way-back machine v14: Hot Tuna

...at the Tweeter Center, Camden, NJ, on this date in 2001.

Jorma and Jack, touring as "the Original Acoustic Hot Tuna"...at this show they were first on the bill before Willie Nelson and Phil Lesh & Friends. What a great day of music.

Pretty sedate as far as Tuna sets go...Jorma just seems like he's at his best at night-time...still a solid set. We'll serve you up our highlight below...

Hot Tuna, 99 Year Blues
from the Tweeter Center, Camden, NJ, July 28, 2001

Golden Smog in NYC

Golden Smog at the Bowery Ballroom, New York, NY, July 26, 2006.

Made up of members of the Jayhawks, Soul Asylum, Big Star (and on record, Wilco), they are touring behind their fourth record in about 15 years. One of the highlights of the show was a great cover of Bowie's Starman...

If you happen to have a recording of this show please let me know or upload it to me here.

I have a couple of photos from the show, click on the ticket stub to see them.

And I did find this on YouTube...Looks like an audience shot from the balcony, not a bad capture...Of the three tracks posted this is the one to dig, their cover of Bowie's "Starman":

Still very much grooving to their new record, too..

Burning Dervish Vol Two

Our second compilation, available for download here.

1. Popcorn, by Lee "Scratch" Perry, from Scratch the Upsetters Again


2. El Pussy Cat, by The Skatalites, from Stretching Out


3. Guajira Van, by No. 1 de No. 1, from World Psychedelic Classics 3: Love's a Real Thing


4. Lion, by Burning Spear, from Live


5. Rastafari Chariot, by The Itals, from Brutal Out Deh


6. Take Me Home Country Roads, by Toots & The Maytals, from Funky Kingston


7. Give Me Your Love, by Junior Marvin, from Darker Than Blue: Soul from Jamdown (1973-1980)


8. Yasdestal, by Mahmoud Ahmed, from Ethiopiques, Vol. 6: Almaz


9. Tezetaye Atchi Lidj, by Mulatu Astatqe, from Ethiopiques, Vol. 4: Ethio Jazz & Musique Instrumentale, 1969-1974


10. Bellyfull, by The Gladiators, from Dreadlocks The Time Is Now


11. Sit And Wonder, by Prince Buster, from 200% Dynamite!


12. Ma Ne Vale La Pena, by Augusto Martelli, from Black Sound From White People


13. Black Slavery Days, by Skulls, from Black Slavery Days


14. Mountain Time, by Ginger Baker, from Horses & Trees

Download Burning Dervish Vol Two until August 2nd here.

way-back machine v13: Sonny Sharrock

...at the Real Art Ways Jazz Festival, Hartford, CT on this day in 1993...

We were turned on to Sonny through his Bill Laswell-produced record, Ask the Ages, which featured Pharaoh Saunders and Elvin Jones as sidemen. To our ears, the first great record of the 90s...

The show this download is taken from was part of a free festival put on by a community arts organization in Hartford, CT, Real Art Ways and was held in an inner-city park whose name escapes us now...Marc Ribot was the opener but we've never been able to get our hands on a recording of his set.

This line-up is much different than the Ask the Ages crew, more of a hard-rock meets free-jazz band called Highlife. No matter who you team him with, though, Sonny's outrageous approach to the guitar (he called himself, "a horn player with a really fucked up axe") cuts through.

Sonny died of a heart attack within less than a year of this show. We were lucky enough to catch him before that happened, though. Music from that show in a future post...

Sonny Sharrock, Dick Dogs
from Real Art Ways Jazz Festival, Hartford, CT, July 25, 1993.

way-back machine v12: Grateful Dead

...live at the World Music Theatre, Tinley Park, IL on this date in 1990...

As we mentioned yesterday, this show was Brent Mydland's last with the band.

We've chosen the Dead's cover of "The Weight" for today's download. It features Brent's last vocals with the band, singing the line, "...I gotta go but my friends can stick around".

A light certainly went out for the band with Brent's passing. There were some hot shows in the 90s as you might expect from a band that played together for that long, but they got spottier and spottier 'til Jerry kicked it, too. By the time of the band's last tour with Jerry in the summer of 1995 it seemed like they needed to take some time off or hang it up completely.

Grateful Dead, The Weight
from World Music Theatre, Tinley Park, IL, July 23, 1990

way-back machine v11: Grateful Dead

...live at the World Music Theatre, Tinley Park, IL on this date in 1990.

Posts are heavy-up lately on Dead-related stuff mainly 'cuz they toured so much in the summer months, we saw them a lot in those months, and we have a ton of recordings from those shows.

The World Music Theatre is the worst of the worst in amphitheatre design. High ceilings, boomy sound, built for the summer rock/pop concert season (which basically means cheaply and without care), as opposed to venues like the Performing Arts Center in Saratoga which is essentially the summer home for one of New York's orchestras...

In addition to being the first time this venue hosted the Dead it was also the Dead's last three shows with keyboard player Brent Mydland, who died a few days after this show at his home back in California. Overdose.

Our posts for today and tomorrow are going to be little tributes to Brent, who carried the band on his back more often than a lot of 'heads at the time were comfortable admitting. His fiery spirit certainly sparked Jerry's playing throughout the 80's and especially during the old man's return from his coma in 1986.

Brent's singing was rough at these shows. He was probably pretty smacked out and weary. For that reason we're not actually featuring a track with Brent singing lead. Instead, today's download is a track he contributed so much to over the years.

Grateful Dead, Feel Like a Stranger
from, World Music Theatre, Tinley Park, IL, July 22, 1990

Is this irony or dementia?

We all know the web is jam-packed with funny, bizarre, silly, sophmoric, inane, brilliant, inspired, insipid material. Some websites manage to be all of these things at once.

Brett Meisner's Rock and Roll Bad Boy website is one such site.

One can spend endless hours on his site only to come away confused and thrilled. One page in particular exemplifies Brett's unique worldview, something he alternately calls the "Meisner Manifesto" or, "The Hard Truth".

The Manifesto is actually a list of nine "truisms" which Meisner insists are based on both scientific and spiritual principles. These truisms are:

1. Music Does Not Sound Better On Pot. Asks Brett: "...what is the finally (sic) destination for musicians who smoke pot? Just ask Kurt Cobain, Elvis Presely and Buddy Holly. Oh, I forgot - they're all dead! Nuff said..."


2. Rap Music Is A Passing Fad. According to Brett, "...like a drunk party guest who can't find his car keys, rap music continues to overstay its welcome. Now calling itself "hip-hop," rap is trying to buy a new lease on life. I say let's end this charade once and for all..."


3. Hank Williams and Johnny Cash Were Not Cool. "...Believing that either of them made one iota of a contribution to rock and roll is like believing in Santa Claus past your 11th birthday..."


4. The CIA Killed Jimi Hendrix, Janis Joplin and Jim Morrison. Supporting evidence, "...I have received an number on anonymous documents that indicate that Hendrix may have been killed for being half white (unconfirmed), while Morrison was killed for being half black (confirmed)..."


5. Steely Dan is the Best Recorded Band in Music History. Not even really sure what this means but its as good an explanation as any: "...Hey just 'cause someone is good looking and intelligent, does that make them an asshole? David Hasselhoff is a genius in Germany, but he can't buy a fart in America! Give him a lazy eye and some webbed feet and they'll call him a genius!"


6. Technically, Peter Frampton was Never Famous. Apparently, "...what many of you don't know are the facts..." about Peter Frampton's supposed fame and Cameron Crowe's role in continuing the myth. Nor did we.


7. MTV Ruined Rock Music. OK, we'll give him this one.


8. Woodstock was a Farce. "Quick: Name one band from Woodstock that hasn't broken into your car and stolen your Blaupunk for crack money!" And all these years we thought it was the crackhead who live down the block! Turns out it was Richie Havens!
.

9. Napster Saved the Music Industry. Brett's argument being based on the fact that people who download free music create demand for legitimate store-bought product because they need the cover art to fully enjoy the experience.

Burning Dervish Vol One

We're hoping to roll out 2 or 3 mixes a month as we comb through our trove of music...this first collection really speaks to where we've been at for the better part of 2006 - lots of music from the Middle East, Africa, the Carribean and South America. There will probably be several compilations along these lines, especially given 1. that we've recently stepped into about 16GB of rare reggae and dub MP3s and 2. our eMusic "saved for later" download list is jam-packed with jems they continue to surface from around the world...As with our individual MP3 posts the link to download Burning Dervish Vol One will expire seven days from this post going up...Enjoy and let us know what you think).

1. Maduba (Crisis Creation), DXT, from Reanimator: Black Market Science. DXT, essentially the inventor of turntablism, laying down futuristic, apocalyptic, electronic dub. Produced by Bill Laswell.


2. Telegram Dub (African Postman), Burning Spear, from Living Dub, Vol. 2, the dub companion to Spear's classic Hail H.I.M.. It's one's chocolate to the other's peanut butter...


3. Im Ninalou, DJ Cheb I Sabbah, from, La Kahena. A Sufi, a Jew and a Berber walked into a bar...


4. Allegro, Sanjay Mishra, from, Blue Incantation. We originally picked this record up to catch the three tracks Jerry Garcia contributed to in what turned out to be some of his last sessions and then shrugged the record off as new age fluff. Coming back to it many years later we were really sucked in by some of Mishra's melodic guitar playing. Turns out Jerry's parts are the weakest of the record...


5. Exodus, Bob Marley, from, Dreams of Freedom: Ambient Translations of Bob Marley in Dub, one of our "desert island discs" of the 1990s and one of the best examples of that era's output of "ambient dub". Exodus and The Heathen are the stand-out tracks.


6. Water No Get Enemy, Fela Kuti, from Expensive Shit. Jamming defiant funk from the Kalkuta Republic.


7. In These Times, Errol Walker, from Lee "Scratch" Perry's Arkology box set. There are a million ways to get into Scratch Perry given that he has produced literally countless reggae and dub sides, but this box set might be the best way. Lots of notes and info to send you on your way...This guys talent is impossible to measure or describe.


8. Dance Mediterrane, Simon Shaheen & Qantara, from Blue Flame. Shaheen has made more "authentic" records but the playing on this record really legitimizes the fusion style.


9. Jah Works, The Gladiators, from Dreadlocks, the Time Is Now . This is such a deep record. Some serious spirit runs through the entire enterprise...


10. Roll Jordan Roll, Wingless Angels from Wingless Angels. A Keith Richards side project in which he recorded some Nyabinghi sessions at his home in Jamaica, laid in the most perfect bass and guitar lines and produced a rootsy, acoustic, trance of a record. Almost makes you wish Keith would quit his day job to follow his own muse more often. Really.


11. Dem a Come, The Abyssinians, from Arise. Deep roots and equisite melodies make this record...


12. Herbsman Shuffle, King Stitt & Andy Capp, from Tighten Up: Trojan Reggae Classics 1968-74. This track is from a 2-disc "best of" the Trojan series of Tighten Up compilations. Bad-ass throughout with lots of gems. Herbsman is one of our key tracks.


13. Mela Mela, Mahmoud Ahmed, from Ethiopiques, Vol. 6: Almaz. As of this writing there are 21(!) volumes in this series of Ethiopian music spanning traditional, tribal sounding music to modern Ethiopian music, which, from the late-60s thru mid-70s was all about soul, jazz and mellow funk. It is a thrill to listen to most of this stuff and Mahmoud Ahmed is widely held to be the premier practitioner of the sound.

Download Burning Dervish Vol 1 here. Check out the albums these tracks are from here.

way-back machine v9: Edie Brickell & the New Bohemians

Sullivan Stadium, Foxboro, MA, July 14, 1990...

Did every girl you knew in high school like this band or what?

We saw them open for the Grateful Dead at the old Sullivan Stadium a couple of years after the height of their popularity. Their big hit at this point was a cover of Dylan's "A Hard Rain's Gonna Fall" from the Born on the Fourth of July movie soundtrack. That seems funny for some reason now...

Anyway, let's stick with their real hit:

Edie Brickell & the New Bohemians, What I Am
from: Sullivan Stadium, Foxboro, MA, July 14, 1990

way-back machine v8: Grateful Dead

Franklin County Airport, Highgate, VT, on this date in 1994...

As was the case with many a late-era Dead show the goings-on around the show were much more interesting than the gig itself. The first of two years the band played up at Highgate, this was the first open-field show the band had played on the East Coast since a couple of Maine shows in '88. The vibe was terrific. "Old-school", as they say. Lots of camping in fields, bonfires, general craziness. Even the promoter (Jimmy Koplik) directing traffic and parking cars. The production looked great, too.

None of this is to say the show didn't have its moments, most of them did. Here's our highlight of the night:

Grateful Dead, Let it Grow
from Franklin County Airport, Highgate, VT, July 13, 1994

Ethiopian Soul-Jazz

Lots of people stumbled across this music in Jim Jarmusch's film, Broken Flowers. We didn't but nonetheless only came to it recently...

The reviewer on Amazon says it is, "reminiscent of Miles Davis's "In a Silent Way" paired with Cannonball Adderly and Roy Ayers". Yeah, ok, but throw in a side of Grant Green, too...All we c