Category: Music

Frank Zappa’s record labels

Frank Zappa had two record labels in the late 1960s-early 1970s, Bizarre and Straight. In addition to his own and Mothers of Invention records, the labels released records by other artists. This included the first two Alice Cooper albums. Zapped was a sampler. Probably the best known is Captain Beefheart’s Trout Mask Replica. Here are some examples.

“It’s the blimp., Frank, it’s the blimp”
https://www.instagram.com/p/CQLpXlihxep/?utm_source=ig_web_copy_link

Los Lobos online concert May 5

Los Lobos is a great band. I’ve seen them seven times starting in 1993. I have enjoyed watching online concerts during the pandemic. They’re not the real thing but the prices are reasonable and support the artists. They’re still worth seeing. I’m looking forward to this one.

I got a doormat made from a ticket stub scan

Phunky Threads will make a doormat from your scan or photo of a ticket stub. I think they did a great job. The ticket was from Jason Isbell’s first solo tour after he left the Drive-By Truckers. Fletcher’s was a bar that only held a few hundred people. I saw an incredible Drive-By Truckers show there in 2003. That show is available here.

It got dirty and I got a second one in 2023. It looks great.

A collection of official James Brown videos

I was not a James Brown fan in the 1960s and 1970s. In the mid-1980s when I got a CD player, it was hard to find CDs to buy so I tried The CD of JB because I had read a favorable review of it. It was great. After that, there was a flood of excellent James Brown reissues and I bought most of them. I finally got to see him in concert in 1993. I’m sure it wasn’t as good a show as I would have seen 20 years earlier but it was still great. It was anachronistic – he had a big band and mostly played old songs but they were classics.

Brown is one of the most influential artists ever. I think he has more to do with today’s music than the Beatles, Stones, or Dylan.

I have added some official Brown videos from YouTube

This poster was for the 4 CD box set Star Time

Elliott Landy photos of the Band and Bob Dylan

This is an excellent article on Elliott Landy who took the great photos on the covers of Nashville Skyline and The Band. He has a web site.

I have autographed copies of several of his photos.

The Band cover photo was from a Kickstarter campaign for a book he did of photos of them.

The other Band photo was released with the Music From Big Pink deluxe edition.

The black and white photo is from Magnum which released editions on 6″ square prints. I have ordered the Nashville Skyline one.

The Magnum print

Also from Magnum

John Prine remembered one year after his death

John Prine died on April 7, 2020. I was fortunate enough to see him perform several times. I saw him at the Philadelphia Folk Festival in the early 1970s and remember that he sang “Please Don’t Bury Me” and “The Accident” before they were released on Sweet Revenge in 1973. I saw him at the Academy of Music around 1976 with Steve Goodman. They both performed solo with acoustic guitars and did the encore together. The last time I saw him was at Pier Six in Baltimore in 2011.

If you don’t know Prine, I would start with his first album John Prine from 1971. It has many of his best songs such as “Angel from Montgomery”, “Sam Stone” and Hello in There”. What a great singer and songwriter.

Monster (R.E.M. album)

Monster (1994) is a great album. Peter Buck’s loud electric guitar replaces the delicate folk-rock sound of their prior albums. A deluxe version was released in 2020.

‘Monster’: How R.E.M. Unleashed Their Inner Rock’n’Roll Beast

Songs about sports

The start of major league baseball season tomorrow has prompted me to post about songs about sports including those sung (being generous there) by athletes.

For baseball, I’m posting “Joe DiMaggio Done It Again” from 2000’s Mermaid Avenue Vol. II. Billy Bragg and Wilco took unpublished Woody Guthrie lyrics and set them to new music. The music for this song was written by Bragg and it is sung by Wilco’s Jeff Tweedy.

I saw DiMaggio at a baseball autograph show in Atlantic City around 1990. He was not memorable. There was a long list of stuff he wouldn’t sign which included Marilyn Monroe-related items and The DiMaggio Albums (2 book set). The books included commentaries by DiMaggio so I thought it was odd and disappointing that he wouldn’t sign them,

Obviously, the best-known baseball song is “Take Me Out to the Ballgame” but I’ll post about that another time

For cricket, I have to go with “Cricket” by the Kinks from 1973’s Preservation Act 1. I don[t know much about the sport but I have always liked the song.

For football, I’ll go with “The Super Bowl Shuffle” by the 1985 Chicago Bears. Fortunately, these Super Bowl champions were better at football than music.

For hockey, here’s “Penalty Box” by Dave Schultz who was the highly-penalized enforcer for the Philadelphia Flyers in the early 1970s. He holds the NHL record for most penalty minutes in a season. I doubt this song was played much outside of the Philadelphia area.

Basketball is represented by Cheech and Chong’s 1973 “Basketball Jones”. I also included the 1996 Space Jam version by Barry White and Chris Rock.

7/22/22 – several videos no longer available and I removed them