GRAM PARSONS.

IGGY POP.

THE MC5.

GET A MOTHERFUCKING CLUE, CLEVELAND

That’s from Paul’s first solo tour in 1993. (Ignore the moronic crowdsurfers, it’s worth it.)

I found this today not because I spend a lot of time crusing around YouTube, but because last night the latest issue of the Skyway landed in my inbox. I’ve been subscribed to the Skyway since the first day I got an email address back in 1994. I have moved email addresses a gazillion times since then but I always make sure to resubscribe so I don’t miss it.

The Skyway is kind of an anarchronism in these days of RSS and social networking; it’s a broadcast-only email newsletter, infrequent more than ever these days. In the old days, it would roll out once a month or so, full of stories people wanted to share about the ‘Mats, odd tidbits, tape requests (remember tapes?). Its frequency largely depended on what the list-keeper was up to at the time. (That’s a much longer story you’ll have to read through the issues yourself to get a handle on.) When he had enough material, Matt would roll everything up into a text-only email and send it off. It wasn’t a newsgroup; it wasn’t a mailing list; it was what it was and it’s probably lasted as long as it has because of the odd, yet completely comfortable format.

You should go read the latest issue. I’ll buy you a coffee if you think it wasn’t worth your time and didn’t make your day just a little bit better.

WFMU’s Beware of the Blog: Velvet Underground Acetate MP3s

(Be careful reading the comments; I’ve been on a live torrent kick lately, after banning any new show from entering this house over the last year or two, and I don’t need to know there’s a demo of Lou Reed singing his entire early 70’s repertoire in a friend’s apartment.)

“I have met the entire starting eight of the 1975-76 World Series Champion Cincinnati Reds. Pete Rose is a freak. The rest of them are sweethearts.”

This new criteria of evaluating men based on their baseball habits would have been useful in my past.

In light of the recent aggression between Israel and the Hezbollah terrorist faction in Lebanon and Syria, I have been moved to comment on my feelings regarding this conflict. While I am saddened by the loss of life and property on both sides, my belief in freedom, democracy and the peaceful existence of the state of Israel remains steadfast. To this end, the Twilight Singers show in Tel Aviv on August 30 will go on as scheduled. We look forward to performing our songs for an audience who has yet to see us in their own country and hope to be visiting in a time of peace.

Shalom-
Greg Dulli

====

Many of you likely know that I have two passports and spent six years living in Tel Aviv. I don’t want to turn this into a political discussion but I’m glad he’s still going, and it’s important to me that he is.

My best friend from those years just recently visited and we were talking about how chickenshit Metallica were back in the day when they played Israel, how they made up some story about why they didn’t spend the night on Israeli soil (they stayed in Cyprus and flew in and out for the show) because there was some random routine going on way up north - it would have been like saying, “Gee, something’s going on at the Canadian border, I better not go to Boston.”

(Except that isn’t exactly true, your concept of what danger really is changes when you live in a war zone.)

(But it was still chickenshit and Lars lied very badly [quelle surprise, I hear you saying] when someone in the media called him on it.)

Now, of course, the situation is VERY different, even in Tel Aviv, a city that you would recognize, no matter where you live right now. But it doesn’t truly impact day-to-day on the street and I’m glad he’s going; a lesser man would have cancelled and not been that badly thought of in this context. But, Dulli is not a lesser man.

I also take particular pride in Dulli’s Israeli outing because I had some direct impact on this, believe it or not. When I lived in Israel, I was the Label Manager for the former Warner/Elektra/Atlantic, and it was my decision to release the Afghan Whigs’ Gentlemen locally. It was the first release of the Whigs over there - before that, maybe you could have special-ordered or found one or two copies of the Sub Pop releases in the funky record store - maybe. Israel is a small, quirky market that can’t possibly support every record released in the US or UK. Some things just don’t sell; some things do sell if you work at it hard enough. Understand that this was a market where I had to make a VERY VERY VERY strong case to the Managing Director that this band called Nirvana was worth taking a chance on.

Anyway, by the time the advance cassette for Gentlemen appeared on my desk, I had enough credibility that I could release it, and hand-carry it over to one of the top DJ’s in the country to make sure it was debuted on his show. It turned out to be a BIG hit,too (well, big in a country where a Gold record was 20,000 - and it was fucking hard to get that). But I do remember the requests at the dj booth (oh yeah, I used to quasi-dj at the big club in Tel Aviv at the time) and the pride at watching a whole room of kids and just-past-kids gyrating and singing along to the Whigs.

I don’t really talk much about what I did there and I’m not quite sure why, because I still have the gold records and the award plaques and stories to tell. Some day, maybe.

I am at work last week, and someone has music on. This is the conversation I have with myself:
Hmm, what is this?
Phil Collins.
Solo or Genesis?
Genesis.
Something live.
Okay, it’s radio, that tinny compression, so it has to be released.
Didn’t they have some triple live album at some point?
Yeah, maybe.

Eventually, it dawns on me, crosses my filters because I can’t tune it out. This is because Genesis are covering “Everybody Needs Somebody To Love” tagged with “Satisfaction” and then “All Day And All Of The Night,” as part of some abysmal live performance of “Turn It On Again,” back when Genesis was a band you desperately had to pretend to like, or at least Appreciate Their Contribution To Rock And Roll less you be considered some kind of neanderthal.

This abomination is, apparently, from some Live At Wembley release from 1987 (thank you Google, where the reviewer mentions that this medley “is always good fun to hear” and notes that there is an ALTERNATIVE version to be found on the “Live at Knebworth” double CD - I guess if anything was going to accurately define “Late 1980’s Adult Oriented Rock Bombast” it would be any band of a stature and demographic to make it worthwhile to release a “Live At Knebworth”. Who else was ever live at
Knebworth except overblown balding rock gods? The Who were live at Leeds and live at Charlton, but they never released some poncy “Live at Knebworth” crap album–

(okay. I know. The Who, the band who defined what the live album was supposed to be, after that only ever released crappy live albums - and I mean truly crappy. waste of money, not even worth buying for the one-extra-track-you-don’t-officially-have, badly sequenced and compressed bordering on KISS Alive-sounding)

I’m sorry. Where was I? Genesis. Phil Collins.

And people in my high school wondered why I turned to the Ramones as my personal lord and saviour? Do I even need another reason? The answer is NO. The answer always was no.

Some posts coming soon, I promise…

Yes, that’s Shawn Smith on backing vocals.