This is Griffin’s new favorite book, and every time I see it, I think of Jethro Tull.
Category Archives: Music
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This next one goes out to my ukulele lady
(Hat tip: komcnees)
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Here’s what I was rockin’ back in ’91
Pursuant to my note at the end of yesterday’s post, I owned both of these singles on cassette at one point in my life.
Yes, this was pretty much to the ladies like sugar water is to hummingbirds, especially pouring from the speakers of my Plymouth wood-paneled station wagon.
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“Love and Splendor” by Jon Houghton
My dear friend Jon, performing one of my favorite songs of his. Hope everyone’s having a good weekend.
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“Street Missions”
This is the first installment of the U2 Project, in which I put to use the stupid amount of U2 paraphernalia I’ve collected by writing about every one of their songs ever released, in chronological order.
To the best of my knowledge, this is the earliest-recorded official U2 release: It actually came out in 2004, as part of iTunes’ The Complete U2, but it was recorded in either April or November of 1978 by Barry Devlin at Keystone Studios in Dublin. (u2wanderer.org puts it in April; Eamon Dunphy puts it in November in the U2 biography Unforgettable Fire. I’m inclined to trust the former here, because Dunphy’s book has a reputation for getting little details wrong.)
“Street Missions” gets interesting right before the two-minute mark, when it segues from a ramshackle, propulsive punkish pounder into a full-on guitar solo. In fact, it’s one of the more guitar-solo-ey solos you’re gonna find in the Edge’s repertoire, I think. In U2 by U2, Adam Clayton says:
In keeping with the punk ethic of non-musicianship, our early song-writing was characterized by a lack of virtuosity. So we would always try and bolt on an unexpected bit, some sort of change that would in some way get us over the fact that we weren’t doing it very skilfully. I suppose we were looking for drama in what we were doing. And when you’re not a virtuoso, it’s very hard to create that drama except by hard cuts; it’s either a drum break or something very fast or something unharmonious or whatever. We tended to find those bits and just stick them together. We were very proud of ‘Street Missions’. We used to start and end our sets with it. It was our ‘Freebird’.
“Everyone says there were rules that came up with punk, such as no guitar solos,” Bono says. “But we said, ‘Of course we can play a guitar solo if we want to.’” (He adds that they were never really going to be a punk band anyway.) And Edge notes that he’s pretty sure the lyrics don’t mean anything, that Bono was “just improvising vocal melodies.” Yup, that sounds about right.
Next time: “Shadows and Tall Trees”
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Song of the day: “Kaputt” by Destroyer
I am pretty late to the Destroyer party, but that is simply how I roll: I figure, if I hear about something cool and don’t check it out, then either I will hear about it again later (thus verifying its lasting coolness) or it was just a flash in the pan anyway and not worth my time. Besides, who wants to hang out on the cutting edge? You could fall off! Or cut yourself. On the edge.
If I finish all my work for this week, I think I will buy myself this album. Found the song by way of the Awl.
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The snake is a metaphor
Some enterprising soul has put together an unofficial music video for “Whip Out the Snake,” a song by our favorite masters of metal, Jon Hell and the One-Eyed Snakes. It is absolutely not safe for work, in that it features women spanking each other and large, natural, uncovered breasts:
Given that this was the footage available, I can see why they went with this song. But it’s certainly not the strongest example of Jon Hell’s material. You’re doing yourself a disservice if you don’t download White Line Fever (for free!) right now and treat yourself to “Shitloads of Love,” “Inferno,” and “Ain’t No Fun Sittin’ ’Round With the Dry Heaves (Feat. Alvin and the Chipmunks).”
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