Dept. of Additional Awesome Friday Tunes

Miles and co. from 1959. Jazz fans know this already, but the quiet dude in the back with the sax is, of course, John Coltrane. The whole combo at this point (Kind of Blue era) is like a who’s who of jazz greats. In addition to Davis and Coltrane, they had Wynton Kelly on piano, Paul Chambers on bass, Jimmy Cobb on drums, and Cannonball Adderly also on sax.

It’s particularly cool that, when Coltrane takes his solo, you can see Davis slip off to the side for a smoke.

Dept. Under Appreciated Albums from the Vault

Album Cover In 1992, Keith Richards released Main Offender, the second of his two solo records. Unlike its predecessor (1988’s Talk is Cheap), it spawned no Top 40 hits, and sold poorly. Inevitably compared to Mick’s solo outings, we think it’s aged much better. Instead of preening, wiggling Jagger, we get full-on Keef, uncut by the other half of the Glimmer Twin collaboration. Open chords, simple arrangements, and a rock fucking solid band.

It’s all you need, really. Here’s a taste; the record’s still in print if you want more: Wicked As It Seems (8MB mp3)

Best Quote on 80s Music EVAR.

Wil Wheaton points us to this choice bit about Journey from Scalzi:

[F]or the vast majority of Suburban Americans between the age of 14 and 24 in the early 80s, when it was time to make out and you put Escape on the turntable, you were automatically spotted two bases. Honestly, if you didn’t have a hand under a bra or massaging a button fly by the end of “Who’s Crying Now,” Steve Perry would stop what he was doing, fly to your house and then beat the crap out of you for blowing a sure thing. God forbid you actually flipped the LP, because then, baby, you were going home.

Now, if you’ll excuse us, we have to go to Soundwaves and buy a CD before our wife gets home.

Things that ought to make the hair stand up on the back of your neck

This is remedial, but some of you may not have heard the news:

I heard there was A secret chord That David played, And it pleased the Lord But you don’t really care for music Do ya? It goes like this The 4th the 5th The minor fall and the major lift The baffled King composing Hallelujah…

Mr Cohen via the late Mr Buckley. Go listen. If you’ve no idea what I’m talking about, go find someone who does.

Best. Music. Quote. EVAR.

There’s a sizeable portion of the population that listens to the music they listen to because it’s there and they don’t know any better — a reality that actually predicates the existence of mainstream music. Here’s what I mean: nobody thinks long and hard about music and what it means to them and then ultimately decides to listen to Toby Keith. (Emph. added.)

More here.

Famous people we know

This is fun: our brother’s brother in law was on TV last night.

It’s our bet that when that sentence is usually uttered, it refers to an unfortunate cameo shirtless, in a gimmee hat, as a victim on COPS. Not so this time: the show was Conan, and the occasion was an appearance by the band Strays Don’t Sleep (they also have MySpace, natch).

The Jackson Office’s wife’s brother is Neilson Hubbard, who sings and plays keys wih this outfit. It’s a grownup band, not some bubblegum pop thing, and we’ve been enjoying the CD for several months. For some reason it was released in the U.K. first, but it finally dropped here on 6/13. Take a listen at their site; you might like it.

Welcome to New York, ca. 1979

Screenhead points us to Blondie’s Heart of Glass video, which made us feel very funny when we were 10. As Screenhead’s editors put it: “What’s important here, is that we’d all still eat a pregnant tarantula for the chance to lick one of Deborah Harry’s footprints.”

By the way, it appears the linked site, Sugarjar, includes a metric shit-ton of music videos. Enjoy. (Also, note how insanely young the introducing guest host is just before their clip of David Bowie’s Man Who Sold The World from SNL.)

Jesus, Mary, Joseph and Miles

Agent Triple-FFF and his Ace Sidekick Boogielips have blessed HeathenHouse with some damned fine Miles Davis for our birthday, and it just plain smokes. Some fool’s been sitting on this stuff for 30 years.

Of course, it being 1970-era “Live-Evil” Miles, it’s probably best that Mrs Heathen is out of town this weekend. Chicks don’t dig on the fusion Miles so much.

Still: SMOKES. Smokes. Smokes. This band includes his “young turks” — John McLaughlin, Keith Jarrett, Michael Henderson on bass, Glen Bartz on sax, Jack DeJohnette on drums, and Airto Moreira on percussion. It’s six disks of live goodness from the Celler Door, in Washington DC, from December of 1970. As our friend Cary is fond of quoting, it’s worthy of a full-on Ted Baxter “TOP NOTCH” bellow.

(Of course, if you don’t dig electric Miles and all his trumpet-through-a-wah-wah glory, you can also use it to clear rooms.)

Belated Weekend Observations

Prince remains teh awesome, even when relegated to backing duties as “just” a guitar player for protege Tamar’s last-minute Houston gig on Friday night.

Said gig started at midnight, which is late enough that we took post-work naps to better prepare. We are: old.

Prince’s awesomeness is in no way reducted by the unmitigated halfassery of the venue. They were clearly wholly unprepared for the crowd — which was only about capacity; it wasn’t super-crowded — and had the world’s worst will-call scenario despite knowing in advance that virtually everyone going to the show would be doing will-call. We’ve been in Soviet hotels with better efficiency ratings. A significant number of people were STILL IN THE WILL CALL LINE when the music started, and they’d been there over an hour.

Said venue also manage to have, near as we could tell, only two bartenders. There may have been another bar somewhere, but we can’t be sure. We CAN be sure that the ones we saw were absolutely swamped and wholly insufficient to the crowd gathered ten deep around their bar.

We can’t decide if our favorite part was the “Purple Rain” encore or the moment, early in the show, when Prince dropped the mike and name-checked Sexual Chocolate.

Perhaps the only video you’ll see today of Prince and Tom Petty on the same stage

At George Harrison’s 2004 induction to the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame, Prince stopped by to help out. We suspect this popped up on MeFi because someone saw him kick ass on SNL and remembered “oh yeah — that little dude’s a badass guitar player, too!”

If he comes anywhere near you on tour, pay whatever it costs to see him. Hock something if you have to. Eat ramen for a week or a month if that’s what it takes, but see him. Up close. We saw him in 2004, and it was, bar none, the best damn rock and roll show we’ve EVER seen.

This is all over the web, but it’s still funny

Anyone with a brain knows that most musicians don’t make it big. They play all sorts of gigs they don’t like, or that pay poorly, because they love to play. They frequently work in cover bands to fund the time spent on their own music. It is therefore not surprising that any musician whose name you know probably did this, too. It is furthermore unsurprising that, once a given musician reaches a certain level of fame, evidence of these previous musical endeavors becomes much more interesting. And the Internet, of course, makes it much, much easier to distribute these examples of juvenilia.

So, via Mefi, we point you to video of Trent Reznor’s 80s cover band doing “Eyes Without a Face”. Given the quality and song choices (not to mention Trent’s baby face), we figure this dates from his late teens or early 20s at the latest. (There’s also a Joe Jackson cover. We shit you not.)

(As “Rebel Yell” was released in 1983, which Wikipedia says was Reznor’s senior year, it looks like the time frame works.)