It’s Labor Day. No one’s reading blogs today. Time to be lazy and post a bunch of stuff from YouTube and elsewhere.
Watch the entire full length documentary Who Killed the Electric Car? right here.
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A sad Sesame Street moment.
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It’s only water, part 1
HERE.
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Lightening it up a bit, this video from the Smothers Brothers Show, or a reasonable facsimile, of the classic Mason Williams song:
ROG
Here’s an old meme I found, which I’ll use to celebrate Led Zeppelin lead singer Robert Plant’s 60th birthday.
Artist/Band: Robert Plant (b. 8/20/1948)
Are you male or female: Poor Tom
Describe yourself: Dazed and Confused
How do some people feel about you: Your Time Is Gonna Come
How do you feel about yourself: Fool in the Rain
Describe what you want to be: Ten Years Gone
Describe how you live: Trampled Under Foot
Describe how you love: Babe I’m Gonna Leave You
Share a few words of wisdom: Hey Hey What Can I Do
I was going to use songs from the Honeydrippers or solo Plant, if I had to, but Zeppelin titles filled the bill.
One of my favorite LZ songs, Communication Breakdown
Robert Plant & Alison Krauss doing another song about communications breakdown, Please Read The Letter, from my favorite album of 2007
Tosy found this Yahoo! list of the 20 greatest albums ever based on sales, staying power, and acclaim; FOUR are by Led Zeppelin, three of which I own.
A happy birthday to Robert Plant.
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John Hiatt turns 56 today. Little ambiguity about what He’s communicating:
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Isaac Hayes‘ birthday would also have been today, but he died 10 days shy of his 66th birthday. Since SamuraiFrog posted Walk On By recently, I thought I’d pick another song from the album Hot Buttered Soul, Hyperbolicsyllabicsesquedalymistic.
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I was sad to hear of the passing of Jerry Wexler. His participation at Atlantic Records helped create the sound of Aretha Franklin, Ray Charles, Sam and Dave and many others. He worked with artists as varied as Bob Dylan, Dusty Springfield, Dire Straits, and Santana.
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Photo: Robert Plant and the Strange Sensation at the Green Man Festival – 18.08.2007. [Source=http://www.flickr.com/photos/90336485@N00/1205952170/ Robert Plant by Ella Mullins on flickr.com] |Date=August 18, 2007], used per Creative Commons
ROG
Two from Johnny B..
1.IF SOMEONE SAYS “IS THIS OKAY” YOU SAY?
“I Kissed a Girl” by Jill Sobule
2.HOW WOULD YOU DESCRIBE YOURSELF?
“Graceland” by Willie Nelson
3. WHAT DO YOU LIKE IN A GUY/GIRL?
“Meadowlands” by Nancy Jacobs and Sisters
4.HOW DO YOU FEEL TODAY?
“It” by Prince
5.WHAT IS YOUR LIFE’S PURPOSE?
“Tell It Like It Is” by Aaron Neville & the Neville Brothers
6.WHAT IS YOUR MOTTO?
“In the Bleak Midwinter” by James Taylor
7.WHAT DO YOUR FRIENDS THINK OF YOU?
“Hey Diddle” by Paul McCartney
8.WHAT DO YOUR PARENTS THINK OF YOU?
“Detention” from Cry Freedom
9.WHAT DO YOU THINK ABOUT VERY OFTEN?
“Long May You Run” by Neil Young
10.WHAT IS 2 + 2?
“Torn & Frayed” by the Rolling Stones
11.WHAT DO YOU THINK OF YOUR EX?
“Dreaming” by Cream
12.WHAT DO YOU THINK OF THE PERSON YOU LIKE?
“Sound of Silence” by Simon & Garfunkel
13.WHAT IS YOUR LIFE STORY?
“Fire” by the Pointer Sisters
14.WHAT DO YOU WANT TO BE WHEN YOU GROW UP?
“Is this Love” by Bob Marley & the Wailers
15.WHAT DO YOU THINK WHEN YOU SEE THE PERSON YOU LIKE?
“Live Good” by Burning Spear
16.WHAT WILL THEY PLAY AT YOUR FUNERAL?
“Oh, Me” by Nirvana
17.WHAT IS YOUR HOBBY/INTEREST?
“Whenever You’re Ready” by James Taylor
18.WHAT IS YOUR BIGGEST FEAR?
“I Don’t Wanna Talk About It” by Indigo Girls
19.WHAT IS YOUR BIGGEST SECRET?
“Friday Dance Promenade” by k.d. lang
20.WHAT DO YOU THINK OF YOUR FRIENDS?
“Hey Joe” by the Yardbirds
Directions:
1. Put your iTunes, Windows Media Player, iPod etc. on shuffle.
2. For each question, press the next button to get your answer.
3. YOU MUST WRITE THAT SONG NAME DOWN NO MATTER HOW SILLY IT SOUNDS.
Now press Next one more time and use it as your title.
The title tune is by Shirley Brown, a Stax hit. Some of the answers work well (#18 in particular), while I wish #11 and #12 were switched.
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You are the Sense of Sight |
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You are a very observant, detail oriented person. You are able to take in a lot of information at once. You often see things that other people never notice. You have a good eye for design and aesthetics. You love to be surrounded by beauty – natural or not. When you imagine how something should look, you see it clearly in your mind. |
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Isaac Hayes, whose Theme from Shaft ended up on my Top 20 Songs That Move Me, died this past weekend. I don’t have much more to say about the singer/keyboardist/songwriter other than what I wrote last year on his 65th birthday.
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Fred Hembeck on Bernie Mac (August 10).
ROG
20. Strawberry Letter #23 – Brothers Johnson
Starts off with circus music, then kicks a groove. That swirling sound at the bridge is extraordinary.
Feeling: loving.
ROG
I got me a major league Stax Records jones lately, and it’s all based on some sort of cosmic convergence.
Fifty years ago, in 1957, Satellite Records the predecessor to Stax Records, was opened, ushering in an era of soul. The label changed its name when the founders discovered another company called Satellite Records.
I’ve been listening to Stax music heavily since at least July 29, which is the birthday of Rock and Roll Hall of Fame inductee Jim Stewart, who co-started the label with his sister Estelle Axton; STewart-AXton. I played The Complete Stax-Volt Singles 1959-1968, the nine-disc box set that came out in 1991, and The Complete Stax-Volt Soul Singles, Vol. 2: 1968-1971, the nine-CD 1993 followup. I haven’t bought The Complete Stax-Volt Soul Singles, Vol. 3: 1972-1975, the TEN-disc completion, but after reading the Amazon reviews and listening to 100+ minutes of 30-second snippets on Amazon, I may.
I’ve also been reading Soulsville U.S.A.: The Story Of Stax Records by Rob Bowman, which came out in 1997 during the 40th anniversary of the label; the book was 12 years in the making. It is stunningly detailed, with footnotes indicating, among other things, differing memories of the participants. It also makes me wonder why Estelle Axton isn’t in the Rock Hall, for it was her Satellite Record Shop where the sound of early Stax was developed.
On PBS this month, I got to watch Respect Yourself: The Stax Records Story, which, not so incidentally, will be available on DVD on October 2, 2007; I believe it’s available through PBS now. Let me put it this way: if you claim to care about American popular music, you should either read the Bowman book or watch the video. Preferably both, although the last third of each, showing the final decline, is a bit tough.
You’ll find out about a problematic deal with Atlantic Records that, along with the deaths of Otis Redding (on a plane in the Midwest) and Martin Luther King, Jr. (assassinated in Memphis), nearly killed the label by 1968, but you’ll also learn about how Stax managed to have a racially integrated house band that rivaled Motown’s The Funk Brothers in segregated Memphis, including Steve Cropper and “Duck” Dunn, names you might recognize from the Blues Brothers band.
Thanks to the hard work of Al Bell, the record producer who had become president of Stax, the label not only survived but thrived. According to the Wikipedia piece: “On August 20, 1972, the Stax label presented a major concert, Wattstax, featured performances by Stax recording artists and humor from rising young comedian Richard Pryor. Known as the “Black Woodstock,” Wattstax was hosted by Reverend Jesse Jackson and drew a crowd of over 100,000 attendees, most of them African-American. Wattstax was filmed by motion picture director Mel Stuart (Willy Wonka & the Chocolate Factory), and a concert film of the event was released to theaters by Columbia Pictures in February 1973.” Thus, today is the 35th anniversary of that seminal event.
Some bank dealings, plus an unfortunate arrangement with CBS Records, helped lead to the label’s unfortunate first ending in 1975, although it’s been recently revived.
The final piece is that today is the 65th birthday of “Black Moses”, Isaac Hayes. Long before he started recording as a featured performer, he was a session musician. He also wrote a number of songs, many for Sam (Moore) and Dave (Prater); his songwriting partner was often David Porter. Then he became a star, putting out an 18-minute version of Jim Webb’s “By the Time I Get To Phoenix” on “Hot Buttered Soul”; a 6:45 single was also released. Of course, he is probably best known, at least in my generation, as the writer/performer of the Oscar-winning theme for the movie Shaft. “That man Shaft is a bad mother—.” “Shut your mouth.”
Here’s a section from the Bowman book:
…by the time Hayes was eighteen months old his mother had passed away in a mental institution; because his father had disappeared sometime before her death, Isaac was raised by his [sharecropper] grandparents…After his grandfather died, when he was eleven, Isaac, his sister and grandmother, together and separately, lived all over North Memphis…When they were cut off from welfare…they used the wood from their outhouse to burn for heat…The next year, the family ran out of food and Isaac’s grandmother and sister got sick from hunger.
Yet, Hayes survived, and once he discovered music, thrived.
So read about Stax. More importantly, Respect Yourself and LISTEN to some Stax.
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Steve Gerber Knows His Stax. Gordon’s July’s Record You Should Own is a Stax album. Julie Hembeck, for your birthday, listen to some Stax.
ROG
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