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Here's a suggested study for climate change scientists:  Forget CO₂ for a moment. It seems reasonable (if not axiomatic) that global cloud coverage should track global temperature rises. More heat = more water vapor = more clouds. Is this testable?

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Here's the sort of old school blues that Sixty loves:

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If that song is familiar, the following cover should provide some clues.

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Zepparella guitarist, Gretchen Menn, has her own webpage. She's quite accomplished and is from a musical family. She used to fly commercial jets. I don't think there's any doubt whether she can read music.

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That song is called "Oleo Strut."  Can you just imagine churning butter? 

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I remember seeing the Wilson sisters when that song* came out:

I wonder what they thought about playing for a crowd of teenaged boys?

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*Heart's drummer stole that basic 4/4 drum beat (with bass drum triplets) from John Bonham's Achilles Last Stand.

Full, misheard lyrics after the jump

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Grunge owed bands like Husker Du an awful lot. The Minneapolis bands, the SST bands, and the L.A. punk bands who thrived in the '80's simply never got on the public's radar like Grunge bands did. The bands knew this. Kurt Cobain called the Meat Puppets a favorite band and covered their songs; the  Chili Peppers -- who dedicated "Blood Sugar Sex Magic" to Mike Watt -- knew this. Hell, Sonic Youth featured a voice recording of Watt in their 1988 "Day Dream Nation."

I met Mike Watt more than once. The first time was in the summer of 1991 in Zurich. My girlfriend asked him what was new in music and he said "Everybody's listening to Nirvana." We were like "Nirvana who?" A few months later everything changed. So I've always carried this little bit of snobery regarding Grunge. Why weren't people excited about Grunge excited about The Replacements? About Husker Du?

I think it was the dissonance.
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From the YouTube comments:

Bob Mould predicting the creation of Internet... killer lyrics.

Lyrics after the jump

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Lady Gaga's old Zeppelin cover band:

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Lady Gaga made a great appearance with Metallica at tonight's Grammys.

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The song expresses a very male and very teenaged angst.

From the Wiki:

Kidd and the Pirates' finest moment might have been the powerful song "Shakin' All Over", which features memorable opening guitars and solo from Joe Moretti,^[2] and reached number one in the UK singles charts in 1960. The song and the group's proto-power trio line-up both made a strong impression on the Who, who would cover it in their 1970 album Live at Leeds, whose CD liner notes proclaim the original to be the UK's best pre-Beatles rock single. Canada's The Guess Who reached #1 with a cover version in early 1965. It was covered again in 1984 by the California band "Pegasus" with Tedd Armstrong and Steve Caton on their "Pegasus Takes Flight" EP. Music critics Roy Carr and Tony Tyler would later write that "Shakin' All Over" was the second-ever genuine British rock classic, following Cliff Richard's "Move It".

Heh. The blurb doesn't mention that Pete Townshend said that they had to do the cover because, in the early days of The Who, concert fans always confused them with The Guess Who, and demanded to hear the song.

Here is the 1965 The Guess Who version:

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Guess who's still not in the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame?

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Iggy Pop's first commercial album with The Stooges. Iggy was inspired by The Doors and was even signed by the same label, Elektra Records. The cover art was an homage to The Doors' first album:

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I think the guitarist was ahead of his time with that technique. Also, Dick Clark appears at the end.

From Wiki:

By 1969, the Count Five had broken up, but their memory was immortalized in a 1972 essay by rock journalist Lester Bangs, entitled "Psychotic Reactions and Carburetor Dung." In the essay, Bangs credited the band for having released several later albums (after Psychotic Reaction): Carburetor Dung, Cartesian Jetstream, Ancient Lace and Wrought-Iron Railings, and Snowflakes Falling On the International Dateline — each displaying an increasing sense of artistry and refinement. However none of these subsequent albums actually existed except in Bangs' own imagination. link

Lester Bangs was overrated. But, he was memorably portrayed by the late Philip Seymour Hoffman in Almost Famous.

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From 1981:

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The music for the song was recorded a decade earlier, intended to be part of "Goats Head Soup." But the song lacked something then (lyrics, according to Jagger) and was only finished for 1981's "Tattoo You."  The sax solo was added then too.

BTW, That's not Keith Richards playing guitar on "Waiting For A Friend;" it's Mick Taylor -- the forgotten Stone -- the one who just happened to be along during the band's peak (he replaced Brian Jones but quit in 1974). Taylor was not credited for "Waiting On A Friend" and ended up suing the Glimmer Twins and winning.

Other related trivia: In the beginning of the video, Mick Jagger is waiting for Keith Richards in a doorway. The building is the same one made famous earlier on the cover of Led Zeppelin's album "Physical Graffiti:"

I remember when that video first came out and was played to death on MTV.  Rewatching it, I had the exact same reaction I had then: look how ashen Keith Richards' complexion is.

That man will outlive us all.

"Algorithm can create a new Van Gogh or Picasso in just an hour"

"The algorithm was given this photo of buildings, left, and a copy of Vincent Van Gogh’s “The Starry Night.” In about an hour it taught itself to mimic Van Gogh’s style, and apply it to the photo of the buildings."

"Canadian Artist Adds Pop to Thrift Store Paintings, Ups Value"

Do you have a favorite?

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Link in case the video doesn't load

The video is both grainy and blurry, but I'd never seen it before. I like it because The Who are clearly spoofing the whole lip synching trend then so prevalent. Well, at least Moon is.

"I Can't Explain" was The Who's first hit song written by Pete Townshend, and appeared 50 years ago this month. The song was inspired by The Kinks' "You Really Got Me."  Said Townshend (later):

I was driving...I heard "I Can't Explain" on the radio. I thought wow! I've got a commission...I've got a patron...this is ART!

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That's the original 1964 version which languished until a producer added (without Simon's or Garfunkel's knowledge)* faux "live applause," electric guitar and bass, and drums. But those changes got the public's attention and the immortal song climbed the charts 50 years ago.

The original version above has a sort of underlying purity; it's not an "unplugged" version of "Sound of Silence." The popular version was a studio creation -- much the same way that The Rolling Stones put together "It's Only Rock And Roll (But I Like It)." link  
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*Paul Simon was horrified when he first heard the remixed version after its release. The problem was that the original recording's tempo was uneven, and the studio musicians had to impose one. There's a point in the remixed song -- right about at the line "and the people bowed and prayed" where the drummer sort of stutters and resets the tempo. I find this whole story ironic in view of Columbia Records using the same studio musicians for the overdub that they used for Bob Dylan's "Like a Rolling Stone" (sans Al Kooper). It was Kooper who famously couldn't keep the tempo in that song, forever giving it that characteristic "leading from behind" organ signature. 

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[Continued-in-part from my previous KLEM post]

Speaking of Joni Mitchell's song "The Circle Game," I think it anticipated the following scene in "Mad Men" in every important way:


Mad Men: The Carousel from ray3c on Vimeo.

Here's the Joni Mitchell song, "The Circle Game:"

Link in case the video doesn't load 

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I like the video montage of the Beats:

 
Canned Heat - On The Road Again from Rimbowarrior on Vimeo.

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Love that song!  There's just nothing bad about it.

Over at the Wiki, I found an interesting quote from Dave Marsh:

'Good Lovin'' all by itself is enough to dispel the idiotic notion that rock and roll is nothing more than white boys stealing from blacks. link

What's up with that?

It turns out that "Good Lovin'" was a remake of an original:

Just what is it that makes the Young Rascals' version so much better?  Ironically, I think it's the "call and response." YMMV
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Other things I noticed: Tom Dowd produced the Young Rascals' version. I chastised what Dowd did to my favorite Allman Brothers' song "In Memory Of Elizabeth Reed" back here.

Notice that the drummer holds his sticks in the traditional grip. You don't see that much anymore in younger drummers.

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Celebrity Lament

Boobs and rows of pubic hair and I scream hassles on the air
and feathered boas everywhere, I've looked that way on Cloud.
But now they only block the fun, they rain and snow on everyone.
So many things I could have done but Clouds got in my way.

I've looked at Clouds from both sides now,
from give and take, and still somehow
it's Cloud's intrusions I recall.
I really don't know Cloud at all.

Original:

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A few years ago, I blogged a series called "50 Years of My Tunes." Beginning in 1960 -- the year I was born -- I considered all my favorites from each year going forward, one year at a time. It helped to have my iTune songs labelled with its year -- something I appended by hand -- err, by finger. With a mouse click, I can summon all of my favorites from any given year.

I gave up the blog project when I reached 1998 and I realized that I had stopped caring about pop music around the time my first child was born. Music just seemed less important. I'm going to try it again in reverse, beginning with 1959 and working back in time to seek out the roots of rock and roll. It's a contentious topic (much like most of Lem's topics) and it won't be solved in one night.

1959 was a turning point for pop music. A series of events -- Elvis' draft; the untimely deaths of Buddy Holly, Ritchie Valens, & J. P. "The Big Bopper" Richardson; Little Richard's hiatus; Jerry Lee Lewis' scandals -- all these events dimmed and defocussed the first phase of rock and roll. Some doors closed only to be reopened abroad and reimported. But other doors -- American doors -- also opened: 1959 saw the release of two great jazz albums: Miles Davis' "Kind of Blue" and The Dave Brubeck Quartet's "Time Out." The former album, "Kind Of Blue," had a subtle and profound influence. Consider the two quotes below from two disparate rock guitarists:

Referring to his own guitar playing on the song "In Memory Of Elizabeth Reed," Duane Allman said in an interview:

You know, that kind of playing comes from Miles and Coltrane, and particularly Kind of Blue. I've listened to that album so many times that for the past couple years, I haven't hardly listened to anything else.

Keith Richards wrote much later in life:

The early days of the magic of guitar weaving started then. You realize what you can do playing guitar with another guy, and what the two of you can do is the power of ten, and then you add other people. There's something beautifully friendly and elevating about a bunch of guys playing music together. This wonderful little world is unassailable. It's really teamwork, one guy supporting the others, and it's for one purpose, and there's no flies in the ointment, for a while. And nobody conducting, it's all up to you. It's really jazz -- that's the big secret. Rock and roll ain't nothing but jazz with a hard backbeat.
~Keith Richards, Life, p. 104.

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Here are my nominees for best singles and albums in 1959:

Singles

"Smoke Gets In Your Eyes" by The Platters
"Raining In My Heart" by Buddy Holly
"El Paso" by Marty Robbins
"A Worried Man" by The Kingston Trio
"The Tijuana Jail" by The Kingston Trio
"M.T.A." by The Kingston Trio
"Shout (Parts 1 & 2)" by The Isley Brothers
"Tallahassee Lassie" by Freddy Cannon
"I Only Have Eyes For You" by The Flamingos

Albums

Miles Davis ~ Kind of Blue
The Dave Brubeck Quartet ~ Time Out

Here are some further suggestions for nominations: Link

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R Crumb's "Keep On Truckin'" (1968):

The Grateful Dead's "Truckin'" (1970):

In the 1920s and 1930s, black jazz musicians used the verb "to truck" in the Robert Crumb sense of "Keep On Truckin'." You can see an example of it in Disney's 1941 "Dumbo," where one of the crows says "And they tell me that a man made a vegetable truck," and all the others crows assume the Keep on Truckin' position. link

Here's the scene from "Dumbo;" the line occurs at around 58 sec:

The crows do a lot of stereotypical strut and swagger, and I wonder if R Crumb was influenced by this in creating his iconic cartoon? Terry Zwigoff's documentary "Crumb" recorded how the young Crumb brothers were obsessed with at least one Disney movie, "Treasure Island" (1950), and Crumb probably saw Dumbo too as a kid (what boomer didn't?). Also, Crumb showed an early fascination with -- ahem -- African American caricature.