quoperative

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• Jonathan Richman – Pablo Picasso
• The Muggs – Just Another Fool
• John Wesley Coleman – Bad Lady Goes To Jail
• The Black Crowes – I Ain’t Hiding
• The High Beams – Living To Die
• The Ramones – Bonzo Goes to Bitburg
• Patto – Man
• Richard Hell & The Voidoids – The Plan
• Johnny Thunders & Wayne Kramer’s Gang War – The Harder They Come

Part 2 of 2 of the 100% Vancouver series (part 1 is here):

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• Rock Thy Neighbor – The Smugglers
• S.T.H.D – Ladyhawk
• If You Want Me – Indian Wars
• The Way To Gone – Black Mountain
• The Last of The 1%ers – The Black Halos
• Wind Me Up – Lightning Dust
• Scrambled Eggs – Pointed Sticks
• Shake This Joint Around – Rich Hope and His Evil Doers
• Spider Baby Jesus – Duffy and The Doubters
• Mountain Bitch – Black Wizard

Back to your regular programming…

Part 1 of 2 of the 100% Vancouver series:

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• Jesus – Black Wizard
• Moving Along – Lions in the Street
• In the Forest, Under the Moon – Blood Meridian
• Woof Woof I’m a Goof – The Evaporators
• DXM – The Jolts
• (Gone is the) Freedom Train – John Ford
• New Drug Queens – Pink Mountaintops
• Van City – Rodney Decroo

Thank you and goodnight.

On June 9th I posted a little tool to let people play with the separated tracks from Gimme Shelter. Since then I’ve observed that:

1. People like to play with this. Lots and lots of people. More than I ever thought would find it.
2. These separated tracks actually originated from the game Rock Band. So much for my claim that Bill Wyman dropped the master tapes off at my house.
3. The above point was brought to my attention by a very kind and courteous DMCA takedown notification letter.

After a few weeks off in cottage country here’s another little radio show:

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• Teenage Head – Flamin’ Groovies
• Get Up Morning – Eddy Current Suppression Ring
• I’ll Get Along Without You – The Melodians
• Get Yo Shit – Black Joe Lewis & The Honeybears
• Black River Killer – Blitzen Trapper
• Fad – The Black Lips
• You On the Run – Black Angels
• Little Bonnie – Aorta
• #1 Tonite! – Bad Wizard
• Carol Anne – Indian Wars
• Shining Light – Neil Young

Thank you and goodnight.

Today I tried a little experiment with the amazingly simple Nicecast.  Can you say a little pirate radio? Here’s the result and the setlist:

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• (Intro) Surfin’ Blues (Part 2) – Al Casey
• Just Wanna Rock – Gorilla
• The Rocker – Thin Lizzy
• The Sun Goes All Around – Thee Oh Sees
• Ruby D – Les Sexareenos
• Bummer – Jeff the Brotherhood
• Rave ‘n’ Rock – Daddy Maxfield
• Frankie – D Generation
• Sheena’s Back – Nick Curran and the Low Lifes
• Get Found – Bass Drum of Death
• Powerman – The Kinks

Thank you and goodnight.

The intertubes provided the separated tracks from one of the Stones’ most iconic songs (and recordings) of all time. I took those and built a little player that lets you turn each individual track on and off while you listen.  Don’t like Charlie’s drums? Turn them off. Want to hear only the lead guitar? Turn everything else off.  Want to hear Mick tell Keith to go f**k himself when he flubs a note? Sorry, that’s not on this recording… or any recording that I’m aware of.

But seriously, I love the little imperfections. Just goes to show how unimportant it is to deliver a 100% flawless performance.  The little mistakes give it life.

And around the 3:00 minute mark if you isolate the two vocal tracks you can hear Merry Clayton’s voice crack (twice)… that just gives me chills. Immediately after Mick cries “Whoo!”.  Damn right, Mick.

I watched Observe and Report the other night and this song comes up when the mall security team comes down the escalator in their “strictly business” pose.  My man Bob pointed out it’s an extremely bad-ass track from Patto called “The Man”.  It’s a long one but hang in there for the absolutely frenetic drumming during the closing climax.  Jesus this kills.

It’s a fuckin’ dark comedy (if you dig Jody Hill’s other stuff like The Foot Fist Way and Eastbound and Down) and the soundtrack is absolutely killer — The Band, Dwarves, Yardbirds and a smokin’ Pixies cover.  I figured they must have gotten Wayne Kramer to handle the music again since he’s done such a great job on EBAD but turns out it wasn’t him after all.  Obviously Jody Hill puts a high priority on locating only the finest tracks to aurally accompany his work.

OK, time to come to grips.

SxSW 2009 is over. I’m back to the usual grind of NOT seeing fifty bands and drinking twelve beers a day. Or was it twelve bands and fifty beers? I wish I could remember. Fortunately I was documenting the experience by updating Facebook about every 5 minutes with a blow-by-blow account of the every mundane detail of my time in Texas.  I’m sure those of you that un-friended me for melting down your friend feed know what I’m talking about.

So here’s a quick recap in nature’s most lazy format… list form!

Bands that I had never heard of but discovered were awesome

• The Fresh & Onlys San Francisco, CA
• Blackholicus Austin, TX (listen to this band… and then think that the girl fronting the band is like 4’6″ tall and just SLAYS on bass)
• Capsula Buenos Aires, Argentina
• Thee oh Sees San Francisco, CA

Bands that I either knew or suspected were awesome and verified them as such

• Steel Panther Hollywood, CA (incidentally the best show by far… PS. here’s a video of Justin from the Darkness joining them on stage… PPS. Satchel is one of the most talented guitarists I’ve ever seen)
• Brimstone Howl Omaha, NB
• King Kahn & the Shrines Germany via Montreal
• Telepathic Butterflies Winnipeg, MB

I totally screwed the pooch and missed seeing these bands (despite 2 of them playing 4+ times during the weekend… how did I manage to do that?)

• Glasvegas Glasgow, Scotland
• Black Lips Atlanta, GA
• Priestess Montreal, QC

Some photos that I didn’t take… but I was there!

The Fresh & Onlys at Beer Land

Capsula at Agave

King Kahn & the Shrines at El Sol y La Luna

Priestess at El Sol y La Luna

Bruce Springsteen once said: “I play Buddy Holly every night before going onstage. It keeps me honest.”

Who knows if the Boss actually said it or not but I’ll be damned if it ain’t true that Buddy made some real honest rock’n'roll.

It was almost 50 years ago today (I’m a couple days late because I was busy turning my legs into linguine at Revelstoke) that Charles “Buddy” Holly, Richie Valenzuela (aka Ritchie Valens) and JP Richardson (aka the Big Bopper) died in a plane crash in Northern Iowa just after a show at the Surf Ballroom in Clear Lake. A devastating day for rock’n'roll, but as luck would have it Buddy’s bass player — a young fellow by the name of Waylon Jennings — managed to survive.

The plane was chartered for Buddy and his band but Waylon gave his seat up to the Big Bopper, who was running a fever and had trouble fitting into the bus seats.  When Buddy found out that Waylon wasn’t going to fly he said, “Well, I hope your old bus freezes up.” Waylon responded, “Well, I hope your plane crashes.” This friendly joking would haunt Waylon for years.

Buddy’s drummer, Tommy Allsup, gave his seat to Valens after losing a coin toss. Valens got the seat and Allsup got the rest of his life.

Buddy Holly was 22.  Rock on.

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