I can post again!!! But my brain is mush, so instead of some cogent prose, here's some beautiful music...
Showing posts with label hunter. Show all posts
Showing posts with label hunter. Show all posts
Saturday, October 15, 2011
Thursday, September 8, 2011
The Ballad of Mott the Hoople
And in other Mott the Hoople news, it was on this date (Sept 8) 39 years ago (in 1972) that the album All the Young Dudes was released!
Thursday, April 9, 2009
More Music
I used to read a lot of musician interviews and biographies back in the day. I'm sitting here now in my den, facing a wall-long bookcase that's got a few shelves filled with memoirs, life histories and a couple of volumes of Rolling Stone Interviews. In a lot of them, artists mention a watershed moment -- hearing the Beatles, or Elvis, or Chuck Berry for the first time -- when their lives were changed forever. A person has to be of a certain age for that to have happened, since from the early 60s on, rock music became rather ubiquitous.* But people who came of age in the 50s (or earlier) can often point to a moment in their lives when they heard a certain kind of music and were stopped in their tracks.
I've always loved this scene in The Buddy Holly Story (which I admit is a slapdash account of Buddy Holly's life -- one look at the drum kit in this early clip is a good tip off to the sloppiness of the film's Accuracy Police), because it depicts the excitement that people felt when they heard rock (or blues, or be-bop or whatever) for the first time. The energy was contagious.
I came along later, and have always felt like I missed out on something, because I never had that landmark moment. For me, rock music was always there -- the Beatles were making music before I was born and even my parents had a few hip records.
But I do clearly remember when I heard Mott the Hoople for the first time -- specifically, the Mott album. We had relatives in town, which for me was a good thing -- I loved the big family gatherings, when my grandparents would cook epic meals, parental supervision became even more lax than usual, and cousins provided all sorts of entertainment and companionship. Generally, the grownups all stayed over at my grandparents' house and my family's home was turned over to the young people -- my mother would stock the fridge with luncheon meat, condiments and bread, and the cupboard with peanut butter and cereal, and we were on our own. It was awesome -- a kids' paradise.
Anyway, we were hanging out at the stereo... well, actually, I was lurking in the periphery, while some of the older guys were spinning some records... and my cousin pulled out an album he'd brought with him to play for my brother. There was also a neighbor hanging out, and after hearing just the first few notes of "All the Way from Memphis," he laughed while asking "what the hell is this?!?"
I didn't care what it was -- I loved the way Ian Hunter banged on the piano throughout (and especially at the beginning), the swaggering and scolding glam rock vocals, the guitar god solos from Mick Ralphs (on his last album with MtH before leaving for Bad Company), and the unrestrained sax from Roxy Music's Andy Mackay (which I'm pretty sure inspired some of Jon Fishman's later vacuum cleaner solos). I eventually came to appreciate the song's lost guitar narrative, but there on that day, I was drawn in by the raw energy of the song.
The whole album was a thrill to explore. "Honaloochie Boogie" and "Whizz Kid" are pure fun, "Violence," "Drivin’ Sister," and "I’m a Cadillac/El Camino Dolo Roso" have a harder, rocking edge to them, "Hymn for the Dudes" and "Ballad of Mott the Hoople" are breathtaking, and the confessional "I Wish I Was Your Mother" is perhaps the most beautiful song on the album, with some gorgeous mandolin playing from Ralphs and emotional lyrics from Hunter. If you haven't heard it all, you might enjoy checking it out.
And with that (between this and my previous music post, you should now have some sense of where I come from, musically), I think I'll lay off the Ian Hunter for a while and explore something new in my next musical exposition. I bet you can't wait to hear where I land next! ;-D
I've always loved this scene in The Buddy Holly Story (which I admit is a slapdash account of Buddy Holly's life -- one look at the drum kit in this early clip is a good tip off to the sloppiness of the film's Accuracy Police), because it depicts the excitement that people felt when they heard rock (or blues, or be-bop or whatever) for the first time. The energy was contagious.
I came along later, and have always felt like I missed out on something, because I never had that landmark moment. For me, rock music was always there -- the Beatles were making music before I was born and even my parents had a few hip records.
But I do clearly remember when I heard Mott the Hoople for the first time -- specifically, the Mott album. We had relatives in town, which for me was a good thing -- I loved the big family gatherings, when my grandparents would cook epic meals, parental supervision became even more lax than usual, and cousins provided all sorts of entertainment and companionship. Generally, the grownups all stayed over at my grandparents' house and my family's home was turned over to the young people -- my mother would stock the fridge with luncheon meat, condiments and bread, and the cupboard with peanut butter and cereal, and we were on our own. It was awesome -- a kids' paradise.
Anyway, we were hanging out at the stereo... well, actually, I was lurking in the periphery, while some of the older guys were spinning some records... and my cousin pulled out an album he'd brought with him to play for my brother. There was also a neighbor hanging out, and after hearing just the first few notes of "All the Way from Memphis," he laughed while asking "what the hell is this?!?"
I didn't care what it was -- I loved the way Ian Hunter banged on the piano throughout (and especially at the beginning), the swaggering and scolding glam rock vocals, the guitar god solos from Mick Ralphs (on his last album with MtH before leaving for Bad Company), and the unrestrained sax from Roxy Music's Andy Mackay (which I'm pretty sure inspired some of Jon Fishman's later vacuum cleaner solos). I eventually came to appreciate the song's lost guitar narrative, but there on that day, I was drawn in by the raw energy of the song.
The whole album was a thrill to explore. "Honaloochie Boogie" and "Whizz Kid" are pure fun, "Violence," "Drivin’ Sister," and "I’m a Cadillac/El Camino Dolo Roso" have a harder, rocking edge to them, "Hymn for the Dudes" and "Ballad of Mott the Hoople" are breathtaking, and the confessional "I Wish I Was Your Mother" is perhaps the most beautiful song on the album, with some gorgeous mandolin playing from Ralphs and emotional lyrics from Hunter. If you haven't heard it all, you might enjoy checking it out.
And with that (between this and my previous music post, you should now have some sense of where I come from, musically), I think I'll lay off the Ian Hunter for a while and explore something new in my next musical exposition. I bet you can't wait to hear where I land next! ;-D
*I know these experiences did not end after the rock era began -- people were stopped in their tracks when they heard punk or metal or rap or hip hop for the first time (I do, for example, have a specific memory of a party when someone put Rapper's Delight on the stereo), but I don't think later developments gave us as dramatic a shift as our culture saw when rock and roll arrived.
Friday, March 27, 2009
Inaugural Music Post
I'm on a Friday Creature hiatus again, due to a lack of photos. To make up for my dereliction, though, I'm going to attempt a long-overdue music post. My inaugural effort features the song that I'm likely to name, more often than not, if you were to ask me what's the best song ever. First off, here's the song, "All American Alien Boy," so you can listen while you read along.
It was 1976 and Ian Hunter had recently become a British tax exile in upstate New York and was all about immersing himself in everything that was cool about America: the vocabulary of this country, the things that informed our music, and what fed us as artists and workers and poets and people -- all the things he had long loved from afar in England, while consuming so much music that was inspired by what the Brits were hearing coming out of places like St. Louis, New Orleans and New York. And meanwhile, way over in western New York, I was a sullen young teenage doofus, mining my brother's record collection for stuff that made me feel cool. I was familiar with Hunter's work with Mott the Hoople (more on that in a later post) and David Bowie, but All American Alien Boy was a surprising departure from his previous glam-rock extravaganzas, as its songs featured a host of very funky and jazzy American musical influences.
The album, which took its name from the song, is uneven at times, but it features some of Hunter's best work, from the delicately sweet "Irene Wilde" and finger-wagging "Letter to Britannia from the Union Jack," to the wide open "Rape" and "You Nearly Did Me In" (featuring the guys from Queen), the lilting "Apathy" and thoughtful "God Take 1."
But "All American Alien Boy" was what really grabbed me. It was a moment in time that Hunter captured and recorded beautifully, with the help of some truly remarkable talent, in what I think was his first outing in a while without Mick Ronson. The song prominently features the incredible work of David Sanborn on sax, Jaco Pastorius on bass, and Aynsley Dunbar on drums. It runs over itself at times in a very exciting, swirling buildup to a cacophony of appreciation for all things Yankee. It is exhilaration, energy, celebration and euphoria all wrapped up into a blast of a song written and performed by a guy who is as much a fan of music as he is a talented musician. It was quite the thrill ride for that dorky little girl -- and even now, it can send chills down my spine.
If you're lucky enough to be in the right place at the right time, you can still catch Ian Hunter up on the stage -- usually in or around the great cities that lie on either side of the Pond. Here he is a few years ago, chatting it up with Craig Ferguson:
It was 1976 and Ian Hunter had recently become a British tax exile in upstate New York and was all about immersing himself in everything that was cool about America: the vocabulary of this country, the things that informed our music, and what fed us as artists and workers and poets and people -- all the things he had long loved from afar in England, while consuming so much music that was inspired by what the Brits were hearing coming out of places like St. Louis, New Orleans and New York. And meanwhile, way over in western New York, I was a sullen young teenage doofus, mining my brother's record collection for stuff that made me feel cool. I was familiar with Hunter's work with Mott the Hoople (more on that in a later post) and David Bowie, but All American Alien Boy was a surprising departure from his previous glam-rock extravaganzas, as its songs featured a host of very funky and jazzy American musical influences.
The album, which took its name from the song, is uneven at times, but it features some of Hunter's best work, from the delicately sweet "Irene Wilde" and finger-wagging "Letter to Britannia from the Union Jack," to the wide open "Rape" and "You Nearly Did Me In" (featuring the guys from Queen), the lilting "Apathy" and thoughtful "God Take 1."
But "All American Alien Boy" was what really grabbed me. It was a moment in time that Hunter captured and recorded beautifully, with the help of some truly remarkable talent, in what I think was his first outing in a while without Mick Ronson. The song prominently features the incredible work of David Sanborn on sax, Jaco Pastorius on bass, and Aynsley Dunbar on drums. It runs over itself at times in a very exciting, swirling buildup to a cacophony of appreciation for all things Yankee. It is exhilaration, energy, celebration and euphoria all wrapped up into a blast of a song written and performed by a guy who is as much a fan of music as he is a talented musician. It was quite the thrill ride for that dorky little girl -- and even now, it can send chills down my spine.
If you're lucky enough to be in the right place at the right time, you can still catch Ian Hunter up on the stage -- usually in or around the great cities that lie on either side of the Pond. Here he is a few years ago, chatting it up with Craig Ferguson:
Tuesday, January 8, 2008
New Hampshire Results
Because I know you guys love these things, here's a look back at previous New Hampshire primary results -- with tonight's rankings appended as well! In short, I think there were some big winners (Clinton and McCain), but no big losers (some early response from the left).
UPDATE: Amen to this!
UPDATE: Amen to this!
Friday, January 4, 2008
The Kids Are Alright
Random notes in a post-Iowa world:
The young people finally showed up!. If the next generation is, indeed, taking over, is Chelsea the only relevant Clinton?
Obviously, the big winners yesterday were the Democratic party and Obama and Edwards. Both men made great speeches last night. If you didn't get to stay up and watch them live, here are the reruns: Barack Obama ~ John Edwards.
UPDATE: Walter Shapiro's Iowa in the rear-view mirror looks back at both Obama and Edwards in Iowa.
Dodd and Biden: I'm so sorry to see both of these candidates go, but glad to have them back in the trenches and doing what they do so well -- standing up to both the Republicans and the spineless Democrats -- full time again. And perhaps we will see them in new roles soon... majority leader and secretary of state, perhaps?
And while their campaigns are still active, Kucinich, Gravel and Hunter have been excluded from the weekend's New Hampshire debates, and their showings in Iowa do not bode well for their continuing efforts.
The good news is that the results in Iowa show that a candidate can't waltz in and just buy themselves a nomination. The candidates who thought they could throw some money at the state and win were shocked to see rivals with much less money do just as well, if not better, than they did. Yay for the power of the people! Also good news: the establishment took a big hit in Iowa. Hillary Clinton, the DLC, the BDE, Mitt Romney -- they all were schooled by anti-establishment winners like Obama, Edwards and Huckabee. Them's fighin' results!
Did the night also leave us with more questions than answers?
We do still have the same old Rudy Giuliani: "9/11, 9/11, 9/11, 9/11, 9/11, 9/11..." He's got nothing else to say.
And who is suddenly the ugly stepchild in the GOP? Evangelical voters. Republicans have been quietly tolerating them, and using them to get out the vote, for years. But are they ready to let one lead their party? Apparently not.
The young people finally showed up!. If the next generation is, indeed, taking over, is Chelsea the only relevant Clinton?
Obviously, the big winners yesterday were the Democratic party and Obama and Edwards. Both men made great speeches last night. If you didn't get to stay up and watch them live, here are the reruns: Barack Obama ~ John Edwards.
UPDATE: Walter Shapiro's Iowa in the rear-view mirror looks back at both Obama and Edwards in Iowa.
Dodd and Biden: I'm so sorry to see both of these candidates go, but glad to have them back in the trenches and doing what they do so well -- standing up to both the Republicans and the spineless Democrats -- full time again. And perhaps we will see them in new roles soon... majority leader and secretary of state, perhaps?
And while their campaigns are still active, Kucinich, Gravel and Hunter have been excluded from the weekend's New Hampshire debates, and their showings in Iowa do not bode well for their continuing efforts.
The good news is that the results in Iowa show that a candidate can't waltz in and just buy themselves a nomination. The candidates who thought they could throw some money at the state and win were shocked to see rivals with much less money do just as well, if not better, than they did. Yay for the power of the people! Also good news: the establishment took a big hit in Iowa. Hillary Clinton, the DLC, the BDE, Mitt Romney -- they all were schooled by anti-establishment winners like Obama, Edwards and Huckabee. Them's fighin' results!
Did the night also leave us with more questions than answers?
We do still have the same old Rudy Giuliani: "9/11, 9/11, 9/11, 9/11, 9/11, 9/11..." He's got nothing else to say.
And who is suddenly the ugly stepchild in the GOP? Evangelical voters. Republicans have been quietly tolerating them, and using them to get out the vote, for years. But are they ready to let one lead their party? Apparently not.
Yes, I've known for a while that not all Republicans embrace the religious right, the culture wars, the incessant gay-bashing and all the other "social" issues. But they certainly tolerated and enabled these folks for decades (that's why some of us left the party a long time ago). I suspected and hoped that there'd come a time when the Republicans would finally have enough of the holy-rollers in their midst, but I never thought the revolt would come on little cat feet. Almost without notice, something changed, and establishment Republicans are now turning on Huckabee and the "values voters" that he represents, big time.Or is it Ron Paul that the Republicans can't stand?
Thursday, January 3, 2008
Results (with many updates)
MSNBC Results
Chris Dodd has already indicated that he will be dropping out of the race.
Turnout was great, with the projections estimating 220,588 Democrats (compare that to 124,000 four years ago) and 114,000 Republicans caucused. Those are remarkable numbers for a red state!
Obama is speaking now and doing a great job. Emmie commented that "he looks presidential." His voice sounds a little shaky, but his message is full of energy and change (hitting a lot of the populist tones that Edwards has been ringing). If he's trying to roll some momentum into New Hampshire, he's doing a great job. Wow.
Joe Biden is also out.
From Ezra Klein:
Barack Obama won tonight, but, in a sense, John Edwards' campaign also triumphed. The progressivism of the race, the focus on ideas, the courage of the Democrats -- all were products of his early example. He began the campaign by talking about poverty, announced his candidacy in the mud of New Orleans, set the agenda with the first universal health care bill, and closed Iowa speaking of the uninsured. This is Barack Obama's victory, and it's richly deserved. But Edwards, running as a full-throated populist, set the agenda and finished second, ahead of the Clinton juggernaut. He said his role was to speak for the voiceless. He now barrels towards New Hampshire with ever more volume. And while his shot at the nomination is long at best, his candidacy, even if it fails, will have been far more successful than most.
Saturday, April 7, 2007
Happy Easter
I'll be enjoying the day in my usual Sunday way, which basically involves getting stuff done and enjoying the company of friends and family, hopefully with a good meal thrown in the mix somewhere. I'll be more tempted by the idea of church once the ranks of Chrisitanity manage to cull the herd a bit, ridding yourselves of the Dobsons, Falwells, Haggards, and other types who pretend to be Christian while really chasing the trappings of politics and wealth.
To quote the words of Ian Hunter (formerly of the groundbreaking band, Mott the Hoople):It's troubling to listen to "Christian radio" and hear the kind of hate spewing out of the mouths of my brothers and sisters in the faith.I mean no disrespect to the people closing their businesses to celebrate Good Friday, or those joining the throngs at church on Easter Sunday. But the joy of religion is long since past for me. And until it becomes more about quietly setting the highest example for others to follow and less about judgement and scorn, it will probably remain that way.
In fact, I've grown tired of people who pimp God. That's right; we have a litany of individuals today who are holy, holy, holy, sing hallelujah, talk about how they love the Lord, but when it's time to walk the walk, somehow the spirit evaporates.
There's no religionMore here, with lots of discussion in the comments.
you did that
it helps to keep your little leaders fat
Like faith 'n superstition stay
to help you pass the time away
Friday, December 2, 2005
Thursday, November 24, 2005
Happy Thanksgiving
Thanksgiving is by far my favorite holiday. No fuss, no shopping, no annoying commercials, no decorations or silly costumes -- just a simple meal with people we enjoy. I don't have any photos, though, as I spent the day in the kitchen, so this is one from the archive.
Counting stars by candlelight, all are dim but one is bright;
The spiral light of venus, rising first and shining best,
On, from the northwest corner, of a brand new crescent moon,
While crickets and cicadas sing, a rare and different tune,
Terrapin station.
(The photo is from a couple of months ago -- right before the Market Street Bridge closed -- and the words are, of course, from Robert Hunter.)
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