"An artist is an artist only because of his exquisite sense of beauty, a sense which shows him intoxicating pleasures, but which at the same time implies and contains an equally exquisite sense of all deformities and all disproportion." Charles Baudelaire on Edgar Allan Poe, 1856. fromThe Painter of Modern Life and Other Essays
"Well, could you play a car crash with an electric guitar?" Patti Smith to Lenny Kaye, 1971. fromJust Kids
Patti Smith and Lenny Kaye performed together for the first time on February 10, 1971 at The Poetry Project at the St. Marks Church in New York City. It was also the first time an electric guitar had ever been played at the church, and Lenny uses it to demonstrate the auditory car crash sounds in "Ballad of a Bad Boy," one of four selections from this rarely heard performance, and would serve as the the first of many collaborations between these two. Later becoming the Patti Smith Group, they helped to forge a new alliance between rock n roll, art and poetry in New York's punk scene of the mid 1970s. The historic venues in New York where they originally played before touring the world are now all gone except for The Poetry Project which tonight will host their return in celebration of the 40th anniversary of that first performance.
So, if you're in New York City, you might wanna check it out.
Once upon a time there was a band from Glasgow named Orange Juice. Formed as punk rock group the Nu-Sonics in the late 70s, they went on to record several records that flirted with rock, pop, soul and disco sounds, all the while being audaciously twee and unafraid to use major seventh chords. The singer and frontman Edwyn Collins, had an unusual feylike baritone voice sounding at times like (among others) Bela Lugosi. Collins, also displayed an unusual and unique guitar style, that when interweaved with original OJ guitar player James Kirk could conjure up an Anglo-like version of Television. They were brilliant and virtually unknown on these shores (they never played in the US) and went on to influence countless bands in the UK, including Belle and Sebastian, the Teenage Fanclub, The Smiths, and Aztec Camera. A few months ago Domino Records released a long overdue career spanning box set compiling their singles, LPs, some rarities and BBC recordings from the John Peel Show as well as a DVD: seven discs in all. Most of their catalog has been out of print or only available as expensive imports for several years.
In conjunction with Domino Records, we are offering the first ever giveaway here at the Boogie Woogie Flu. An 18 song sampler from Coals to Newcastle plus 10 groovy Orange Juice pins, pictured below. We have three of these packages to give away. If you'd like one, send an email with your mailing address (US Residents only) to boogiewoogieflu@gmail.com and explain in 25 words or less why you want it. These will go fast. Good luck.
Gone!
The giveaway is over, and all winners have been notified. Two of the three winners are from Texas. So as an addendum I think it's appropriate to add this:
New York City is covered in snow, just as it was fifty years ago this week when Bob Dylan first arrived here. And though the exact date is in dispute, it was on or around January 24, 1961. His ambition had outgrown the appropriately named Dinkytown coffeehouse scene in Minneapolis, and while having reinvented himself a few times already at the age of nineteen, Dylan, a self-described "musical expeditionary" with "no past really to speak of, nothin' to go back to, (and) nothin' to lean on" set his sites on brighter pastures: New York City, and the burgeoning folk scene in Greenwich Village to be exact. He also set out to meet his hero Woody Guthrie, who was spending his final years in a hospital in New Jersey suffering from Huntington's Chorea disease.
Dylan arrived in town via the George Washington Bridge in a 4-door Pontiac driven by his friend Fred Underhill. As legend has it, he disembarked and caught a train downtown where he promptly met Fred Neil and found himself a spot in the revue at Cafe Wha? backing Neil on harmonica and playing his own three song set which was the standard alotted time for each performer. His own repertoire at the time consisted almost entirely of Woody Guthrie songs, of which he'd learned most of the catalog. He had yet to write any of his own material to speak of, and from most accounts back in Minnesota, Dylan was a fairly ordinary folk singer with great ambition who did a good Woody Guthrie imitation. He had a lot of game and a "schtick" as was needed to succeed, but whatever it was that he considered success at that time, he certainly could have never imagined what lay in store for him in the coming year.
Dylan describes this moment as his "crossroads," as in Robert Johnson at the crossroads, and this particular one (give or take a block or two) was at the corner of Bleecker and MacDougal. The transformation that took place in the coming months is nothing short of remarkable. In the right place at the right time, he quickly met, learned from, and collaborated with a cast of characters including Dave Van Ronk, Karen Dalton, Fred Neil, and Ramblin' Jack Elliott, as well as his future muse Suze Rotolo. He also met Guthrie. He'd regularly board a bus to New Jersey with his guitar and sit with him in the hospital. Woody would call out song titles (his own) and the young disciple would oblige his requests. He learned fingerpicking, and slowly started writing his own songs, borrowing melodies and form from the vast American songbook of country, blues and folk that he and his contemporaries were mining and appropriating into another new form.
In April, he got his first paying gig, at Gerdes Folk City, with a two week run opening for John Lee Hooker. Izzy Young, of the Folklore Center, offered guidance and tried to help the fledgling midwestern transplant find a record deal. The folk labels all balked. In September, while playing harmonica on a Caroline Hester session for Columbia, he caught the ear of John Hammond, who signed him to a record deal a month later. This was far beyond his wildest dreams that a label such as Columbia would be interested in what he was doing. In Chronicles, Dylan recalls getting a copy of the yet to be released LP of Robert Johnson's Vocalion sides (still relatively unknown outside of a small group of blues aficionados) from Hammond on the day of his signing.
"Over the next few weeks I listened to it repeatedly, cut after cut, one song after another, sitting and staring at the record player. Whenever I did, it felt like a ghost had come into the room, a fearsome apparition."
In early November, he played his first concert as a headliner at the Carnegie Chapter Hall, a small annexed room upstairs from the main hall. A typewritten program for the event included a self-penned biography of his reinvented self. It begins: "Bob Dylan was born in Duluth, Minnesota in 1941. He was raised in Gallup N.M. and before he came to NY earlier this year, he lived in Iowa, S. Dakota and Kansas. He started playing carnivals at the age of 14, accompanying himself on guitar and piano." It goes on to say that he "learned many blues songs from a Chicago street singer named Arvella Gray" and met "Mance Lipscomb, from the Brazos River country of Texas, through a grandson that sang rock and roll."
A few weeks later Dylan would enter the studio and record his first Columbia LP in three short sessions over three days of mostly other people's arrangements and songs. He'd save his own compositions for his next record, which he began working in by the middle of 1962. A half a century after his arrival in New York City, he continues to perpetrate his peculiar brilliance, appropriation and reinvention.
Today is January 8th, which means two things around here. It's the fourth anniversary of the Boogie Woogie Flu, and, of course, it's Elvis's birthday. So, in celebration of these two miraculous events, I, T-Bone Carruthers, Mayor of Fluville, offer you four groups of four songs, four square and for today. They are: four versions of Bob Dylan's answer song to "Norwegian Wood," four songs covered by Elvis on his Memphis Record, the same four songs performed by the King, and four songs about him. Think of them as little EPs.
Things have been somewhat quiet here this year at the Boogie Woogie Flu and without all of the writers who contributed pieces, I don't think I could have kept it going. So, as we begin our 5th time around I would like to express my deepest gratitude to all of you readers and everyone who has helped keep this insane endeavor alive.
Tonight, I was working from home. I read a bit, did my dishes, and then headed out to a local restaurant/bar in my overly-hip and totally uncool Brooklyn neighborhood. I sat down at the bar to eat as I always do when I go out for a late dinner by myself. I know the owner and the staff fairly well, and I like them all very much. There were a group of men sitting at the bar who had all probably had too much to drink about an hour before I showed up. I tried to ignore them as they were deciding where True Grit ranked in the pantheon of Coen Brothers films, and one of them, who seemed to dominate the conversation by talking more loudly than the rest, (as drunks are prone to do), was starting to get on my nerves, "somewhere below Lebowski, and above Fargo," he said. The others cheered him on.
I talked a little bit to the bartender, a friend (who's probably in his late 20s or early 30s) as I finished eating. "Time for some Rafferty," he said. I shook my head in disbelief. "He's too young to know," I thought to myself. He walked over to the stereo, and with a remote control, there it was, the opening bars of "Baker Street," the monstrously huge hit from 1978.
And then the saxophone.
I excused myself and walked outside to have a cigarette. I could still hear the song clearly, and watched the guys at the bar through the plate glass windows fall all over themselves with excitement while pantomiming to the song. What the fuck? I was amused, but this record is still, after all these years, lame. I stayed outside until it was over, but heard it all including the cheesy guitar solo I had forgotten all about. It touched a raw nerve I guess. Maybe some suppressed memory from a Jr. High School dance. I'm not sure.
In the year of it's release, I turned 13 years old and was very much into music. There were some great records that year. A few that come to mind off the top of my head are: Road to Ruin by the Ramones, the vastly under-rated Street Legal by Dylan, Darkness on The Edge of Town by Bruce Springsteen, and the Rolling Stones last moment of true greatness, Some Girls. And while at least two of those records got a fair amount of radio play, a lot of things didn't. The airwaves were dominated by the worst of the worst: Styx, Kansas, Boston, Rush and Journey (a band who has enjoyed a resurgence of popularity in recent years, by those too young to remember that they sucked then and will always suck.)
That same year, Elvis Costello, released, This Year's Model with the song "Radio Radio," which got him all but banned from my hometown when the corporate rock radio station KSHE, that sponsored his local appearance were not amused when he dedicated that very song to them. They deserved it then and still do.
"...and the radio is in the hand's of such a lot of fools trying to anaesthetize the way you feel."
Elvis got into a lot of trouble that year, most notably, when he played that same song--after being instructed not to do so-- on SaturdayNight Live (the appearance was actually late 1977). Costello started playing the scheduled song, "Less Than Zero" from his then current record, My Aim Is True, andabruptly stopped the band, and announced "I'm sorry Ladies and Gentlemen, there's no reason to do this song here." He then called out "Radio Radio" to the band and launched into it. It's live television at it's finest. Producer Lorne Michaels was also not amused. You can't watch it on YouTube, but it is available HERE. Costello recreated that moment with a planned bum-rush on the Beastie Boys who backed him on SNL's 25th anniversary show.
The purpose of this rant is not to disrespect Gerry Rafferty. He was probably an okay guy, and while I admit I don't know that much about him, I am a fan of his first hit record, "Stuck in The Middle With You," which he recorded in 1972 while fronting Stealers Wheel. It's a good record, but it is, after all, a pretty good imitation of John Lennon imitating Bob Dylan. It's best known today as the soundtrack to Michael Madsen's sociopathic character "Mr. Blonde," in a gruesome torture scene from Quentin Tarantino's Reservoir Dogs. I much more prefer this song than his cheeseball fluff of six years later.
William S. Burroughs tells a Christmas tale for the ages, in which Danny the Carwiper, dopesick and freely sprung from prison, learns the true spirit of giving on Christmas Day. He is rewarded with divine intervention, and scores "for the immaculate fix."
