re: My Merrily Mirthful Melodic Melange -- Myriad Musical Miscellania

Joe Maphis - "Pickin' And Singin'"

In this rare TV clip of one song you can watch and hear the legendary session man shredding:

1. Double neck guitar
2. Fiddle
3. Mandolin
4. Banjo
5. Upright bass

Today I learned of the recent passing of Liverpool singer Jackie Lomax, one of the first acts signed to the Beatles' Apple label:

Jackie Lomax - "Sour Milk Sea"

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"Sour Milk Sea" is a song written by George Harrison in early 1968 during the Beatles' stay in Rishikesh, India. It was given to Jackie Lomax to record and released as the latter's debut single on the then-new Apple Records label, in August 1968. "Sour Milk Sea" was among Apple's first batch of releases, another of which was the Beatles' "Hey Jude" single. The recording of "Sour Milk Sea" is notable for being the first of many extracurricular musical projects produced by Harrison, and a rarity among non-Beatles songs in that it features three members of the band. Along with Harrison, Ringo Starr and Paul McCartney, the backing musicians on the track were Eric Clapton and session pianist Nicky Hopkins.

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Now here is a fascinating historical document -- the recording of an actual telephone call between Buddy Holly and record company exec Paul Cohen:

March 28, 1957

Holly is calling long distance (a big deal in those days, especially for a struggling musician) from Lubbock to NYC asking Decca Records (now known as MCA) to let him rerecord songs he'd cut for the company a few months earlier, so he could cut them for another label. Cohen refuses to give an inch and insists Holly can't rerecord the songs for five years.

Note how unfailingly polite Holly is. Maybe manners were different then, or maybe Buddy was just a nice guy. I would've told Cohen GFY.

FWIW, Holly would eventually get around Cohen and Decca by rerecording the songs (one of which, "That'll Be The Day", would go to #1) under the name of his band, The Crickets. :likeaboss:







:crickets:

Van Morrison - Blowin' My Contract



In 1967 Van Morrison was desperate to get out of his contract with Bang records, who weren't promoting him, or even paying him on time. So went into the studio and cut 31 improvised mini-songs, and delivered them to the label as his contractual obligation. (Yes, he went out with a Bang)

"The Big Royalty Check"

I'm waiting
For my royalty check to come
And it still hasn't come yet
It's about a year overdue

I guess it's coming from
The big royalty check in the sky
I waited and the mailman
Never dropped it in my letterbox
Oh, oh oh, oh

I guess it's a
Big royalty check in the sky
Ohh, baby
But you can't beat the tax man
And me all at once

"Ring Worm"

"Have a Danish"

Van has so much Celtic soul in him he can't help but make these ad-libbed GFY put-ons mystically swing. If you listen very closely, you can hear harbingers of Astral Weeks...

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Van has so much Celtic soul in him

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Without a doubt. Aided and abetted, of course, by Irish whiskey and vodka.

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"Ring Worm"

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Awesome.

For some reason "I Like Traffic Lights" from Monty Python's Contractual Obligation Album comes to mind.

Jim Croce covering Gordon Lightfoot's Steel Rail Blues

Guitarist Randy Bachman Demystifies the Opening Chord of ‘A Hard Day’s Night’

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You could call it the magical mystery chord. The opening clang of the Beatles’ 1964 hit, “A Hard Day’s Night,” is one of the most famous and distinctive sounds in rock and roll history, and yet for a long time no one could quite figure out what it was.

In this fascinating clip from the CBC radio show, Randy’s Vinyl Tap, the legendary Guess Who and Bachman-Turner Overdrive guitarist Randy Bachman unravels the mystery. The segment is from a special live performance, “Guitarology 101,” taped in front of an audience at the Glenn Gould Studio in Toronto back in January, 2010. As journalist Matthew McAndrew wrote, “the two-and-a-half hour event was as much an educational experience as it was a rock’n'roll concert.”

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One highlight of the show was Bachman’s telling of his visit the previous year with Giles Martin, son of Beatles’ producer George Martin, at Abbey Road Studios. The younger Martin, who is now the official custodian of all the Beatles’ recordings, told Bachman he could listen to anything he wanted from the massive archive–anything at all.

Bachman chose to hear each track from the opening of “A Hard Day’s Night.” As it turns out, the sound is actually a combination of chords played simultaneously by George Harrison and John Lennon, along with a bass note by Paul McCartney. Bachman breaks it all down in an entertaining way in the audio clip above.

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Adam Carolla on today's music (from his new book President Me):

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On to the music of today. The shitty, shitty music of today. The teenage-girl garbage fest that passes itself off as music that has infected our culture. This shite is insidious. It has spread quicker and farther than AIDS in Africa. There’s no escaping it. Traditional bastions of male-dom are being invaded by this teen chick music. I was in the chair at the aforementioned Mexican barbershop and they were pumping Miley Cyrus. Worse, I was at a sports bar in the San Antonio airport at nine A.M. trying to enjoy a preflight Bloody Mary and Lady Gaga was blasting from the speakers. Because there’s nothing guys who frequent sports bars in Texas during prime hangover hours enjoy more than the music of Lady Gaga. My travel companion, Mike August, asked the bartender to turn it down. The bartender replied that he wasn’t allowed to.

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my buddy Daniel was in town and we made plans to go out after the show to a high-end steak joint in Manhattan called STK.

Before we even sat down, I was annoyed. The jams were being pumped. I looked over and saw a live DJ on a riser at one end of the place. When the waitress came over to take our order, she had to shout the specials at us like you do at your deaf grandmother when you visit her in the home. “IT’S NOT A TRADITIONAL CRAB CAKE . . . NO, CRAB CAKE . . .” I shite you not, the techno was so loud I had to act like a UN interpreter between the waitress and the guy sitting next to me. “SHE SAID THAT ONLY COMES WITH TWO SHRIMP, SO WE SHOULD PROBABLY DO THREE ORDERS!” We all got a nice side order of tinnitus with our asparagus.

And they were not just any jams. No, this DJ was doing it mash-up style. So not only were we treated to Carly Rae Jepsen’s “Call Me Maybe,” but it was mashed up with the bass from “Roxanne.” And to add insult to injury there was ten seconds of relief when they played the intro to Frank Sinatra’s “New York, New York.” I thought, “Oh, thank God. Finally, a little Sinatra in a New York steak house, the world is right again.” And then came the Alicia Keys.

And that’s the point. How about some Sinatra or jazz? Would people light the place on fire and throw chairs through the windows if you played a little Dave Brubeck? Is this a steak house or a fashion show? I came here for a porterhouse and some mashed potatoes, not a rave.

Of course I had to talk to the waitress about this. I asked, “Do people like the music so loud they can’t hear the specials?” She gave me two very unsatisfying answers. First she said, “I know. Everyone complains about it.” Then why don’t you do something about it? Is there a city ordinance that the music must be louder than a jet engine? The second part of her answer was worse. When I asked why the DJ cut Sinatra, she said the owners wanted it that way to make the place more friendly toward women. I thought, “Women or eleven-year-old girls?” Because that’s who this “music” is appealing to.

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I was at an event at the Tribeca Film Festival and the white DJ, who I’ve lovingly dubbed DJ CrackerJew, was pumping up the jams as if the room was full of thirteen-year-old girls with learning and hearing disabilities. I went up and asked him politely to turn it down and he said no. I asked, “Do you see anyone dancing?” He replied that he didn’t. So I asked again if he could turn it down and he said no again. Then I snapped, “No one likes your shitty music.” He said, “I do,” and turned it up. I wanted to find this guy’s parents and kick the shite out of them. Just never stop kicking them until my shoes were covered in teeth and blood. Can we get black people DJing again? White guys have too much to prove.

Seriously. Remember when party DJs were lovable black guys in Run-D.M.C. sweatsuits whose shoes were untied? (Unclear if they were trying to cultivate a look or if it was the morbid obesity that prevented them from doing so.) They played some Temptations, they played some Marvin Gaye, they dutifully honored the “Walking on Sunshine” request, and then went the frick home. Now they’re spindly, obnoxious white guys in front of a Mac laptop with their hats on crooked looking like a cheap Chinese bootleg of a Beastie Boy. This guy doesn’t seem to notice he’s in a room full of people whose average age is fifty-one and average skin color is Meryl Streep. This is just jacking off, they don’t care what their audience wants to hear, as long as they look and feel cool doing it and get to take a coke break once in a while.

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