David Crosby (Left) and Dylan at the tribute concert.
A year after Roy Orbison died, in February 1990, an all-star tribute concert was held for him at the Universal Ampitheater in Los Angeles.
The Byrds reunited for the show and performed “Mr. Tambourine Man” with Bob Dylan.
It’s interesting to watch the interaction between Dylan and Roger McGuinn, who pushes Dylan to sing lead, finally joining him at the microphone to get him to sing more.
Check it out.
“Mr. Tambourine Man,” live at Newport, 1964):
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Kim Gordon’s collection of essays, “Is It My Body?: Selected Texts,” will be published by Sternberg Press later this month.
The book collects essays Gordon wrote for various publications including Artforum in the 1980s and early 1990s.
From the Sternberg Press website:
Throughout the 1980s and early ’90s, Kim Gordon—widely known as a founding member of the influential band Sonic Youth—produced a series of writings on art and music. Ranging from neo-Conceptual artworks to broader forms of cultural criticism, these rare texts are brought together in this volume for the first time, placing Gordon’s writing within the context of the artist-critics of her generation, including Mike Kelley, John Miller, and Dan Graham. In addressing key stakes within contemporary art, architecture, music, and the performance of male and female gender roles, Gordon provides a prescient analysis of such figures as Kelley, Glenn Branca, Rhys Chatham, Tony Oursler, and Raymond Pettibon, in addition to reflecting on her own position as a woman on stage. The result—Is It My Body?—is a collection that feels as timely now as when it was written. This volume additionally features a conversation between Gordon and Jutta Koether, in which they discuss their collaborations in art, music, and performance.
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Wednesday night David Byrne joined composer Jherek Bischoff at New York’s St. Ann’s Warehouse to perform his Brian Eno collaboration “Strange Overtones,” a collaboration with Bischoff called “The Fat Man’s Comin’,” and a the Talking Heads song “And She Was.”
Check out these fan-shot videos of those three songs:
“Strange Overtones”:
“The Fat Man’s Comin’”:
“And She Was”:
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Amiri Baraka, a major figure in the “Black Arts” movement of the ’60s and ’70s, is dead.
He was 79 years old.
Baraka once said, “We want poems that kill.”
Wikipedia: “Rather than use poetry as an escapist mechanism, Baraka saw poetry as a weapon of action. His poetry demanded violence against those he felt were responsible for an unjust society.”
“Somebody Blew Up America”:
The New York Times wrote:
Amiri Baraka, a poet and playwright of pulsating rage, whose long illumination of the black experience in America was called incandescent in some quarters and incendiary in others, died on Thursday [January 9. 2014] in Newark. He was 79.
His death, at Beth Israel Medical Center, was confirmed by his son Ras Baraka, a member of the Newark Municipal Council. He did not specify a cause but said that Mr. Baraka had been hospitalized since Dec. 21.
Mr. Baraka was famous as one of the major forces in the Black Arts movement of the 1960s and ’70s, which sought to duplicate in fiction, poetry, drama and other mediums the aims of the black power movement in the political arena.
Among his best-known works are the poetry collections “The Dead Lecturer” and “Transbluesency: The Selected Poetry of Amiri Baraka/LeRoi Jones, 1961-1995”; the play “Dutchman”; and “Blues People: Negro Music in White America,” a highly regarded historical survey.
“Black Art,” Amiri Baraka reads his poem with Sonny Murray on drums, Albert Ayler on tenor saxophone, Don Cherry on trumpet, Henry Grimes on bass, Louis Worrell on bass, for the album Sonny’s Time Now:
For the rest of the New York Times obit, head here.
Baraka was a friend of Allen Ginsberg.
Wikipedia: “In 1954, he joined the US Air Force as a gunner, reaching the rank of sergeant. After an anonymous letter to his commanding officer accusing him of being a communist led to the discovery of Soviet writings, Baraka was put on gardening duty and given a dishonorable discharge for violation of his oath of duty.[citation needed]
“The same year, he moved to Greenwich Village working initially in a warehouse for music records. His interest in jazz began during this period. At the same time he came into contact with avant-garde Beat Generation, Black Mountain poets and New York School poets. In 1958 he married Hettie Cohen and founded Totem Press, which published such Beat icons as Jack Kerouac and Allen Ginsberg. Their literary magazine Yugen lasted for eight issues (1958–62). Baraka also worked as editor and critic for Kulchur (1960–65). With Diane DiPrima he edited the first twenty-five issues (1961–63) of their little magazine Floating Bear.”
A July 6, 1994 lecture by Amiri Baraka on the politics of poetics. The lecture ends with a question and answer period covering topics such as jism and jazz, grants in music, whores, hypocrisy, Bob Dylan, and Noam Chomsky.
“Dope”:
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Forty years ago, on January 10, 1971, Bob Dylan appeared in the NBC documentary, “Earl Scruggs: His Family & Friends.”
Dylan opens the documentary singing and playing “East Virginia Blues,” accompanied by Scruggs and others. They also perform the instrumental “Nashville Skyline Rag.”
In 1968, Flatt and Scruggs had released an album, Nashville Airplane, that included four Dylan songs: “Like A Rolling Stone,” “I’ll Be Your Baby Tonight,” “Rainy Day Women #12 & 35” and “The Times They Area A-Changin’.” That album was produced by Dylan’s producer, Bob Johnston, and utilized many of the session musicians Dylan used on Blonde On Blonde and his other Nashville sessions. Other Flatt and Scruggs Dylan covers appeared on 1970’s Final Fling.
Also from the Scruggs documentary, this cool performance of Scruggs and The Byrds performing, in the second half of the video, Dylan’s “Basement Tapes” song, “You Ain’t Goin’ Nowhere”:
Here’s Clarence Ashley singing “East Virginia Blues.” Dylan likely knew this version:
And here’s a version by Roscoe Holcomb:
Flatt and Scruggs, “Like A Rolling Stone”:
Flatt and Scruggs, “Rainy Day Women #12 & 35”:
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This is a very beautiful rendition of the Everly Brothers’ “When Will I Be Loved” sung by Sandy Denny and Linda Peters (who would become Linda Thompson).
It appeared on an album by The Bunch called Rock On.
Wikipedia’s entry on The Nunch:
Rock On is a 1972 one-off album of oldies covers by the Bunch, a group of English folk rock singers and musicians. The Bunch got together in late 1971 to record their one and only album, Rock On. This album consisted of covers of the band’s favourite songs by Elvis Presley, Buddy Holly, and The Everly Brothers, among others.
Among the Bunch were members of Fairport Convention and others, including Sandy Denny, Richard Thompson, Linda Thompson (credited as Linda Peters), Pat Donaldson, Ashley Hutchings, Gerry Conway, and Dave Mattacks.
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Sonny Boy Williamson II performs “Nine Below Zero” at the American Folk Blues Music Festival in 1963. Introduced by Memphis Slim, with Otis Spann (piano), Matt Murphy (guitar), Willie Dixon (bass) and Billy Stepney (drums).
