Last night (December 5, 2013) Jeff Tweedy did a solo gig at the Paramount Theater in Denver.
Here he performs “One Sunday Morning.” The song appeared on Wilco’s The Whole Love.
You can’t see much, but the audio is pretty good.
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Arcade Fire covering The Clash’s “I’m So Bored in the U.S.A.” when they were in London recently.
Audio not so great, but it’s the full song.
Better audio in Paris but it’s only some of the song.
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Thanks Brooklyn Vegan!
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In a terrific review of “Inside Llewyn Davis” that ran in today’s New York Times, A. O. Scott concludes by quoting on of Dylan’s most obtuse lines as he compares the Coen Brothers approach to making films to Dylan’s creative strategy.
Scott writes:
One of the insights of “Inside Llewyn Davis” is that hard work and talent do not always triumph in the end. Like most of the Coens’ movies, this one sidesteps the political turmoil of its period, partly because it is a fable, not a work of history. (The public affairs of the time get a shout-out in the form of a goofy novelty song called “Please Mr. Kennedy,” a barely topical sendup of the space race and the New Frontier.) But there is nonetheless a strong, hidden current of social criticism in the brothers’ work, which casts a consistently skeptical eye on the American mythology of success.
Winners do not interest them. There’s no success like failure, and failure’s no success at all. That observation was made by Bob Dylan, like Joel and Ethan Coen, a Jewish kid from Minnesota and, like them, possessed of a knack for conscripting the American popular art of the past for his own idiosyncratic genius. His art, like theirs, upends easy distinctions between sincerity and cynicism, between the authentic and the artificial, and both invites and resists interpretation.
So I won’t speculate further on what “Inside Llewyn Davis” might mean. But at least one of its lessons seems to me, after several viewings, as clear and bright as a G major chord. We are, as a species, ridiculous: vain, ugly, selfish and self-deluding. But somehow, some of our attempts to take stock of this condition — our songs and stories and moving pictures, old and new — manage to be beautiful, even sublime.
For the entire review, which I hope you’ll read, head over to the Times.
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The two incarcerated members of Pussy Riot are not likely to get amnesty, The Guardian reports.
An amnesty bill expected to be passed by the Russian parliament in the next week or so is not expected to apply to Nadezhda Tolokonnikova and Maria Alyokhina.
The two members of the group are serving a two-year prison sentence for ‘hooliganism’ for the “punk prayer” protest against Putin in Russia’s main cathedral in February 2012.
The Russian prime minister, Dmitry Medvedev said today on Russian television that Russians were “not inclined” to grant amnesty to those who had committed violent crimes and “crimes against society including hooliganism.”
Both members of Pussy Riot are due for release in March of 2014.
For more, head to The Guardian.
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“Visions Of Johanna” is an endlessly fascinating song. It’s a song that reveals itself slowly, over the years. And then the light changes and you hear it totally different.
I’ve gathered together two outtakes from when Dylan was calling the song “Freeze Out,” a bunch of live recordings from the 1966 tour of Australia and Europe, and the official version released on “Blonde On Blonde.”
Enjoy.
“Freeze Out 1” (VOJ outtake)
“Freeze Out 2” (VOJ Outake)
Live: “Visions Of Johanna” (April 13, 1966, Sydney)
Live: “Visions Of Johanna” (April 20, 1966, Melbourne)
Live: “Visions Of Johanna” (May 5, 1966, Dublin)
Live: “Visions Of Johanna” (May 16, 1966, Sheffield)
Live: “Visions Of Johanna” (May 27, 1966, London)
Official version, “Visions Of Johanna,” off Blonde On Blonde
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Nelson Mandela, who fought to free South Africa from apartheid and became a symbol of freedom throughout the world, died Thursday, He was 95.
“He no longer belongs to us,” President Obama said at the White House. “He belongs to the ages.”
Transcript of Obama’s comments on Mandela:
At his trial in 1964, Nelson Mandela closed his statement from the dock saying, “I have fought against white domination, and I have fought against black domination. I have cherished the ideal of a democratic and free society in which all persons live together in harmony and with equal opportunities. It is an ideal which I hope to live for and to achieve. But if needs be, it is an ideal for which I am prepared to die.”
And Nelson Mandela lived for that ideal, and he made it real. He achieved more than could be expected of any man. Today, he has gone home. And we have lost one of the most influential, courageous, and profoundly good human beings that any of us will share time with on this Earth. He no longer belongs to us — he belongs to the ages.
Through his fierce dignity and unbending will to sacrifice his own freedom for the freedom of others, Madiba transformed South Africa — and moved all of us. His journey from a prisoner to a President embodied the promise that human beings — and countries — can change for the better. His commitment to transfer power and reconcile with those who jailed him set an example that all humanity should aspire to, whether in the lives of nations or our own personal lives. And the fact that he did it all with grace and good humor, and an ability to acknowledge his own imperfections, only makes the man that much more remarkable. As he once said, “I am not a saint, unless you think of a saint as a sinner who keeps on trying.”
I am one of the countless millions who drew inspiration from Nelson Mandela’s life. My very first political action, the first thing I ever did that involved an issue or a policy or politics, was a protest against apartheid. I studied his words and his writings. The day that he was released from prison gave me a sense of what human beings can do when they’re guided by their hopes and not by their fears. And like so many around the globe, I cannot fully imagine my own life without the example that Nelson Mandela set, and so long as I live I will do what I can to learn from him.
To Graça Machel and his family, Michelle and I extend our deepest sympathy and gratitude for sharing this extraordinary man with us. His life’s work meant long days away from those who loved him the most. And I only hope that the time spent with him these last few weeks brought peace and comfort to his family.
To the people of South Africa, we draw strength from the example of renewal, and reconciliation, and resilience that you made real. A free South Africa at peace with itself — that’s an example to the world, and that’s Madiba’s legacy to the nation he loved.
We will not likely see the likes of Nelson Mandela again. So it falls to us as best we can to forward the example that he set: to make decisions guided not by hate, but by love; to never discount the difference that one person can make; to strive for a future that is worthy of his sacrifice.
For now, let us pause and give thanks for the fact that Nelson Mandela lived — a man who took history in his hands, and bent the arc of the moral universe toward justice. May God Bless his memory and keep him in peace.
Bono wrote about Mandela for Time magazine:
As an activist I have pretty much been doing what Nelson Mandela tells me since I was a teenager. He has been a forceful presence in my life going back to 1979, when U2 made its first anti-apartheid effort. And he’s been a big part of the Irish consciousness even longer than that. Irish people related all too easily to the subjugation of ethnic majorities. From our point of view, the question as to how bloody South Africa would have to get on its long road to freedom was not abstract.
Over the years we became friends. I, like everyone else, was mesmerized by his deft maneuvering as leader of South Africa. His cabinet appointments of Trevor Manuel and Kadar Asmal were intuitive and ballsy. His partnership with Sowetan neighbor Desmond Tutu brought me untold joy. This double act—and before long a triple act that included Mandela’s wife, the bold and beautiful Graca Machel—took the success of the anti-apartheid fight in South Africa and widened the scope to include the battle against AIDS and the broader reach for dignity by the poorest peoples on the planet.
Read the rest of Bobo’s Mandela obit at Time.
For more on Mandela’s life here’s a Chicago Tribune story.
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An in-process handwritten draft of Bruce Springsteen’s lyrics for “Born To Run” sold at Sotheby’s today for $197,000.
At one time the notebook page was owned by Springsteen’s former manager, Mike Appel, according to Sotheby’s. However the identiy of the seller nor the buyer have been revealed.
Of course if you don’t need to have the original, you could do like I did and print out this scan of the lyric sheet.
It’s not gonna get you $197,000 but it’s pretty cool to check out a work in progress, especially when the writer is Bruce Springsteen and the song is “Born To Run.”
For more on the auction, check out this Associated Press story.
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“Tropica” was directed by Anthony Mandler (Rihanna, Jay Z, Taylor Swift). It features the songs “Body Electric,” “Gods and Monsters,” and “Bel Air,” from Dal Ray’s Paradise Edition of last year’s Born to Die. It debuted last night on Vevo, where it was described as “an epic tale based on the biblical story of sin and redemption” that “features Del Rey starring as Eve.”
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