Radical Transparency

(in case the other blogs need a friend)

Are These The Sex Pistols?

First, the original:

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Now, a reimagination:

I heard the Old Crow version first, maybe a year ago. It led off a mix that one of Lauren's best friends sent her. I found out about Alvin Robinson last week, when I remembered liking that old track 1 and went to look for it on Hype Machine. According to the internets, The Rolling Stones, The Coasters, and Taj Mahal have covered the song too. No word on The Sex Pistols.

The Old Beijing Roommates

Extraordinary talents, these two.

Cheers

One, last I heard, was racing planes in Reno.

The other just launched a totally awesome iPhone app. It features a panda in a bib. And makes it possible for anyone, regardless of language skills, to navigate Chinese menus and restaurant interactions like a pro.

Here's a song one of them recorded a few months ago. Anyone want to guess which one?

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Any Way You Feel

I'm still not sure how (or if) a wagon wheel rocks, but I love the microphone, the sideburns that don't fit the suit, and the shot of the ticket stand, the nodding head, and the empty carnival in the background.

That was one of many awesome covers that featured prominently in the muzfest last weekend.

And has anybody else noticed something of a southbound bias in musical train similes? There must be something that happens like a northbound train...

Just Beyond the Sky

Ben Sollee was playing cello with The Sparrow Quartet when I first heard him play.  Both the band and the audience spent the show seated quietly under unexpectedly bright and disorganized lighting in a university auditorium in Beijing.

Ben brought the Americans in the house to our feet when he ditched his bow and strummed us Bury Me With My Car.
 
He rocks a mean Sam Cooke too.

A Change Is Gonna Come is track 9 on Learning to Bend.

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The Boys Are Back in Town

Ran into The Spinto Band on a sidewalk by a big blue mailbox in the mushroom capital of the world today.  They were eating pastries and looking at recording studio space.  It was funny asking questions and having six people respond, rarely more than two voices at a time, gracefully, coherently.  They looked more like rockstars than I'd ever seen them.

This is the song they played to close out last summer's music festival.  It's not on an album.  I stole it from here.

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And Then She Takes Your Voice

Something about the cast of characters in this song...

Hungry women.  Saint Annie.  My best friend the doctor.  Sweet Melinda, the goddess of gloom.  The peasants.  The cops.  The boasting authorities.  The sergeant at arms.  My brother Carl, who left looking like a ghost.  No one to bluff.  Tom Thumb.

And, of course, since it's a cover of his song, Bob Dylan.

The song below is Nina Simone's version of Just Like Tom Thumb's Blues.  Originally, it's track 8 on Highway 61 Revisited.  In my opinion, Nina took a cool little poem and turned it into a fully bad ass song.

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Windshield Wipers Slapping Time

Freedom's just another word for nothing left to lose.

Really, Janis?

Or were The Dead on to something when they adjusted it?

Freedom's just another word for nothing left to do.

Great song, regardless of who's singing and how.

But.

There is one line that worries me:

But I'd trade all my tomorrows
For one single yesterday
To be holding Bobby's body next to mine

That's a scary state of mind.

Janis Joplin originally published Me and Bobby McGee as track 7 on Pearl.  The Grateful Dead version posted here is track 7 on the second disc of a four CD live album recorded in New York City in April 1971.

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