guy from Abbey Road says” You can use that one if you want” Oh yes, my friend, we’re having that. I was just trying to remember to breathe… Charlie mics [the drums] just like I asked: like the Beatles. AKG D20 on bass drum, A D19 between the snare and hi hat and the Coles ribbon mic that looks like a shower head right over the drummer’s head. Mind you, these are the actual microphones used on Ringo’s drums. There are also dozens of old German mics on boom stands throughout the studio…All used by the Beatles at various points…

You get the picture. I was reminded how another colleague of mine, Luke Jackson, brought in the late Robert Kirby, a key arranger on classic records by Nick Drake to arrange and conduct some orchestral parts for “This Life ” and three other songs from Jackson’s impressive album, …And Then Some, which is available from Popsicle Recordings. “Why not,” says Luke in his press materials, “make an album with my favourite musicians on the planet?” So he was off to Malmö’ and the Aerosol Grey Machine studio along with his producer Christoffer Lundquist (Roxette, Cardigans) Robert Kirby and nine players from Malmö’s Opera Orchestra.  Of course Luke would want someone so amazing (who had worked with Drake AND Elvis Costello AND John Cale) to work with him, and the results were as predicted, beautiful and unique. Sadly, Kirby died within a years time of the sessions.

Here’s Luke’s video for the “This Life” session…

…and another song from the sessions, “A Little Voice”

The people, the places, certain instruments, all of them have power.

I’ll leave you now with Beatles associate Klaus Voormann, who made this little clip to share his special feelings for Ardent Studios in Memphis…

And I almost forgot, I used to frequently record using the same technology Bruce Springsteen used to make Nebraska!

QUESTIONS, COMMENTS OR SIMILAR STORIES? PLEASE DO SHARE THEM HERE IN THE COMMENTS SECTION. AND THANKS FOR READING THE PULMYEARS MUSIC BLOG.

I STILL CARE ABOUT MUSIC. DO YOU?

The Dead And The Living

Today I’m just jotting down a couple of quick mentions about two really great musicians whom I think would be worthy of your ear attentions. Sadly one of them, Will Owsley, is dead. Luckily, the other, Sam Phillips, is still very much alive. First the bad news…

WILL OWSLEY (1965-2010)

Will Owsley (left) with Amy Grant.

Born in Anniston, Alabama, in 1965 – the year that the Beatles released Rubber Soul – Will Owsley was probably better known to the mainstream music world as one of the great “studio rats” and sidemen in Nashville and Los Angeles, but I first heard him in the late 90’s when a friend who worked at Sony in Nashville hipped me to the “Nash Vegas” power pop scene there. That scene had spawned a lot of great alternative music (which in Nashville meant not country) from the likes of Millard Powers, who had worked with Owsley and Ben Folds in The Semantics. I have, since, heard the story about how they got signed to Geffen but that the label dropped them before it ever got to the stores. Then, my friend had sent me a CD called Nashpop: A Nashville Pop Compilation (released in 1998 by the NotLame Recording Company) One of the songs on there, “Sonny Boy”, was credited simply to Owsley, and it was classic pop…

CLICK TO HEAR “SONNY BOY” (hosted by Popdose)

I didn’t hear much until the following year, when Giant Records (a major label subsidiary of MCA/Universal, if I recall correctly) released his first solo album, Owsley. Working with Millard Powers, and aware of the breakthrough of their peer Ben Folds, it seemed that Will Owsley was on the fast track to being that rare exception, a power pop cult artist who crosses over to wider commercial acclaim (the great irony of the pop world being its inherent lack of mainstream commerciality). It rocked as good as Cheap Trick, it gave good ballad, and even echoed Folds in its more wistful moments, and really should have done better than it did.

CLICK TO HEAR “COMING UP ROSES” (hosted by Popdose)

Read between the lines, though, in this blurb from Amazon’s Steven Stolder:

“It seems that the only thing foreseen more frequently than a big pop revival is the death of Beatlesque rock & roll. Neither prediction ever quite comes true. As sure as you can count on a Crowded House coming along every few years to serve as a new messiah for pure pop, you know you’ll soon be scratching your head and pondering, What ever happened to Jellyfish?  But they just keep coming. Will Owsley is the latest Great Hope to step forward.”

Certainly, something like “Oh No The Radio” had some of the manic hooks of an XTC or Jason Falkner…

Radio? Oh no, it never really happened that way.  I mean, whatever did happen to Jellyfish? Know what I mean? (I know by the way) Owsley’s second album, The Hard Way (2004) made even less of an impact beyond the fans (like me) who got power pop. Susanne Ault of Billboard moaned that “while The Hard Way rolls along competently, the mid-tempo guitar hooks and straight ahead vocals lack the necessary punch to reach mainstream consciousness”

There wasn’t a growth market on Owsley’s own music, and like so many talents before him (and after him) he couldn’t waste his gifts sitting around waiting for his own songs to catch on, so he went into the sideman business, where he thrived. He spent over 16 years as a sideman to Amy Grant – he also did work with Shania Twain – and had recently been a Disney Music hired gun working on everything from Demi Lovato to the Jonas Brothers. He made enough money from the higher profile gigs to build himself quite a nice home studio.

I wonder if it ever made him crazy, playing a side role to the fame that could have, should have, been his. Maybe that’s why, if the initial reports are to be believed (and forgive us all if they are not) he chose to take his own life last week. He left behind two kids, and lord knows how many people who may have tried to save him, if that was possible. But maybe he wasn’t bummed about being a successful sideman at all (my friend Steven Page told me that he recently hired Owsley to play pedal steel on his own record, and spoke highly of him). Maybe self-pity as a motive, then, is simply too romantic, too cliché. Perhaps, like so many sad souls in the world, Will Owsley merely suffered the ravaging effects of common, although not trivial, depression and for a brief flickering moment, couldn’t see how he could possibly live another second. It’s just sad, that’s all it is. Rest in Peace, then, Will Owsley, some of us got it while you were here.

Here, Owsley pays tribute to one of the architects of power pop, Paul McCartney

On to the living then…

SAM PHILLIPS – THE LONG PLAY

I’ve been slow to the game but I am pleased to see that Sam Phillips is now doing an online subscription thing called The Long Play. I’ve been a fan of Sam Phillips for years now. I remember getting a copy of her first album The Indescribable Wow in a used bin at Flip City Records on Queen St West in Toronto way back in 1990, and then picking up her next one Cruel Inventions, a year after that. She was with T-Bone Burnett in those days and had heavy cats like him, and Elvis Costello and Van Dyke Parks, backing her. Her reed thin voice had a similar attack to that of Marianne Faithfull, yet somehow softer, more sanded down. I knew she’d come from the world of contemporary Christian rock (where she recorded as Leslie Phillips) but the fact that she threw off the commercialization of that world to walk among the secular (her faith no doubt intact) made me respect her all the more. What really mattered was the songs. By way of giving you an audio sample, here’s a YouTube clip of “Where The Colors Don’t Go” from Cruel Inventions, featuring a static still photo of Sam.

Then in 1994, I was pleased to hear that she had enlisted XTC’s Colin Moulding to join her and T-Bone on the Martinis & Bikinis album, which featured this single, “Baby, I Can’t Please You”:

Shortly after this, she turned up in an acting role, as a villain in a Bruce Willis movie, Die Hard With A Vengeance, but soon it was back to music. I interviewed her, in Toronto, shortly before the release of her album Omnipop (It’s Only A Flesh Wound Lambchop) her last album for Virgin, which also featured contributions from Jon Brion and other L.A. awesome-folk. We seemed to hit it off in the interview and I was delighted when I heard that she had asked Virgin to hire me to rewrite her official bio for the album. Apparently, I wasn’t the first or last person to be hired for that bio, so I don’t think Virgin ended up using it. It’s a funny footnote to me though, and I always smile when I hear songs from that album.

A lot of folks heard her when she contributed music and made cameo appearances on The Gilmore Girls, where instead of making Sam uncool by association with a TV show, she made the show seem hipper for associating with her..

Later on, Nonesuch released the album Fan Dance (2001) which many reviewers felt was her best ever. Here’s an odd little super 8 video with her song “Taking Pictures” and some West Coast tour dates (from 2008) superimposed over it.

Now, she’s signed a publishing deal with Notable Music and has gone direct to her fans via the now-viable model of fan subscription (something you’ll recall Todd Rundgren trying as far back as the late-nineties!!).  Here’s how Sam describes The Long Play on her site:

Long Play is a year of music. While digging for inspiration and journaling the process of writing and recording, I will release 5 EP’s and a full-length album through samphillips.com. There is no record company involved — this is just between us.

As a subscriber, every two months you will automatically receive a high-quality digital EP made up of new songs, new versions of my old songs, seasonal songs, or previously unreleased songs.  (The first EP is entitled “Hypnotists in Paris”; a collaboration between myself and The Section Quartet.)

At the end of the Long Play, next fall, you will receive a full-length digital album.  This is the most music I’ve ever released in a one-year period. Essays, video, photos and audio logs will make the Long Play part music, book, magazine, laboratory, radio program and curiosity collection.

Will opening up some of the creative process affect the way I write and record the music? Will it affect how you hear it?  I have no idea, and there’s only one way to find out…please join me for the Long Play. 

Sam

A $52 subscription includes:

– 5 digital EP’s (high-quality MP3, FLAC and Apple Lossless formats); released every two months starting October 1, 2009

– 1 full-length digital album (high-quality MP3, FLAC and Apple Lossless formats); scheduled for release in the fall of 2010

– 1 Subscribers-only bonus track with each EP and album, plus additional bonus tracks throughout the year

– Bonus audio and video content throughout the year

– Long Project; may include live concert footage, rehearsal tapes, demos, behind-the-scenes footage and interviews, etc.

– Exclusive audio and visual oddities

– Membership in the Long Play community with exclusive access to Sam’s journaling of her creative process as well as an exclusive social network of Sam’s fans.

Thanks to everyone for the support! It’s going to be a great year of Sam Phillips exclusive music & content!

Here’s a sampler for the Holiday album in the series,

Oh and by the way, Sam wrote the song “Sister Rosetta Goes Before Us” which was covered by Robert Plant and Alison Krauss on Raising Sand, produced by T-Bone Burnett. But here’s Sam doing it on NPR:

Two weeks ago (April 20th) Sam released Magic For Everybody: Here’s an Amazon link for that.

Finally, here’s an LA Times review of a little show Sam Phillips did last week at the Hotel Cafe:

http://latimesblogs.latimes.com/music_blog/2010/04/live-review-sam-phillips-at-the-hotel-cafe.html

AS ALWAYS PLEASE SHARE YOUR THOUGHTS, QUESTIONS AND COMMENTS ON ANYTHING I WRITE ABOUT – OR JUST SAY HELLO – IN THE COMMENTS SECTION BELOW.  THANKS FOR TAKING THE TIME TO READ THE PULMYEARS MUSIC BLOG.

THANKS TO WILL HARRIS, WHO POSTED THE OWSLEY AUDIO FILES IN HIS “HOOKS ‘N’ YOU” COLUMN ON POPDOSE, I LINK TO THEM IN THIS PIECE.

Rock Docs And Biopics Friday – The Big Concert Film

It’s Friday, time for Rock Docs And Biopics feature, to help you make a few choices for music themed DVDs if you’re heading to the bricks and mortar video store, the Netflix queue, the iTunes Movies queue or just looking to do some good old fashioned bit torrenting.  Every week, I’ll try to give you the tip of the iceberg from a variety of subcategories of music films, and this, in honour of the release of that new 3D Phish Concert film this weekend (April 3oth, see local listings for time and screens) we’re going to get make like Paul McCartney in his song “Rock Show” and get our wigs straight, as we salute the Concert Event Film.

The Rolling Stones GIMME SHELTER (1970) directed by Albert & David Maysles

Arguably, one of the first major concert movies to attain cinematic significance was 1970’s Gimme Shelter, the Albert and David Maysles “direct cinema” documentary (edited by Charlotte Zwerin) featuring The Rolling Stones and culminating in their ill-fated December 6, 1969 free concert at Altamont Speedway. During that show, a drunk and surly Hell’s Angels “stage security guard” pulled a knife on 18 year old concert goer Meredith Hunter and stabbed him to death right before the bleary eyes of a stunned Mick Jagger. Like the best concert docs this film is valuable for the subtext and back story around the concert itself. Accidentally capturing the murder on film – some critics refer to it as the rock and roll equivalent of the Zapruder film of JFK’s assassination – The Maysles brothers deftly show the aftermath and one particular scene, with Mick watching the playback in frightened disbelief, is worth the whole film.  Released in the ugly hangover of the summer of love, the year after Manson murders and the deaths of Jimi, Jim and Janis, the film eerily marks the death of the 60s’ optimistic buzz. The film also features footage from earlier shows in the tour, the Madison Square Garden concert which ended up on vinyl as Get Yer Ya-Ya’s Out, and you’ll get live takes of “Jumpin’ Jack Flash,” “Satisfaction”, “You Gotta Move”, “Brown Sugar”, “Love in Vain”, “Honky Tonk Women”, “Street Fighting Man”, “Sympathy for the Devil”, “Under My Thumb” and the title song, “Gimme Shelter”. There’s also music from other acts at Atamont, the Jefferson Airplane do “The Other Side of This Life”  and The Flying Burrito Brothers do “Six Days on the Road” and from Ike & Tina Turner, from the MSG show, doing “I’ve Been Loving You Too Long”.

Since ABKCO seem to have taken down any real clips from Gimme Shelter, I direct you to this charmingly horrible student film by “Chad and DJ” about the incidents at Altamont…

The Stones, of course, have a great deal of live films out there, and I’ll briefly skip At The Max (the IMAX film they did in 1995) to move to the most recent one:

The Rolling Stones SHINE A LIGHT (2008) directed by Martin Scorsese

Shot with characteristic camera motion by one of Scorsese’s (and Quentin Tarantino’s) favourite cinematographers, Robert Richardson, Shine A Light may be the new gold standard in Stones films, at least in terms of sound and pictures, and while it may not be the young and hungry Stones of the 60’s and 70’s, the band was certainly “on” for these shows, filmed digitally in 2006 at New York’s Beacon Theatre during their A Bigger Bang Tour. While Scorsese opts to included archival footage, it is the way that Scorsese chose to film and record these Clinton Foundation Benefit shows (October 29 and November 1, 2006, attended by Bill & Hillary Clinton and the former Polish President Aleksander Kwasniewski, not the one who died recently) that make it special.  The feeling of being right there in the action is achieved by the use of special cinematic lighting and Richardson’s roving and personal cameras which follow the band around the stage, plus there’s a genius sound mix by Bob Clearmountain which changes to reflect the pictures on screen (i.e. during Charlie Watts close up, the drums are slightly louder but when we cut to Keith Richards, his guitar is suddenly more present).

Musically, the Stones cover a lot of what you’ve come to expect – “Start Me Up”, “Jumpin’ Jack Flash”, “Tumbling Dice” and “Brown Sugar” but there are some fine versions of slower material like “As Tears Go By” and “Far Away Eyes” and their take on “Just My Imagination”. Celebrity guests include Christina Aguilera, who holds her own with Mick on “Live With Me” and bluesman Buddy Guy brings it to the Muddy Waters number, “Champagne & Reefer”. A worthy concert film, seemingly made with love by good old Marty Scorsese, who also brought us…

The Band & Friends THE LAST WALTZ (1978) directed by Martin Scorsese

Filmed at San Francisco’s Winterland Ballroom on November 25, 1976, Thanksgiving Day, The Last Waltz was a star-studded send off for The Band, lovingly captured in concert with the likes of rock peers Bob Dylan, Joni Mitchell, Neil Young, Ringo Starr, Ronnie Wood and Eric Clapton,  Dr. John, Paul Butterfield and Muddy Waters gospel heroes The Staple Singers, country rock songbird Emmylou Harris and, somewhat surprisingly, Neil Diamond (who rises to the occasion) And don’t forget poets Michael McClure and Lawrence Ferlinghetti or the awesome horn arrangements by New Orleans all-star, Allen Toussaint. The only complaint you’ll ever hear about this film from fans of The Band is its apparent dotage on Scorsese’s pal Robbie, who does tend to dominate the proceedings in a manner not unlike Paul McCartney’s dominance in Let It Be.  In fact, in Levon Helm’s book, This Wheel’s on Fire, claimed that not only was Marty working hard to make Robbie look better than he was, he revealed that a lot of what we hear in the film wasn’t live at all, having been later overdubbed for the final release. Helm also stood up for keyboard players Richard Manuel and Garth Hudson, both of whom, Helm says, got shafted in the final edit and reduced to being Robertson’s side men. Here though, Levon is at the helm on “Ophelia” with some great horn charts from Toussaint:

It’s a pretty damn good concert too, with some amazing musical moments from The Band’s back catalogue and indeed from all involved, notably Neil Young who sings “Helpless” with a visibly peruvian post-nasal drip, Dr. John on “Such A Night” and Ronnie Hawkins reliving the days when The Band were The Hawks on Bo Diddley’s “Who Do You Love?”

Another all star concert film, with Bob Dylan and Ringo Starr was also the first big scale charity event, predating Live Aid by 12 years…

George Harrison & Friends THE CONCERT FOR BANGLADESH (1972) directed by Saul Swimmer.

Fresh out of the Beatles, George Harrison was in the middle of producing Apple Records protégés Badfinger when he got an urgent call from his friend and sitar mentor Ravi Shankar, despondent over the famine and war which continued to ravage the post-Indian nation of Bangladesh. He was so moved as to drop what he was doing (handing off the Badfinger album Straight Up to producer Todd Rundgren) and hastily put together this all-star event at Madison Square Garden, held over two shows (at noon and at 7:00 p.m. respectively) on August 1, 1971, famously consulting an astrologer to set the date. Harrison got most of his heaviest of heavy friends to the gigs including Bob Dylan, Eric Clapton, George Harrison, Billy Preston, Leon Russell, Badfinger, and Ringo Starr along with veteran sidemen like Jim Keltner, Jesse Ed Davis, Klaus Voorman and Carl Radle. While Harrison and his rag-tag musical army do serviceable versions of  his All Things Must Pass songs, “Wah-Wah”, “My Sweet Lord” and “Awaiting On You All” Badfinger’s Pete Ham gets a featured role on”Here Comes the Sun”, Leon Russell is given a lead vocal on Harrison’s “Beware of Darkness” and Clapton reprises his guitar solo on “While My Guitar Gently Weeps.” While Ringo pitches in with his certified smash hit “It Don’t Come Easy” (written for him by Harrison) it is Billy Preston who comes hungriest and leaves with the greatest impression as his spirited performance of his own song, “That’s The Way God Planned It” nearly steals the show.

Dylan is featured heavily, even more than in The Last Waltz, and contributes “A Hard Rain’s a-Gonna Fall”  “It Takes a Lot to Laugh, It Takes a Train to Cry” “Blowin’ in the Wind” and “Just Like A Woman.”

Speaking of large, hairy groupings of musicians…we have to mention another groundbreaking concert documentary…

MONTEREY POP (1968) directed by D.A. Pennebaker

Pennebaker’s cinéma vérité style, among the first to use 16 millimeter portable colour cameras, was perfect for capturing the landmark, three-day long, Monterey International Pop Music Festival, which was held from June 16 to June 18, 1967 at the Monterey County Fairgrounds, south of San Francisco, right smack in the middle of the summer of love. The first large scale international rock festival of its kind (est. attendance was between 55,000 to 90,000 fans) and marked the U.S. debuts of Jimi Hendrix (who had really honed his act in the UK) and The Who, plus a groundbreaking unveiling of the Memphis sounds of  Otis Redding and his backing band Booker T. and the MG’s.  The brainchild of promoter Lou Adler, John Phillips of The Mamas & the Papas, producer Alan Pariser, and publicist Derek Taylor, the team somehow managed to impress the peace and love vibe on the artists to the extent that most acts played for free, with the gate receipts donated to charity…except for Ravi Shankar, who took home $3,000 for his four hour afternoon performance Ravi Shankar four-hour sitar performance, one of the first instances of “world music” on a what was essentially a rock and roll stage.  So many stories surround the event itself: The Who tussled backstage with The Jimi Hendrix Experience over who would have to follow who on the bill, Janis Joplin did a sultry version of “Ball ‘n’ Chain” that is said to have inspired Columbia Records to sign her and Big Brother and The Holding Company on the spot. “So this is the love crowd” said a 26 year old Otis Redding, kicking of his set booked by Booker T. & The MG’s and while this concert was something of a breakthrough in terms of reaching a wider (whiter) audience, he would only live 6 months longer until the his tragic death in a small plane crash. Here’s a little taste of Hendrix from the show:

Monterey inspired the most famous concert, and concert movie, of all time…

WOODSTOCK: 3 DAYS OF PEACE & MUSIC (1970) directed by Michael Wadleigh

You’ve probably seen it, or maybe not, but get Wadleigh’s 1994 director’s cut which restored footage originally edited out of the theatrical release including moments by Canned Heat, Jefferson Airplane and Janis Joplin (Just what was Sha Na Na doing there?) A young Martin Scorsese worked on this film too (as a fledgling editor) and in addition to the mud, mayhem and maryjane smoke, the film captures the music in all it’s curly corded, nearly electrocuted in the rain, glory. Dig Santana (check out young Michael Shrieve‘s crazy drum solo on “Soul Sacrifice”)

and legendary performances from Jimi Hendrix, The Who, Crosby, Stills and Nash, Richie Havens, Joan Baez, Joe Cocker, Arlo Guthrie, Ten Years After and more. That said, how about the film often referred to as “the Black Woodstock”?

WATTSTAX (1973) directed by Mel Stuart

On August 20, 1972, the Memphis based label Stax Records organized a concert at the Los Angeles Coliseum to commemorate the rebirth of the South Central L.A. community known as “Watts” seven year after violent riots had threatened to bury it. The idea for the Wattstax concert, a self-conscious nod to Woodstock, was to assemble highly visible and inspiring members of the L.A. African American community and make the show accessible to lower income folks by keeping gate price down to a dollar a ticket. The Reverend Jesse Jackson gave the invocation to open the event and the film features insightful cutaways to people like comedian Richard Pryor, filmed in a barber shop, shucking and riffing in his prime, about the trials and tribulations of the Black American experience.

Come for the social commentary, STAY for the big slabs of soul celebrating music. The Bar-Kays, fresh off the Shaft soundtrack, act as a kind of “house band” for the event which features jawdropping peformances by the late great Isaac Hayes, The Staple Singers, Rufus Thomas, Johnnie Taylor, Kim Weston and Albert King. The contemporary counterpoint to Wattstax may be…

DAVE CHAPPELLE’S BLOCK PARTY (2006) directed by Michel Gondry

Features comedian Dave Chappelle, functioning for his generation in this film much as Richard Pryor had in Wattstax. Filmed late in the summer of 2004 the film essentially documents an actual “block party” concert thrown by Chappelle in Brooklyn, New York’s  Clinton Hill. Besides some lively comedy bits and inspired direction from Gondry, what makes this film sing is the guest list of invited artists at the concert itself. The Roots are the house band, and artists of the day like Kanye West, Common, John Legend, Mos Def, Jill Scott, Erykah Badu and Lauryn Hill rejoins The Fugees just for the occasion (don’t forget The Central State University Marching Band!)

Also on the hip hop tip is  a little film by Beastie Boys Adam Yauch…

AWESOME; I FUCKIN’ SHOT THAT! (2006) directed by Nathanial Hörnblowér (Adam Yauch)

The Beastie Boys did a cool, cool thing at their sold out October 9, 2004 Madison Square Garden show. Giving camcorders to 50 audience members, they told them that the only rule was to keep ’em rolling at all times (even when going to the bathrooms or lining up to buy beer!). After the fans shot the show – which featured Beastie’s hits and fan favourites such as “Sure Shot”, “Root Down”, “Pass the Mic”, “Body Movin'”, “So What’cha Want”, “Intergalactic”, “Sabotage” and plenty more –  they took all the cameras back the stores they got them from for a full refund. Way to keep the budget low.

On the other end of the spectrum is Jonathan Demme’s tightly choreograped Talking Heads film…

STOP MAKING SENSE (1984) directed by Jonathan Demme

Filmed meticulously by Demme over three concerts at the Pantages Theatre, Hollywood, in December 1983, Stop Making Sense is a true to life document of the Talking Heads transitioned sound from the quirky four piece college band of 77 to the quasi-afro-funk nine piece unit employed since Remain In Light. Having just released their Speaking In Tongues album, the band’s sound was newly accessible to a wider audience who lapped up David Byrne‘s “big suit” and danced in the aisles to a funky set list that includes “Psycho Killer”, “Burning Down the House”, “Life During Wartime”, “Swamp”, “This Must Be the Place (Naive Melody)” “Once in a Lifetime” “Girlfriend is Better” and “Take Me to the River” while Heads’ Chris Frantz and Tina Weymouth are given a moment to shine on “Genius of Love”, their side project as Tom Tom Club.

On a lower key, Demme’s STOREFRONT HITCHCOCK (1997) lives up to its title with a simple stripped down concert by Robyn Hitchcock in a storefront.

Jonathan Demme is kind of a master of the well-shot concert film as you’ll note when you sit down with our next selection with Neil Young…

NEIL YOUNG: HEART OF GOLD (2006) directed by Jonathan Demme

Filmed at Nashville’s Ryman Auditorium on August 18 and 19, 2005, Heart of Gold documents Young’s return to the stage after the death of his father (sports writer Scott Young) and after his own successful battle with a brain aneurysm. The film also capture the debut of Young’s softer gentler material for the rustic Prairie Wind album, intercut with new interviews with Neil and Pegi Young and his backing band, featuring for this tour, Emmylou Harris, Ben Keith, Rick Rosas, Grant Boatwright and Spooner Oldham (and others). After doing most of the Prairie Wind album, Young also graces us with  some old chestnuts, including “Harvest Moon”, “Heart of Gold”, “Old Man”, “The Needle and the Damage Done”, “Comes A Time” and Ian Tyson’s “Four Strong Winds”.

For a different shade of Neil, you might want to check out

NEIL YOUNG & CRAZY HORSE: RUST NEVER SLEEPS (1979) directed by Bernard Shakey (Neil Young)

and

GREENDALE (2003) directed by Bernard Shakey (Neil Young).

For old time’s sake I’ve gotta mention a film that I saw when I just a wee lad…

LED ZEPPELIN: THE SONG REMAINS THE SAME (1976) directed by Joe Massot and Peter Clifton

Hey, it’s Zeppelin live at Madison Square Garden, during their 1973 American tour. It’s a moving document of great rock band in their prime, and the stoned among you will simply love the crazy, self-indulgent non-musical fantasy sequences added to the concert stuff.  Plus you get to see Led Zeppelin manager Peter Grant going ballistic at an unauthorized merch table, the real life basis for Spinal Tap manager Ian Faith and his handy cricket bat.

Also have to mention, for New Wave fans,

URGH A MUSIC WAR (1982) directed by Derek Burbidge

This compilation of concert performances by New Wave, and post-punk  acts, was originally shot in 1980 and features UK acts 999, UB40, Echo & the Bunnymen, The Police. Magazine, Steel Pulse, and XTC along with US acts Devo, The Cramps, Oingo Boingo, Dead Kennedys, Gary Numan, Klaus Nomi, Wall of Voodoo, The Go-Go’s, The Fleshtones, Joan Jett and the Blackhearts, Pere Ubu and others. A fascinating artifact of a different time, which now seems like a different world.

Finally, while I haven’t seen this yet, I’m very curious about the Blur reunion film…

BLUR: NO DISTANCE LEFT TO RUN (2010) directed by Dylan Southern

AND NOW I TURN IT OVER TO YOU. SEND ME, IN THE COMMENTS SLOT, YOUR FAVOURITE CONCERT MOVIES, PREFERABLY THOSE WITH A CINEMATIC RELEASE, BUT I’M NOT GOING TO GET PICKY.