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READIN
READIN started out as a place for me
to keep track of what I am reading, and to learn (slowly, slowly)
how to design a web site.
There has been some mission drift
here and there, but in general that's still what it is. Some of
the main things I write about here are
reading books,
listening to (and playing) music, and
watching the movies. Also I write about the
work I do with my hands and with my head; and of course about bringing up Sylvia.
The site is a bit of a work in progress. New features will come on-line now and then; and you will occasionally get error messages in place of the blog, for the forseeable future. Cut me some slack, I'm just doing it for fun! And if you see an error message you think I should know about, please drop me a line. READIN source code is PHP and CSS, and available on request, in case you want to see how it works.
See my reading list for what I'm interested in this year.
READIN has been visited approximately 236,737 times since October, 2007.
Here are a couple of funky covers of the disco classic.
Tragedy bill themselves as "the #1 heavy metal Bee-Gees tribute band" -- I'm willing to accept this claim at face value as I would never have dreamt of the category existing to begin with. They have some hot tunes; "Stayin' Alive" is my favorite of the ones I've listened to.
...And here is a cover by Ozzy Osbourne, Frank and Dweezil Zappa -- surprising me again: I had no idea any pair of these three had worked on a record together. (I also don't have any verification that it's true, beyond the YouTube caption -- obviously Ozzy is singing the verse and playing guitar, someone else is singing on the break -- possibly this is Zappa père and/or fils. A quick Google search turns up a lot of references to the record (though not all of them mention Frank Zappa being involved) but no dates or personnel information.)* Either way it kicks ass:
* Zappa-head Apostropher confirms this is not a Frank project; it is on Dweezil's 1991 record Confessions. Apo says Dweezil's "actually an excellent metal guitarist, though his guitar playing sounds really, really different from FZ's. There are several live shows where they play together, swapping solos and while they're both impressive, there's never any doubt who's who."
posted evening of October 23rd, 2008: Respond ➳ More posts about Music
Slacktivist posted this video yesterday, with the note that there are only three more days -- well today there are only two more days; and this is the perfect version of the perfect song for this moment.
I found another pretty spectacular cover version of "Satellite of Love" -- this one is by Robyn Hitchcock and Grant Lee Phillips, I'm assuming from the same tour (possibly the same concert) documented in Elixirs and Remedies. A beautiful performance, and I just love the camerawork way the visual frame is composed.
Nigel Smith at Carnival Saloon notes that "after his classic 60s records I reckon Blood on the Tracks is the Bob Dylan album most commonly cited as a favourite." This seems true from conversations I've had; and I've never quite understood why so many people name this as their favorite, when to me it seems like pleasant music not remotely in the league of the classic 60's records. Anyways, Mr. Smith had the great idea of assembling a Blood on the Tracks disc on which every song is performed by a different artist -- Robyn Hitchcock, Joan Baez, Elvis Costello,... You can listen to it at his blog. Mr. Smith also links to a previous instance of the same idea, put together by JayEss of The Saddest Music in the World; the music files there are no longer online but the track list is nice.
Another Update: and more! Mary Lee's Corvette has recorded covers of these tunes on their 2002 live album Blood on the Tracks. I'm listening to their "Simple Twist of Fate" right now and digging it. (Though I am missing Dylan's harmonica...)
I was reminded this weekend of a song I love, and I bothered to do a little research and find out more about it. Here's the version I was listening to this weekend:
I always think of this as a Rockabilly tune; turns out the original version predates Rockabilly by a few years. It was written by Granville "Stick" McGhee when he was in the army in WWII (supposedly under the title "Drinkin Wine, Motherfucker" -- I hope hope hope this is not apocryphal*) and recorded on Decca in 1946 -- Granville's elder brother Brownie(!) played guitar.
They re-recorded it in 1949 on the Atlantic label and had a hit record:
I can't find the 1946 record on the internet anywhere - hoyhoy.com says Decca re-issued it after Atlantic's hit and "It flopped because it didn't rock."
The big hit, the reason I think of this as a Rockabilly number, was Jerry Lee Lewis:
So which do you like best? I hear things I love in each of them, I'm leaning towards thinking the Pirates version rocks the hardest... Any other favorite covers of this tune?
*Update: I found a reference for this story, and more information about Stick McGhee, in The Unsung Heroes of Rock n Roll, by Nick Tosches.
I've gotten interested in this particular 16-bar melody line that I've been hearing in a lot of old blues and jazz tunes -- it is the melody that always makes me think "They're Red Hot!" when I hear it, because Robert Johnson's song is the first one I ever heard with this structure:
I was listening to Fletcher Henderson's Orchestra playing "How Come You Do Me Like You Do?" last week and realized it's essentially the same melody -- since then I've worked out that several other songs on the records that I'm listening to regularly are built from the same elements -- here is a brief playlist of a couple others, including Tommie Bradley's hilarious "Adam and Eve" and a version by "Bogus" Ben Covington.
(And, wow! A 2000th post ought not go unnoticed.)
posted morning of September 28th, 2009: Respond ➳ More posts about Mix tapes
John and I played this 80-year-old song yesterday -- I thought I would link to a couple of source versions.
Dr. Hook and the Medicine Show (1977) rock right out. This might be my favorite version of the song, certainly the first one I think of when I think of this song. (Even though the version I first heard, I'm pretty sure, is that of The Rooftop Singers (1963) -- which I now find comparatively bland.) The original is Gus Cannon's Jug Stompers (1929) -- fantastically good, maybe more inventive play with the lyrics than in any of the covers I've heard. And the version that brought this song back into my conscious mind recently, off of a mix tape my brother made for me, is by Corey Harris and Cassie Taylor (2008), off of the record Recapturing the Banjo.
And suddenly the scales fall from my eyes! Practicing the tune this morning I realize it's another variation on the melody from "They're Red Hot!"
Ellen and I watched Quiz Show tonight, and among other things it made me want to learn the song "Mack the Knife" which plays (Sinatra's version) over its credits. Here are some versions:
The Apostropher's recent Holler mix tape includes Ray Wylie Hubbard's cover of "Choctaw Bingo" -- this is maybe the most affecting song on the tape, the strongest; it is a violent song, feels like getting punched in the gut.
On the hot February morning when Beatriz Viterbo died ..., I noticed that the iron billboards in Plaza Constitución had been cleared of their advertisement for blonde cigarettes (or whatever it had been)... The matter caused me some pain, when I understood that the vast, incessant universe was detaching itself from her memory; this change would be the first in an infinite series.
Zunguzungu has an excellent take on Shirley Temple's turn in The Littlest Rebel (1935). Fine reading and a nice companion to this recent thread at Is there no sin in it?.
Vance writes about the photography of Charles Van Schaik, and links to an archive of his pictures of “poverty, failure, vandalism, arson, domestic violence, disease, depression, alcoholism, insanity, suicide, and murder” in rural Wisconsin. In comments, Michael Lesy links his essay on "Visual Literacy".
Nigel Smith at Carnival Saloon notes that "after his classic 60s records I reckon Blood on the Tracks is the Bob Dylan album most commonly cited as a favourite." This seems true from conversations I've had; and I've never quite understood why so many people name this as their favorite, when to me it seems like pleasant music not remotely in the league of the classic 60's records. Anyways, Mr. Smith had the great idea of assembling a Blood on the Tracks disc on which every song is performed by a different artist -- Robyn Hitchcock, Joan Baez, Elvis Costello,... You can listen to it 
