Here’s a 37 minute collaboration between Savages and Bo Ningen.
Clash Magazine reports:
Billed as a ‘simultaneous sonic poem’, the performance was a molten, volcanic flood of ideas. Taking control of London’s Oval Space venue, the collective spewed forth 37 minutes of inspiration, deeply improvisational music.
Released as ‘Words To The Blind’ via Stolen/Pop Noire, Boiler Room were on hand to film proceedings.
[I just published my rock ‘n’ roll novel, True Love Scars.” Rolling Stone has a great review of my book in a recent issue. Read it here. There’s info about True Love Scars here.]
Mary Gaitskill will appear on a panel at Festival Albertine.
The culture critic (and Bob Dylan expert) Greil Marcus has organized a stunning French-American “intellectual exchange” in the form of the six-day Festival Albertine which will take place from October 14 through October 19, 2014, at the new Albertine bookshop in New York.
All of the panels will be videotaped and made available online via the bookstore’s website, http://www.albertine.com, after the festival so that those who cannot attend can see them.
Marcus has always moved smoothly through highbrow and popular culture, and the festival reflects that. Novelists and graphic novelists, movie directors and TV show auteurs, economics professors and fashion designers, French and American historians and rock, book and film critics will take part in the festival.
Novelist Percival Everett, author of “Erasure.”
The lineup for the six evenings includes: Novelists Mary Gaitskill (“Two Girls, Fat and Thin”) and Percival Everett (“Erasure”), director Olivier Assayas (“Après- Mai”), Joseph Stiglitz (“Freefall: America, Free Markets and the Sinking of the World Economy”), Marjane Satrapi (“Persepolis”), the mathematician John Nash, TV show creators Alexandra Clert (“Engrenages”) and Matthew Weiner (“Mad Men”), historians Françoise Mélonio and Arthur Goldhammer and others.
For info about specific panels and the schedule, head over to the Albertine website.
Although there is no panel devoted directly to rock music, a number of the panelists are or have been immersed in the music. In addition to Marcus, there is former New York Times chief rock critic John Rockwell, former Newsweek pop critic James Miller, “Streets of Fire” screenwriter Larry Gross, and Mary Davis (author of “Classic Chic: Music, Fashion and Modernism”).
Marjane Satrapi, the creator of “Persepolis.”
Albertine opened its doors yesterday (September 27, 2014). The book store and the festival, named after Proust’s muse, Albertine, are the brainchild of French diplomat Antonin Baudry, cultural counselor of the French Embassy in the United States, and, using the pen name Abel Lanzac, co-author of the graphic novel “Quai d’Orsay.”
In an essay that explains why the need for Albertine, Baudry wrote:
“Her naissance is important because so many books were missing in New York, the very heart of the world, before she arrived. Her presence will matter because there are essential ideas to uncover and crucial debates to be had between the old Continent and the new. In the 21st Century, without considering perspectives from near and far, should we be so confident in our definitions of good, evil, beauty; fairness on the battlefield, justice; a good society, a good life, or even literature?
“One can answer each of these questions on his or her own, but to collectively attack them and examine each of their nuances—and from points of view illuminated by the insight of foreign lights—will lead us further. The world is in rapid flux. As new powers emerge or re-emerge on the political, economic and intellectual realms, their presence inspires us to reinforce deep existing friendships. For friendship is always more valuable, precious and rare in complex and dangerous times than during periods of calm and certainty.”
The book store currently contains 14,000 books including, according to the Albertine website, “contemporary and classic titles from 30 French-speaking countries in genres including novels, non-fiction, art, comic, or children’s books.” Visitors are welcome to find a comfortable chair and read any of them.
To get the French-American debate — what he calls the “French-American intellectual exchange” — underway, Baudry decided to kick things off with a festival and enlisted Marcus to curate the week-long event.
“Antonin read [Marcus’ landmark books] ‘The Shape of Things to Come’– as ‘L’Amerique et ses prophètes,’ the French title — and ‘Lipstick Traces,'” Marcus said when asked how he came to curate the festival. “I’d never been asked to do something like it, unless you count co-editing ‘A New Literary History of America.'”
Olivier Assayas, director of Après- Mai.
In his essay explaining the need for the bookstore and festival, Baudry detailed why he chose Greil Marcus to curate it:
Our first question was, Who should curate and shape this debate? We made two decisions concerning this choice—decisions that mirror the entire vision of the Albertine experience. Firstly, the curator must be an American, and secondly, it must be Greil Marcus. Why an American—and not a French person—to curate a French festival at the French Embassy? Because that is the essence of a true dialogue. For Festival Albertine’s to be fruitful in America, speakers must be selected by American ears, eyes and intelligence. And these ears, eyes and this intelligence had to be Greil’s.
Greil Marcus’ masterful work defines him as one of the most relevant and stimulating living thinkers of America. Greil touches the foundational issues of society. Along with many of his books, The Shape of Things to Come: Prophecy and the American Voice addresses questions and issues so fundamental
to America that it perfectly sets the stage for deep analysis of our cultures in comparison. Greil’s texts deliver the intellectual keys to unlock channels of transatlantic dialogue, discussion, and compelling debate.
Moreover, Greil is the founder of a true analytic method. He offers both a broader and more precise conception of history in Lipstick Traces when he writes, “and what is history, anyway? Is history simply a matter of events that leave behind those things that can be weighed and measured – new institutions, new maps, new rulers, new winners and losers–or is it also the result of moments that seem to leave nothing behind, nothing but the mystery of spectral connections between people long separated by place and time, but somehow speaking the same language?”
The bookstore is located in the French embassy. At http://www.albertine.com is this history of the historic building:
Albertine is housed in the official landmark Payne Whitney mansion in Manhattan. In 1902, former Standard Oil Company treasurer Oliver Hazard Payne commissioned the Italian Renaissance mansion as a wedding gift to his nephew Payne Whitney. Between 1902 and 1906, Stanford White, the famed architect of the Washington Square Arch, designed and oversaw construction of the mansion. Since 1952, the mansion has housed the Cultural Services of the French Embassy. The bookshop within the mansion was born in 2014, and its interiors were created by celebrated French designer Jacques Garcia (Chateau du Champ de Bataille in Normandy, France and The NoMad Hotel in New York City)… in the model of a grand private French library. The two-floor space includes a reading room and inviting nooks furnished with lush sofas and armchairs.
I asked Marcus what ten books he would suggest someone planning to attend the festival or watch the videos should read.
The list:
Olivier Assayas, “A Post-May Adolescence”
Joseph Stiglitz, “Freefall: America, Free Markets and the Sinking of the World Economy”
James Miller, “The Passion of Michel Foucault”
May Davis, “Classic Chic: Music, Fashion and Modernism”
Marjane Satrapi, “Persepolis”
Antonin Baudry aka Abel Lanzac, “Weapons of Mass Diplomacy”
Emmanuel Carrère, “The Moustache” and “Limonov”
Mary Gaitskill, “Two Girls, Fat and Thin”
Percival Everett, “Erasure”
—
[Note: I just published my rock ‘n’ roll novel, True Love Scars.” Rolling Stone has a great review of my book in the new issue. Read it here. There’s info about True Love Scars here.]
Photo by Lynn Goldsmith as seen in NYC PBS documentary segment.
NYC PBS ten minute documentary on photographer Lynn Goldsmith, who has shot Bruce Springsteen, Mick Jagger, Patti Smith and of course Bob Dylan.
And here’s a CBS This Morning segment on Goldsmith that includes a shoot with Patti Smith.
[I just published my rock ‘n’ roll/ coming-of-age novel, “True Love Scars,” which features a narrator who is obsessed with Bob Dylan. To read the first chapter, head here.
Or watch an arty video with audio of me reading from the novel here.]
–- A Days of the Crazy-Wild blog post: sounds, visuals and/or news –-
Incredible version by Neil Young and Crazy Horse of “Cortez the Killer,” Barolo Square, Barolo, Italy, July 21, 2014.
Thanks, Thrasher, for reminding me about this clip.
[I just published my rock ‘n’ roll/ coming-of-age novel, “True Love Scars,” which features a narrator who is obsessed with Bob Dylan. To read the first chapter, head here.
Or watch an arty video with audio of me reading from the novel here.
–- A Days of the Crazy-Wild blog post: sounds, visuals and/or news –-
“Johnny in the Basement” by Mark Hamilton. See a bigger version of this photo here.
The New Zealand photographer Mark Hamilton has made a series of photographs inspired by lyrics from Bob Dylan songs.
The photos were exhibited backstage atClaudelands Arena in Hamilton, New Zealand when Dylan played the venue August 9 and 10.
The photographer was hoping Dylan would see the photos and like them.
“Imagine if he didn’t like it, if he retires after seeing those pictures!” Hamilton told the Waikato Times.
“At the end of the day they’re my interpretations and that’s art. It’s even like Bob Dylan himself, he reinterprets his music all the time. He’ll record it for an album but he’ll never play it the same again.”
Listen to Hamilton talk about his Dylan-inspired photos here.
[I just published my rock ‘n’ roll/ coming-of-age novel, “True Love Scars,” which features a narrator who is obsessed with Bob Dylan. To read the first chapter, head here.
Or watch an arty video with audio of me reading from the novel here.
Of just buy the damn thing:
–- A Days of the Crazy-Wild blog post: sounds, visuals and/or news –-
Cool animation using real audio from 1985 of Bob Dylan talking about music videos:
Brian Ives writes at radio.com:
On Minimation, we comb through the archives of legendary New York radio station WNEW-FM and animate interviews with legendary rock artists. This installment is taken from a 1985 interview with Bob Dylan, where he discusses his feelings about the then-budding art form of music videos. This minimation was created for Radio.com by Elliot Lobell.
Bob Dylan’s 1966 short film for “Subterranean Homesick Blues” is often cited as being one of the first music videos. Shot and released decades before there was any real outlet for the medium, it was something of a curiosity at the time. But in 1985, when this interview was recorded, it was a much different era. MTV was becoming a dominant cultural force, and it was pretty much mandatory that artists made at least one video (if not more) to promote their new albums. Ever the contrarian, Dylan’s mood on music videos had cooled by then.
[In August of this year I’ll be publishing my rock ‘n’ roll/ coming-of-age novel, “True Love Scars,” which features a narrator who is obsessed with Bob Dylan. To read the first chapter, head here.
Or watch an arty video with audio of me reading from the novel here.
–- A Days of the Crazy-Wild blog post: sounds, visuals and/or news –-
The great indie power-pop combo, Big Star, made two classic albums in the early ’70s: #1 Record and Radio City.
An incredible third album, Third/Sister Lovers was also recorded but that was basically an Alex Chilton solo record.
The first two albums have been major influential — R.E.M. were just one of numerous bands that fell under the sway of Big Star.
Now the first two albums have been remastered and after many years as a twofer, will be available as single CDs.
The new discs include liner notes by R.E.M.’s Mike Mills.
Says Mills says Big Star was “a band who had gotten it right, who made records that sounded like rock and roll bands should sound. A band who wrote all the songs, from flat-out rockers to achingly beautiful ballads that were still somehow rock songs.”
Mills told Rolling Stone: “Songwriting has always been, for me, the most vital gauge of a band’s quality, and these guys were clearly masters. Big Star gave you something satisfying to listen to, no matter how many times you heard them.”
The timing is right for the reissues. Holly George-Warren’s superb bio of Alex Chilton, A Man Called Destruction, was published earlier this year. A solid documentary on the band, “Big Star: Nothing Can Hurt Me,” was released in 2012. A four-CD box, Keep An Eye On The Skyline, was released in 2009, and a soundtrack to the documentary, Nothing Can Hurt Me, was released in 2013.
Here are some quotes from artists who were either in a later version of Big Star or knew Alex Chilton. These quotes were part of a press release sent out today.
Artists talk about the influence of Big Star:
“To me, the power and purity of #1 Record and Radio City are undeniable. From the first moment we heard these records we felt compelled to spread the word about them as far and wide as possible. The fact that we eventually became a part of keeping this music alive by performing with the reformed Big Star still fills me with a sense of pride, that this music is constantly being rediscovered and more known with every passing year. There’s a reason for that: it deserves it.” —Jon Auer of the Posies, who doubled as a member of Big Star with Chilton, performer on Big Star’sThird shows.
“For me, Big Star’s music is not only superb listening, it’s a litmus test for the human spirit. That this music’s appeal and notoriety has grown over the years is certainly related to its undeniably high level of quality; yet … it almost didn’t get heard. And here’s where it gets interesting. The fact you are listening to this now is due to the actions of a kind of underground railroad of listeners who just wouldn’t take the music industry’s incompetence as the final say on this music. It had to be shared, painstakingly copied to cassette, passed on with love. And by this hand-to-hand action, Big Star was elevated into the canon. Barely. Enjoy.” —Ken Stringfellow, The Posies and 17-year member of Big Star, performer on Big Star’s Third shows.
“Big Star’s records as instantly changing the landscape, redefining with every listen what it could mean to be a Southern rock musician. They were like beacons in the distance, beckoning, pulling us all in, one by one. . . . At a time when rock music was for the most part all bluster and lies, they shocked by trying to be straightforward, honest, and truthful.” — Chris Stamey of The dB’s, who produced some Chilton recordings in the ‘70s and has performed in the Third shows
“The one-two punch of #1 Record and Radio City knocked me out as an impressionable Southern teen musician in the 1970s, and it still does. Much as I love Big Star’s 3rd, it really was the first two albums’ sheen and shimmer that confirmed in me that there might be a melodic pop-rock world for me and my guitar-playing friends to inhabit in my future.” — Peter Holsapple of The dB’s
Listen to Radio City:
And if you haven’t heard it, check out the NOT-REMASTERED version of #1 Record:
Album Track Listings:
#1 Record
1. Feel 3:34
2. The Ballad of El Goodo 4:21
3. In the Street 2:55
4. Thirteen 2:34
5. Don’t Lie to Me 3:07
6. The India Song 2:20
7. When My Baby’s Beside Me 3:23
8. My Life Is Right 3:08
9. Give Me Another Chance 3:27
10. Try Again 3:31
11. Watch the Sunrise 3:45
12. ST100/6 0:57
Radio City
1. O My Soul 5:40
2. Life Is White 3:19
3. Way Out West 2:50
4. What’s Going Ahn 2:40
5. You Get What You Deserve 3:08
6. Mod Lang 2:45
7. Back of a Car 2:46
8. Daisy Glaze 3:49
9. She’s a Mover 3:12
10. September Gurls 2:49
11. Morpha Too 1:28
12. I’m in Love With a Girl 1:48
[In August of this year I’ll be publishing my rock ‘n’ roll/ coming-of-age novel, “True Love Scars,” which features a narrator who is obsessed with Bob Dylan. To read the first chapter, head here.
Or watch an arty video with audio of me reading from the novel here.
–- A Days of the Crazy-Wild blog post: sounds, visuals and/or news –-
Bob Dylan and John Sebastian at Village Cafe in Woodstock, New York in 1964. Photo by Douglas R. Gilbert.
In 1964 Douglas R. Gilbert got the once-in-a-lifetime assignment to photograph Bob Dylan up in Woodstock, and elsewhere, for Look magazine.
Look never ran the photos, but now they will be exhibited at the South Haven Center for the Arts at 600 Phoenix Rd, South Haven Charter Township, MI 49090.
There are superb photos of Dylan with Allen Ginsberg, John Sebastian, Ramblin’ Jack Elliott and Sally Grossman — wife of Dylan’s manager, Albert Grossman — who was later in the cover photo for Bringing It All Back Home.
Here’s what’s on Gilbert’s website about the photos:
In July of 1964, one year before his music changed from acoustic to electric, I photographed Bob Dylan for LOOK magazine. I spent time with him at his home in Woodstock, New York, in Greenwich Village, and at the Newport Folk Festival. The story was never published. After reviewing the proposed layout, the editors declared Dylan to be “too scruffy for a family magazine” and killed the story.
Some of the photos were used for The Bootleg Series, Vol. 6: Bob Dylan Live 1964, Concert at Philharmonic Hall.
And they appeared in the excellent book: “Forever Young: Photographs of Bob Dylan‚ by Douglas R. Gilbert.”
[In August of this year I’ll be publishing my rock ‘n’ roll/ coming-of-age novel, “True Love Scars,” which features a narrator who is obsessed with Bob Dylan. To read the first chapter, head here.
Or watch an arty video with audio of me reading from the novel here.
–- A Days of the Crazy-Wild blog post: sounds, visuals and/or news –-
[In August of this year I’ll be publishing my rock ‘n’ roll/ coming-of-age novel, “True Love Scars,” which features a narrator who is obsessed with Bob Dylan. To read the first chapter, head here.
Or watch an arty video with audio of me reading from the novel here.
–- A Days of the Crazy-Wild blog post: sounds, visuals and/or news –-
Forty-nine years ago, on June 16, 1965, Bob Dylan and a handful of ace session musicians including the great blues guitarist Michael Bloomfield and a upstart organ player, Al Kooper, recorded the take of “Like A Rolling Stone” that established Bob Dylan as one of the great rock ‘n’ rollers of all time.
The session took place in Columbia Studio A in New York, where Dylan was comfortable working, and where he had recorded his previous albums.
Dylan had started recording the song the previous day but didn’t cut a killer take.
The musicians:
Michael Bloomfield, guitar, Joe Macho, Jr., bass, Bobby Gregg, drums. Al Kooper, organ; Paul Griffin, piano; Bruce Langhorne, tambourine.
Greil Marcus writing about the fourth take on June 16, 1965, the take with the magic:
Take 4 — 6.34
“Four,” Wilson says. As it happens, this will be the master take, and the only time the song is found.
“One two, one two three”: the bang that sets it off is not quite as big as in the take just before, but it somehow makes more space for itself, pushes the others away for the fraction of a second necessary to mark the act. Gregg, too, has found the song. He has a strategy, creating humps in the verses and then carrying everyone over them.
As big as the drums are, Griffin plays with light hands; you can imagine his keys loosening. At the very start, piano and bass seem the bedrock — but so much is happening, and with such gravity, you cannot as a listener stay in one place. You may have heard this performance thousands of times, but here, as it takes shape, the fact that it does take shape doesn’t seem quite real. The false starts have created a sense that there can be no finished version, and even if you know this is where it happens, as with all the takes before it you are waiting for it to stop short.
Bloomfield is playing with finesse, passion, and most of all modesty. He has a sense of what to leave out, of when to play and when not to. He waits for his moments, and then he leaps. And this is the only take where, for him, everything is clear.
There is a moment, just after the first “How does it feel?” when Kooper’s organ, Bloomfield’s guitar, and Gregg’s cymbals come together in a single waterspout, and you can feel the song running under its own power. You wonder: what are the musicians thinking, as this astonishing story, told with such a sensation of daring and jeopardy, unfolds in front of them for the first time?
Kooper holds down a stop at the fade, long after everyone else has quit playing. “Like wild thing, baby,” someone says, beside himself. “That sounds good to me,” Wilson says, happiness all over his voice.
You can read Marcus’ description of the entire June 16 session here.
The song that changed everything:
“Maggie’s Farm” into “Like A Rolling Stone” at Newport Folk Festival, July 25, 1965:
Hollywood Bowl, Sept. 3, 1965:
Liverpool, England, May 14, 1966:
The Royal Albert Hall, London, May 26, 1966:
Not sure when or where this is from or who is playing the solo but it smokes:
Bob Dylan with Michael Bloomfield, Warfield Theater, San Francisco, November 15, 1980:
