unfussy backbeats

 

Well now we're respected in society

We don't worry about the things that we used to be...

______________________________

        Last week I was sadly surprised to read that the Rolling Stones drummer Charlie Watts had died.

------------------------------- [excerpts from article in The Guardian] ---------------------------------------- With his limber stance, keen knowledge of jazz, and unruffled ability to make songs swing even when keeping the strictest time, Watts is regarded as one of the greatest -- and most stylish -- rock drummers of all time....

        Born in 1941, Watts was raised in Wembley, north-west London, and later the suburb of Kingsbury.  His first musical love was US jazz from the swing and bebop eras, drumming along with jazz records after getting his first kit in his mid-teens.  He later attended art school and became a graphic designer after graduation, playing in local bands on the side.

        In 1962 he joined Blues Incorporated, a linchpin band in the British rhythm and blues scene led by Alexis Korner, playing alongside the Cream bassist Jack Bruce and more, in a fluid lineup.  Through Korner he met Brian Jones, who would play at Blues Incorporated gigs, and they found regular fans in Jagger and Richards, who also ended up playing with the group.

Jagger, Richards and Jones soon formed their own group, the Rolling Stones, with Watts joining in 1963.  "It was another band to join, I was in about three of them," Watts later said....

        Always using a straightforward four-drum setup -- positively minimalist compared with the multi-instrument setups favoured by many rock groups -- he gave the Rolling Stones propulsive, unfussy backbeats on every one of their studio albums, beginning with their self-titled 1964 debut.  

"I don't like drum solos," he once said.  "I admire some people that do them, but generally I prefer drummers playing with the band.  The challenge with rock'n'roll is the regularity of it.  My thing is to make it a dance sound -- it should swing and bounce."

...The band went on to epitomise stadium rock'n'roll -- though Watts regarded them as a "blues band" -- scoring 13 UK No 1 albums including the critically adored likes of Let It Bleed, Sticky Fingers and Exile on Main Street.  Watts helped to power their high-energy world tours, playing with the group well into his  mid-70s -- his final tour was the two-year No Filter tour, beginning in 2017.

Alongside the Rolling Stones, Watts also played jazz in a series of groups over the years, including his own quintet and tentet, and Rocket 88, reuniting with Korner and Bruce in the late 1970s to play boogie-woogie....

...Other artists paying tribute include Robbie Robertson of The Band, who said:  "Charlie's drumming is powerful and unique.  His approach is entirely his own and helped shape the sound of rock'n'roll."  Paul Stanley of Kiss called Watts "one of the true timeless icons and the backbone of the Stones.  Hard to fathom the loss."

        Joan Jett said Watts was "the most elegant and dignified drummer in rock'n'roll.  He played exactly what was needed -- no more, no less.  He is one of a kind."  

Tom Morello of Rage Against the Machine called him "one of the greatest and most important architects of the music we love ... Rock'n'roll would not be rock'n'roll without the rhythm, the style, the vibe of this incredible  musician."  

Questlove, drummer with the Roots, called him "the heartbeat of rock'n'roll".

_________________________________

article title:

"Rolling Stones drummer Charlie Watts dies aged 80"

written by Ben Beaumont-Thomas

____________________________________

On You Tube, dance to "Respectable" by the Rolling Stones...!

Well now you're a pillar of society...

-30-

descent into darkness

 

Kurt Vonnegut, American novelist

1922 - 2007

book:  Prisoners of Time

written by Christopher Clark

reviewed by Andrew Anthony in

The Guardian

(August 10, 2021)

reader comments

___________________________

                           I'd recommend these three books in sequence to see how eerily familiar is America's possible descent into darkness:  

Defying Hitler by Sebastian Haffner; 

I Shall Bear Witness by Victor Klemperer; and 

My Opposition by Friedrich Kellner.  

        These are all diaries kept by ordinary, literate civilians and give a stunning insight into how it felt to live through the lies, propaganda, violence and horror that slowly, inexorably overwhelmed a once civilized population.  

And Biden seems unable or unwilling to get a voting rights act through Congress.  If he doesn't, and before November next year, I fear there's no way back.

_______________________________

                        Thank you for these recommendations.

___________________________

                   Trump isn't really an aspirational dictator, not at his age, just a poisonous old man, it is his sons I'm worried about....Heaven help the US, the world, if either of them gets elected.

____________________________

                       "There is a tragic flaw in our precious constitution, and I don't know what can be done to fix it.  This is it:  Only nut cases want to be president."

Kurt Vonnegut

------------------------- [end / Reader Comments]

__________________________________________

__________________________________________

On You Tube there is a video titled

"Day of Rage:  How Trump Supporters Took the U.S. Capitol."

uploader:  The New York Times.

It's about a half hour:  it takes you inside the events of January 6th--it's pretty interesting and evocative of the experience.

One comment under the video reads:

---------------------- See what ONE conman can do with a bunch of delusional people?  And those who know me thought I was over doing it when I pointed out that was exactly how Hitler did what he did. ---------------------- [end of comment]

Congressman Paul Gosar, R-Arizona

Congressman Matt Gaetz, R-Florida

and Senator Ron Johnson, R-Wisconsin

appear in the video, saying stuff like, "it wasn't anything, it was just tourists visiting the capitol" ... these guys are gaslighting the American people.  

If William F. Buckley were here, he would kick these people and others like them out of the Republican Party, pronto.

-30-  

a harmless lark

 

book:  Prisoners of Time

written by Christopher Clark

reviewed by Andrew Anthony in

The Guardian

(August 10, 2021)

reader comments

___________________________________

                                I think you are right.  I think there is a widespread tendency in the West, where we take our freedoms of thought and expression, and freedoms of political action for granted, to fail to recognise and grasp the experience of the lived history of vast numbers of people not from the West, who have never experienced democracy, 

or what passes for democracy, who have experienced instability and upheaval that make even the simple things of day to day living precarious and uncertain, and who have been actively discouraged and where they will know the personal penalties for dissent.

Most people don't want to put their heads above the parapet but prefer to learn to live quietly.

I have a friend who was born, went to school, worked, and lived in the USSR, until its demise.

Still, 30 years later, my friend is unwilling to engage in political discussion.  Not because they can't or has no thoughts, but because the habit of keeping one's head down, maintaining stability of home, income, life, still persists.

I sometimes say to them that expressing thoughts now won't lead to the gulag!

___________________________________

                        This person said that "most people want stability", without offering evidence.

Most Western societies no longer have a cultural memory of lawless anarchy and the horrors that attend it.  The breakdown of trade.  Hunger and famine.  The countryside abandoned to outlaws and private armies.  Running mob violence in the streets.

This is what the absence of powerful authority means to much of the world.  Forfeiting a hefty measure of freedom in exchange for the security of a tyrant is a tradeoff humans have proven willing to make over and over again.

______________________________

                                   But my reply to that and to others who have made similar points is that it's democracies that abhor war, not strongmen who frequently unleash war or maintain war.  

Furthermore I wouldn't call them stable even at peace.  

The arbitrary nature of a strongman's rule cannot lead to a good night's sleep, in my view.  

What if your primary school kids unwittingly let slip an innocent but open-to-interpretation remark that was made at home?...What if the factory boss doesn't give the promotion deserved?  How do you refuse to do something unsavoury on the orders of the boss?  

Freedom for many U.K. citizens is more recent than many know.  

My grandad as a property-less working class man didn't get the vote until 1918 when he was in his thirties after four years on the western front.  

Authoritarian regimes are never really stable and they are always, always deeply sinister, whether it's Gaddafi, Putin, Xi or Lukashenko.  Real people cannot live an authentic fulfilling life under such conditions.

__________________________________________

                            Indeed.  And I long predicted trouble when the last of the WW2 generation died out:  the people who knew what it felt like to be hungry, cold and frightened and still had the stink of burnt-out cities and decomposition in their nostrils.  

Three entire generations have now grown up - in the west at least - in societies with material plenty and the rule of law, so can't conceive of a state where neither of those exist.  

This makes them ready to flirt with authoritarians 

who promise to keep them in the manner to which they have become accustomed, because blowing up the system by installing a Trump [Donald in America] or a Johnson [Boris in UK] seems like a harmless lark which can't possibly have long-term consequences for them personally.  

            It's no accident that for four decades, until the year before last, Spain was the only country in Europe not to have a significant far-Right populist party.  

People who had grown up under the Franco dictatorship knew that such regimes are far from pleasant to live under and intrude into your life in all manner of ways:  

for example, never going to law with someone who is a Party member if you aren't, because you'll lose your case for sure, or having your salary mulcted without your consent to put up another statue to the Supreme Leader, "funded by voluntary donations".  But they'll only find that out when it's too late....

______________________________________

                            I'll be buying this book and thinking of aspiring dictators like Trump while I read it.  Because I don't think America is over its fascist problem yet.

________________________________

                                         Nor is the UK.

____________________________

                              Because I don't think America is over its fascist problem yet.

In truth the USA has had a 'fascist problem' lurking just beneath the surface virtually since the day the nation was founded (although it's obviously gone by different names).  It's unlikely to disappear any time soon...

_______________________________

                         The whole human race has got a 'fascist problem'.  Luckily, millions of individuals who have naturally fascistic thought patterns don't join fascist organisations or seek power, they just have an outlook on life that accords with fascism.  Unfortunately, many of those millions don't even realise that they are fascistic in outlook, they just think it is normal.

This is why so many are willing to consent to the rise of a powerful orator who 'talks like them' and 'says it how it is'.  

Fascism is a problem of the human condition, not only America.  The biggest problem is the normalisation of the Fascistic mind frame that runs through all cultures.  The war against Fascism is never ending and takes constant vigilant awareness of what it is and where it comes from to prevent it from defeating democracy.

Fascism is capable of insidiously usurping democracy, in the name of democracy.  That is a massive threat to America itself.

____________________________

                           It's all but baked in.

----------------------------------------------------------------------------

-30-

loot

 

U.S. President Nixon trip to China, 1972

Book:  Prisoners of Time

written by Christopher Clark

reviewed by Andrew Anthony in

The Guardian

(August 10, 2021)

reader comments

__________________________________

                         I've mostly thought that there are two main factors at work in China.  One is that the country has never experienced anything remotely resembling democracy and it is certainly plausible that many may have a fear, gratefully encouraged by the government, of the instability it might bring.  

The other, of course, is that there has been a huge improvement in living standards for most people in the country over the last four decades.  The obvious question is, to what degree did that improvement depend on the appalling tyranny of the government - could it have happened in a democracy.  

I suspect many Chinese think not.  

But those two factors are intertwined because the government has to keep the economic plates spinning at all costs to maintain their otherwise non-existent legitimacy and must fear that environmental and world economic factors could destroy it, hence their need for ever increasing levels of tyranny, along with constantly stoked nationalism as a distraction.

________________________________

                                  "And why do so many who should know better go along with the unhindered concentration of power in one person?"

I think the short (and overly simplistic) answer is a combination of genetics and laziness.

Humanity has been genetically programmed to follow alpha behaviours (it confers organisational advantage and thus has been bred in) and they can't be bothered to think about difficult things, so they'd rather outsource it to someone who sounds like they know what they're talking about.

Step forward the charismatic "strong man" type.  With inevitable consequences.

___________________________

                             'Step forward the charismatic strong man type.  With inevitable consequences.'

A succinct summing up of a conclusion reached by Plato, Aristotle and Polybius.  Two millennia later we are still struggling to deal with it.

___________________________________

                                                 I think most people do want stability, largely as a matter of individual psychology - most people are more comfortable with the familiar and the predictable, even where that may be authoritarian and even though they don't like it, because they can then know how to navigate their lives through the authoritarianism.

This is particularly true IMO in those countries which have a history of instability and uncertainty, and where the population know from long experience how to survive authoritarian governments, and where day to day life for the majority can feel very precarious financially.  Yes they do consent, but not because they want to, but because they have no alternative if they want a quiet life and to see their families survive.

People want the certainty of knowing they have a home, a job, and income, however paltry it is.  People will put up with all the oppression and indignities, if that is not threatened.  Or to put it another way, they will not be inclined to upset the status quo for fear of losing what little they may currently have.  Hence the ability of countries like Belarus and Russia to persist with authoritarianism.

                    Lukashenko, for instance, will know that for all the protest of dissidents, so long as the state continues to pay pensions to older people and offer certainty of homes and jobs, there is unlikely to be any major kick back sufficient to topple him, and therefore he can repress with impunity.

        It is quite striking, that in comparison with the west, how apolitical most people are in Eastern Europe and how 'accommodating' they are of corrupt and failing politicians.  Having lived for many years as part of the USSR, even now people's memories, including folk memories, of how to survive, are very strong and persistent.  Including being unwilling to even talk privately in their own homes about political matters.

Of course, this is not the whole story.  It does not explain why some people enthusiastically embrace authoritarianism, for example.  But the inertia generated by the need to survive in large parts of the population, does go a long way, IMO, to explain why authoritarian regimes persist, and why they are able to find the space to prosper and extend their power.

__________________________________

                                                 "Economic stagnation is fairly strongly linked to the rise of reactionary ideas."  

And we've had 40 years of a system that prides itself on making normal people's lives feel insecure while siphoning off the loot to a tiny elite.

***********************************************

-30-

hours are like diamonds

 

Charlie Watts, the Rolling Stones' drummer

-----------------------------------------------------------------

The Guardian

book review of

Christopher Clark's Prisoners of Time

review by Andrew Anthony

another reader comment:

________________________________

                                     An endlessly fascinating subject.  And why do so many who should know better go along with the unhindered concentration of power in one person?  

Even last week the Economist published a letter from an American man complaining about the paper's critical coverage of increasingly authoritarian China.  This person said that "most people want stability," without offering evidence.  

But does authoritarianism give us stability?  

I think the opposite.  

It gives us the unbearable stress of living in an arbitrary regime where even the most lowly don't know the boundaries and can be unwittingly undone by crossing them.  

Democracy is messy and really annoying but if the rules are adhered to it offers the chance of fulfillment.  

For me the scariest thing right now is the number of people in democratic countries who seem willing to bend the rules to ensure continued power right through to those who would countenance authoritarian take over.  

They range from the cowardly to the downright evil and dangerous and they are out there.

-30-

minority rule?

 

more reader comments on the Guardian article

_______________________________

______________________

                          Nazis, communists, or fascists appeal at most to 30 - 40 % of the population.  They wouldn't get an absolute majority in a functional democracy.  Hitler never got such a majority in a free election; he gained power through flaws in the political system and a rigged referendum (sounds familiar?).   

Any political system that allows a party to gain an absolute majority on a minority of the vote is in danger of being taken over by extremists.  In this regard, the UK and the US, with their FPTP system, are accidents waiting to happen.

________________________________________

                           Agree completely, especially about the voting systems in the UK and US - both completely out of date and undemocratic.  

Having investigated numerous industrial safety incidents etc., over the years I've come to the conclusion that many of the dramatic things that one sees are what I would call 'Black Swan' events, i.e. they come out of nowhere and bite you on the bum.  

It's only when you review the incident that you think, 'well, that was obvious.'  It's the same with fascism, one saw the signs, ignored them, ignored them again and then 1933, or in the case of the US, 2016 and again in 2019.  The signs were there and were ignored.

____________________________________

                                                          And yet the history of Athenian democracy suggests that in free votes an absolute majority will support violently radical and morally reprehensible proposals at times of crisis / panic.

_______________________________

                                In relation to Blaskowitz it sounds like an example of the Creeps, Cynics and Crazies theory of organisations.  The Creeps get control by telling the Crazies (who are always in the majority) what they want to hear, but it's the Cynics who make an organisation run.  The trouble is that the Crazies' support for the Creeps limits the Cynics' ability to stop the Creeps.

-30-

brilliance and greatness and jackboots, oh my

 

"Berlin Street Scene" by Ernst Ludwig Kirchner

On August 10th The Guardian published an article about a new history book.

The book:  Prisoners of Time, by Christopher Clark

The review is written by Andrew Anthony.

some reader comments:

_______________________________

                                   What is more interesting is why civil organs such as judges were appropriated into suspending the Rule of Law and hence to look the "other way".

One of the most fatal errors of the Weimar Republic was not carrying out, from its very earliest years, a gradual but comprehensive clean-out of the German judiciary and civil service which it had inherited from the Kaiser.  

For the sake of continuity and not rocking the boat the great majority of judges in 1930 had also been in place before 1918, and exercised their authority with quite scandalous partiality, far-Right terrorists routinely being acquitted or given derisory sentences for crimes which would lead their far-Left equivalents to the guillotine or life imprisonment.  

        This culture of one-sided impunity was instrumental in bringing about the Republic's collapse in 1931-32; so it's profoundly alarming to see something very similar now in place in the United States, where it seems to be a given that if you're an ex-President or one of his senior associates, then gross abuse of public office and attempted armed overthrow of the state are entirely understandable and no cause whatever for further action.  

        This is very dangerous territory to be getting into, and future generations may come to view January's attack on the Capitol as Trump's Beer-Hall Putsch, an apparently-farcical episode which in fact provided many useful lessons on how to do it better next time.

____________________________________

                                To some extent a 'just get on with it tendency' helps would-be dictators cement their grip on states.  There was a time when the nazis were not universally applauded in Germany.  To some, they represented the future for a Germany badly affected by the First World War.  

To others they represented a bulwark against soviet communist expansionism.  

But to some others, those either disinterested or who felt themselves powerless, it was just another development to be accommodated, and from which to 'make the best of a bad hand'.  Those who would attend rallies, etc, so that they wouldn't stand out from their neighbours, until everything became normalised and habitual.

To a degree some see that tendency in Johnson's UK where moves to reduce the opportunity to challenge the state are underway.  It's not nazism, but it could possibly be the start of a slippery slope.

A sobering thought:  when concentration camps were evacuated as the war in Europe drew to a close, civilian populations feared that the camp inmates would escape and murder everyone because they were anti social elements who had been locked away for the public good.  

Many saw the deprivations as being what the inmates deserved.  

Such was the power of the propaganda and the implicit trust in the state to know how best to protect the people.  It took some time for ordinary Germans to realise how they had been deceived.  

___________________________

                          Fascism is essentially one long hard-luck story; of how naturally superior people were somehow brought low by their inferiors, through weight of numbers and/or treachery within their own ranks, but must now straighten their backs and get even with the dirty rotters by whatever means are necessary.  

The best definition that I've ever come across of this diffuse and often-puzzling phenomenon is "The revolt of the losers".  Self-pity is intrinsic to it.

________________________

                                         It's also why some countries seemed in the 20th century - indeed in some cases still seem - to have a natural inclination towards fascism whereas others don't.  

On the one hand you have the reduced-circumstances one like Hungary or Poland or Spain which were once a great deal bigger and more important but fell upon hard times; while there were also the frustrated-expectations ones like Germany, Italy and Japan which aspired to greatness but believed that they were being held back by various malign conspiracies against them.  

But others appeared pretty well immune to it.  Ireland was the only Catholic country in Europe not to have gone Fascist by 1940, which was of course partly because its disgruntled national minority had been segregated off into a statelet of its own, but also because of the sheer implausibility of the lost-greatness narrative.  

Eoin O'Duffy and his Blueshirts yelling 'Make Ireland great again!" were figures of fun precisely because everyone knew that it never had been great, and moreover that if the Ireland of 1935 wasn't too brilliant the Ireland of 1835 had been a great deal worse.

Anyway, the United States and Britain now seem irrevocably to have joined the lost-greatness countries:  so expect some interesting times ahead as they flail around trying to recreate a past that never was.

____________________________________

                                             The storming of the US Capitol in January is a clear sign that the threat of aggressive right-wing populism is not yet over in America....

  

-30-

...or, bring your leader to us

 

The Washington Post had an article --- a highly skeptical one --- about UFOs, yesterday.

UFO Mania Is Out of Control.  Please Stop.

by Joel Achenbach

------------------ [excerpt] ------------- The lack of resolution to the UFO debate appears to be built into the inquiry.  The subject is interesting only to the extent that the phenomena under scrutiny remain mysterious --- and therefore outside the normal boundaries of logic, journalism and science.

__________________________________________

some of the Reader Comments:

^  The real aliens are just kicking back while their drones survey the situation and scare the humans.

^  Aliens made him write this to throw us off the scent.

^  "We have come for Donald, his mission is complete.  He has destroyed all common sense and intelligence in this place, the United States.......we will drop him in the land of China next....."

^  Maybe the weird things we have observed are semi-autonomous probes.

^  I hope one of them is NOT my ex-mother-in-law.

^  When is the last time you tried to talk to ants, and why would we?  Sure, a few scientists might want to, but most people find ants irrelevant or irritating.

We are the ants on the surface of the planet.

        That "they" (if these aliens do exist)  would want to communicate with humanity might not be reasonable thinking.  What would any very, very advanced civilization gain?  Can we, with our limits, even understand anything they are or want?  Do they even have goals or wants as we understand the concepts?

        We don't know anything about these things.

        Everything else is the same thinking:  "I see lightning, must be the gods.  I just proved I am right."

        We don't know anything, of any sort, about these things.

^  Extremely well thought out article.  However, I don't necessarily agree that "UFOs are a distraction".  For me, the idea of it all is more of an escape.  Much like the movies I watch, the books I read, the games I play, the music I listen to, pondering the possibility of other civilizations existing beyond ours is a breath of fresh air for me.  

        In fact, this recent "flap" has been the catalyst for some truly amazing conversations of late.  Then again, I approach the subject from a place of hope and not one of fear.  I'd like to think if anything could bring us all together, it'd be something altogether not us.

Either way, great job here.

^  It took a mere 120 years for us to go from powered flight to sending a semi-autonomous probe to another planet.  That is a blink of an eye, really, on the time scale of our galaxy.  We did it, it is completely plausible that someone sent a probe to our solar system.

An AI-based probe solves the problem of super long space flights.  It just turns on and phones home when it arrives. ... There is no green tentacled aliens in there driving.

I don't have the answer.  I just think that this is an important scientific problem.  And we should devote resources to observation and cataloguing of these things.  It is the first step to finding out what they are.

The data does not make any sense.  Which is a GREAT thing in science.  Let's gather some more data and figure this out.

___________________________________

-30-

over my head

 

---------------------- [excerpt from Life, by Keith Richards with James Fox] ------------------------------- 

                          I grew up listening to really good music, including a little bit of Mozart and Bach in the background, which I found very over my head at the time, but I soaked it up.  

I was basically a musical sponge.  

And I was just fascinated by watching people play music.  

If they were in the street I'd gravitate towards it, a piano player in the pub, whatever it was.  

My ears were picking it up note for note.  

Didn't matter if it was out of tune, there were notes happening, there were rhythms and harmonies, and they would start zooming around in my ears.  

It was very like a drug.  

In fact a far bigger drug than smack.  I could kick smack; I couldn't kick music.  One note leads to another, and you never know quite what's going to come next, and you don't want to.  It's like walking on a beautiful tightrope.

-30-

jukebox jumpin' with records

 

St. Louis, Missouri, in the 1940s when Chuck Berry lived there during his teenage years

"I made records for people who would buy them.  No color, no ethnic, no political--I don't want that, never did."

~  Chuck Berry

        "Back In The U.S.A." is another one of those jubilant songs from rock's early era that I first heard in the form of a cover version.  August 1, 1978 Linda Ronstadt's single "Back In The USA" was released -- from her album titled Living in the USA.

        I heard it, and felt that it was great -- and then I had to discover Chuck Berry and all his music, and he was the writer of that song -- released in 1959 on Chess Records, it was a hit for him then, and again for Ronstadt 19 years later.

        What was most surprising and exciting to me when I heard the Chuck Berry original recording was the presence of a sort of chorus of voices singing behind and against the main lyric, going

Uh-huh-huh,

Hoo  -  hah!

and

Uh-huh-huh,

Yeah-yeah-yeah-yeah

or

Uh-huh-huh,

Oh  -  yeah!

This added component is like a party:  it expands the song's energy and deepens its groove and mystery; love it.

_____________________________________

You-Tube it --

There's a video on m.youtube in adblock, uploaded by

PowerBigMeat

that sounds really good --

and <PLAY>

_________________________________

-30-

oh well-oh well, I feel so good today

 

We just touched ground on an international runway,

Jet propelled back home from overseas to the U.S.A.

New York, Los Angles, oh! - how I yearned for you

Detroit, Chicago, Chattanooga, Baton Rouge

How I long just to be at my home back in ol' St. Lou!

Did I miss the skyscrapers, did I miss the long freeway?

From the coast of California to the shores of the Delaware Bay

You can bet your life I did, till I got back to the U.S.A.

[instrumental]

Looking hard for a drive-in, searching for a corner café

Where hamburgers sizzle on the open grill night and day

Yeah - and the jukebox jumpin' with records like in the U.S.A.

Well, I'm so glad I'm livin' in the U.S.A.

Yes I'm so glad I'm livin' in the U.S.A.

Anything you want, we got it right here in the U.S.A.

I'm so glad!

(I'm so glad!)

I'm so glad!

(I'm so glad!)

...

_________________________________

Using a computer or device of your choice, listen to the record

"Back In The U.S.A."

by Linda Ronstadt

(On m.youtube in adblock, a video of this song uploaded by

JMEKJDH

has Good Sound.)

-30-

all we've got to do is persevere

 

"Tumbling Dice" is a song from the Rolling Stones' Exile on Main St. album.

        They recorded the songs in France.

        ---------------------------- [excerpt from Life, by Keith Richards] -------------------------------------------------------------------------- We looked at studios in Cannes and elsewhere, reckoned up how much money the French were going to suck out of us.  Nellcote had a large basement and we had our own mobile studio.  The Mighty Mobile, as we called it, was a truck with eight-track recording machines that Stu had helped to put together.  

We'd thought of it quite separately from any plan to move to France.  It was the only independent mobile recording unit around.  

We didn't realize when we put it together how rare it was----soon we were renting it out to the BBC and ITV because they only had one apiece....

        So one day in June it trundled through the gates and we parked it outside the front door and plugged in.  I've never done any different since.  When you've got the equipment and the right guys, you don't need anything else in terms of studios....

        The basement in Nellcote was big enough, but it was divided into a series of bunkers.  Not a great deal of ventilation----hence "Ventilator Blues."  The weirdest thing was trying to find out where you'd left the saxophone player.  Bobby Keys and Jim Price moved around to where they could get their sound right----mostly standing with their backs to the wall at the end of a narrow corridor, where Dominique Tarlé took one of his pictures of them with microphone cables snaking away around the corner.  

Eventually we ended up painting the microphone cable to the horn section yellow.  If you wanted to talk to the horns, you followed the yellow cable until you found them.  You wouldn't know where the hell you were.  It was an enormous house.  Sometimes Charlie would be in a room, and I'd have to tramp a quarter of a mile to find him.  But considering that it was basically a dungeon, it was fun to work there.

        All the characteristics of that basement were discovered by the other guys.  For the first week or so we didn't know where Charlie was set up because he'd be trying different cubicles every night.  Jimmy Miller encouraged him to try down the end of the corridor, but Charlie said, I'm half a mile down the damn road, it's too far away, I need to be closer.  

So we had to check out every little cubicle.  

You didn't want to add electronic echo unless you had to; you wanted natural echo, and down there you found some really weird ones.  I played guitar in a room with tiles, turning the amp round and pointing it at the corner of the room to see what got picked up on the microphone.  I remember doing that for "Rocks Off" and maybe "Rip This Joint."  

But as weird as it was to record there, especially at the beginning, by the time we were into it, within a week or two, it was totally natural.  There was no talk amongst the band or with Jimmy Miller or the engineer Andy Johns, "what a weird way to make a record."  No, we've got it.  All we've got to do is persevere.

        We would record from late in the afternoon until five or six in the morning, and suddenly the dawn comes up and I've got this boat.  Go down the steps through the cave to the dockside; let's take Mandrax to Italy for breakfast.  We'd just jump in, Bobby Keys, me, Mick, whoever was up for it.  

Most days we would go down to Menton, an Italian town just inside France by some quirk of treaty making, or just beyond it to Italy proper.  

No passport, right past Monte Carlo as the sun's coming up with music ringing in our ears.  

Take a cassette player and play something we've done, play that second mix.  

Just pull up at the wharf and have a nice Italian breakfast.  

We liked the way the Italians cooked their eggs, and the bread.  And with the fact that you had actually crossed a border and nobody knew shit or did shit about it, there was an extra sense of freedom.  We'd play the mix to the Italians, see what they thought.  If we hit the fishermen at the right time, we could get red snapper straight off the boats and take it home for lunch. // end - excerpt.  

{Life   

Back Bay Books - 2010}

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On You Tube type in

tumbling dice, linda ronstadt

and listen to her excellent cover of this Rolling Stones song.

(The one uploaded by "Linda Ronstadt" has good sound.)

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Rock and Roll 101

 

When I listened to Linda Ronstadt's version of "That'll Be The Day" I used to think, "Who's Charlie Stark?"

But there is no Charlie Stark -- the lyrics say,

When Cupid shot his dart

He shot it at your heart...

That's where I would get sidetracked.

Both versions of that song are very rhythmic and bouncy--I like 'em all...Buddy Holly's unmistakable vocals sound so pure--like a midnight dream.

        Linda Ronstadt's band is in the '70s rock groove -- their track sounds like you're at a rock-and-roll lounge --

it's loungier, and scroungier.

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Today's song is;

on You Tube, type in

tumbling dice, rolling stones

and <PLAY>.

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learning stuff backwards

 

I was in college when I first heard Linda Ronstadt's cover version of the Buddy Holly song, "That'll Be The Day."  I said to a friend of mine Kevin McNamara, who was a musician, "That is a great song, I love that!"  He replied that it was a Buddy Holly song.  I don't think I really knew from "covers" in those days, until he mentioned it.

Kevin McNamara.  (Approximately half of all men in the state of Massachusetts and especially Boston are named that.  Seems like it, anyway.

        It's like the name John Smith, or Jose Rodriguez.)

Kevin played guitar and sang, & wrote songs.  One evening I heard someone singing a Bob Dylan song in the stairwell of the dorm where I lived freshman year, so I followed the sound, and there he was.

I guess I did know that Peter, Paul & Mary had recorded a version of Bob Dylan's "Blowin' In The Wind".  So I sort of learned about cover versions gradually as I encountered more music.

About a year later, listening to a bunch of Rolling Stones albums on loan to me from the apartment building manager (a law student), I heard the song "Not Fade Away."

        I remember excitedly informing somebody, "Listen to this Rolling Stones song, it's great!"  I start playing "Not Fade Away" and was swiftly informed -- 'that's a Buddy Holly song.  The Rolling Stones just covered it.'

So, a lot of the great early rock and roll songs, I discovered through cover versions.  Even Chuck Berry's "Maybelline" -- the first time I heard it was from a band called The Jaguars, playing in Cambridge.  Similar to when I heard "Not Fade Away" and "That'll Be The Day" -- I thought it was something new.  I asked the band's lead singer during their break what was the name of that last song, and did he write it.

        He loved that.

        (to his band-mate) -- "She thought we wrote Maybelline!"

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And now, You-Tube Linda Ronstadt's record of "That'll Be The Day" and <PLAY>.

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