“Roman Candle” turns 20: Secrets of Elliott Smith’s accidental masterpiece
The complicatedly charming behind-the-scenes story of a heartbreaking album that launched a singular talent
Sunday, Jul 13, 2014
All photos courtesy of JJ Gonson Photography, except where noted.
(Click the photos to view them full-size)
Elliott Smith’s archetypally indie “Roman Candle” album turns 20 years old on Monday. Looking back from a two-decade distance, it’s a case of art rising above conditions, like a kid given a screwdriver and building a chapel. Cavity Search Records co-founder Denny Swofford, who brought the record out, called the sound quality “perfectly bad.” The songs themselves were just plain perfect.
Elliott and the friends with whom he recorded in middle school in Texas
(photo courtesy of Dan Pickering)
The album’s latent story is complicatedly charming. “Roman Candle” wasn’t meant to be a record. If it’s a masterpiece of its form — literally homemade, recorded on zero budget, featuring four unnamed songs — it’s an accidental masterpiece. The very best kind, in other words. Maybe the only kind. No one ever plans a masterpiece.
Heatmiser publicity shot
(L-R: Tony Lash, Brandt Peterson, Neil Gust, Elliott Smith)
Since middle school in Texas on a friend’s dad’s borrowed four-track Elliott had been learning and writing and recording songs, a mix of Rush covers (he adored Rush, as a lot of musically gifted kids do) and originals (songs like ”Inspector Detector,” “Ocean,” “Outward Bound,” “#37″). He moved to Portland, Oregon, at age 14, where he attended Lincoln High School downtown and formed the band Stranger Than Fiction with songwriting partner Garrick Duckler, a brilliantly precocious lyricist, fond of writers like Pinter and Kafka. They played live now and then — at Duckler’s girlfriend’s 16th birthday party, for club gatherings (where they once shouted out, “Live from the Russian Club!”). Several cassettes followed, also recorded on various four-tracks, some sold at a local record store called Djangos. The songs were dense, complex, multi-sectioned, a blend of political satire (inspired by Duckler) and introspective soul-scouring. The process, then, was this: Duckler wrote words, and he passed them along to Elliott, who, with astonishing effortlessness, put the words to music. Now and then Elliott wrote his own lyrics but he never really liked them. In fact, he thought they sucked.
Elliott and JJ Gonson
In college at Hampshire, Elliott did what he’d always done — he started another band, Heatmiser, with gifted guitarist friend Neil Gust. What’s clear, from seventh grade on, is the force of the need to create. No matter where he was, no matter who he was with, no matter how hospitable the conditions, Elliott wrote and recorded music. This was easily the surest thing in his life. It never stopped, and it almost never failed him. Heatmiser gigged in college, they wrote and composed (even joke songs like “The Dicks on D-3,” about dipshits living below them), they recorded in dorm stairwells where the sound was thickest, but they didn’t take off until Elliott and Gust brought the band to Portland in the early ’90s, adding drummer Tony Lash (who’d also played in Stranger Than Fiction) and Oberlin bassist Brandt Peterson.
7-inch, Cavity Search Records
Early ’90s Portland warrants an essay all its own. Overripe, chaotic, heroin-infused venues like Satyricon hosted fresh, adventurous, intensely original bands — Hazel, Crackerbash, Pond, Dharma Bums, and eventually, Elliott’s Heatmiser. Virtually nightly Swofford scouted talent. His new label demanded no less. He lived in the clubs. Like everyone else, he adored Hazel immediately, and Cavity Search brought out their first vinyl seven-inch (CSR 1), “J Hell“ (with two B-sides, “Day-Glo” and “Joe Louis Punchout”). By now Swofford also knew Heatmiser well, excited by their “raw, aggressive, crushing sound.” Plus, just as important, “Heatmiser had manners. They understood a little about tact. They could be adult men. They were real people, not dumb kids. Properly reared. A smart band, smart individuals.” A meeting was set in the basement of the house Heatmiser lived and practiced in, on SE 16th in Portland, just off Division (a street Elliott would later reference in more than one song). For CSR 2, Swofford and label co-founder Chris Cooper knew what they wanted: Elliott’s song “Stray.” After a bit of back and forth, everyone agreed. The pressing was white vinyl, and in keeping with Heatmiser’s scrupulously 50/50 songwriting arrangement, the B-side went to Gust (“Can’t Be Touched”). “Stray” is worth a serious listen. Not only is it vintage Heatmiser, it captures Elliott in barking, throaty Joe Strummer mode, universes away from the more Chet Baker vocal style he’d later unveil on “Roman Candle.”
Two Heatmiser albums followed (“Dead Air,” “Cop and Speeder”), both put out by Cavity Search. Boston transplant JJ Gonson signed on as band manager (and later became Elliott’s girlfriend). There were publicity shots, van tours, interviews in small weeklies, and a growing sense of possibility – -this was something that could go big. Yet on the side, without fanfare, without clear intention, Elliott was busy with what Gonson called “note-taking” — writing and, as usual, recording songs, tunes that didn’t fit the chugga-chugga format. At Heatmiser shows it was difficult setting sound for Elliott’s vocals, according to friend Sluggo. He sang too softly, got buried in the mix. The new, solo songs posed no such problem. Mostly they were Elliott and guitar, vocals up front, as if he were singing right in your face.
Elliott’s Hampshire College ID photo, 1987
“Roman Candle” was homemade, but it was JJ Gonson’s, not Elliott’s, home (later owned, a little miraculously, by the Shins’ James Mercer). The mics were Radio Shack, the monitor courtesy of JJ, who traded a vintage Schwinn bike for it. One guitar Elliott used was a toy model by the name of “Le Domino.” Elliott set up to record in the basement, also in the stairwell. Bit by bit the songs came, scraped out, tape-hissy, intimate.
It’s funny, well after the fact, to survey initial reactions. In a word, everyone was nonplussed. Gonson played the tape for mutual friend Sluggo. “I didn’t really have a response,” Sluggo says. “The songs didn’t blow me away. I was used to Heatmiser, and this was nothing like that. So I didn’t know what I thought.” Swofford was a rabid Heatmiser champion. Initially, he too was bewildered, and the sound, he felt, “totally sucked.” But he kept listening, he keep feeling more and more charmed, more astonished, and gradually the sound seemed less a minus than a plus. The songs themselves, in other words, made the sound irrelevant. They were something like a flawless photograph taken with a bad camera.
Elliott with “Le Domino,” the guitar he used on “Roman Candle”
There has always been some question as to whether Elliott knew the songs were being spread around and casually promoted. Gonson says, “He didn’t know, but he also didn’t not know.” At any rate, he played them himself for Hazel’s Pete Krebs as the two worked a shit job scraping paint off ceilings. And apparently he mentioned to Chris Cooper, Swofford’s partner, that he might be down for bringing out a seven-inch single. It was a dicey situation. Heatmiser was building a following, searching out opportunities; Elliott’s ambivalence was therefore rather intense.
In the end, the songs decided. They were too good to suppress. Swofford bought wine, and he and Elliott reached a handshake agreement. No paper, no actual contract. Elliott wanted it that way. It somehow, one imagines, made the whole thing seem less official. No one expected the record to do much anyway.
Full “Roman Candle” record cover
“Roman Candle” was a departure — from Heatmiser — but it was also a return, of sorts, to a sound and style almost no one, to this day, knows anything about. In between his freshman and sophomore years of college, Elliott formed and recorded with a band — although assemblage of old friends seems more accurate — called Murder of Crows, including Duckler again (who was still in Portland on summer break from Reed College). This was, essentially, a continuation of Stranger Than Fiction, yet with tighter, more compact songs and quite a bit less instrumentation. The tape they made (in 1988) is called “The Greenhouse,” and only those who happened to be around at that time seem to have heard it. Most notably, it includes “Condor Avenue,” which also appears on ”Roman Candle.” There are interspersed falsetto harmonies, the song’s vibe and structure largely identical to the later version, with one spectacularly jarring exception — Elliott’s voice. The vocals sound exactly like a very lo-fi demo of a slightly congested Elvis Costello covering Elliott Smith. People who heard Elliott play in college have said it was almost painful to listen to him sing. He had a hard time staying in key. On “The Greenhouse,” he’s clearly in key, but he sounds nothing like himself (except, perhaps, on one tune called “Shotgun,” where he seems to drop the Costello impersonation). Something people who hear and love Elliott Smith often refer to is the purity and tone of his voice. What they do not know is that it was a very inauthentic instrument early on. A mystery — one I don’t really know the answer to — is how he gradually arrived at his signature style. Hearing the early recordings, it’s astonishing that he did at all.
Then there’s the matter of the lyrics. As with all songs on “The Greenhouse,” “Condor Avenue” was written by Duckler. I don’t have permission to reprint the first set of lyrics here, and some are hard to make out, but it’s clear roughly every other line remains intact in the “Roman Candle” version, either verbatim (“rhythmic quietude,” “I don’t know what to do with your clothes or your letters”) or fractionally. For instance, the first line is the same, except that the car is never named. The setting also does not change. Something is happening at a fairgrounds, and it’s going to alter the girl main character.
What’s unknown is how much of the final version was written by Elliott. Did he take Duckler’s lyrics and revise slightly, or did Duckler? I don’t know. And Duckler, for his part, does not care. He told me he kept contributing lyrics even up through Elliott’s “Figure 8″ record, but he never kept track of how many, and he never asked for credit. For Duckler, the invisible collaboration was a simple and clear continuation of an exceptionally close and private relationship. Was it peculiar that his contributions were never acknowledged? A little. Did it rankle or anger him? No. Anyway, it was nothing new. “Junk Bond Trader,” Everybody Cares, Everybody Understands,” King’s Crossing” — all had their origins in high school or college compositions that Elliott returned to and remade.
Elliott goofing off in Portland
The record features more collaborations, with friends pitching in here and there. Gonson wrote the music for “No Name #1,” Tony Lash helped with mixing, and Hazel’s Pete Krebs shows up on “Kiwi Maddog 20/20,” a drawling country acid tune. Its subject is bad wine. It sounds like the dizzy, nauseous morning after, an aural approximation of bed spins. So, with “Roman Candle,” it’s not as if Elliott pulled some sort of proto-hipster version of Emily Dickinson, burrowing himself away into Gonson’s basement and secretly, entirely independently, crafting fragile, twee tunes. The record implies its Zeitgeist. It’s a product of a place and time, and it’s also a defining moment — a hybrid, in other words, of a past and a possible future, continuous and discontinuous.
Heatmiser
(L-R: Elliott Smith, Neil Gust, Tony Lash, Brandt Peterson)
(courtesy of JJ Gonson photography)
“Roman Candle” kicks off with an acoustic guitar sound of hornets swarming and attacking. It may be the one moment of active assertiveness, Elliott repeating “I want to hurt him, I want to give him pain.” This sort of mind-set quickly drops off, replaced by its opposite: a desire to disappear, either with booze, sleep, or by slipping out quietly and unseen into nullifying night. The theme is oblivion. It’s a desired state. People feel “spooky and withdrawn,” they “leave alone,” they “don’t belong,” they get turned into “whispers,” they arrive “too late,” “ready to hide,” they “walk away, that’s all [they] do,” “home to oblivion.” It’s as if everyone’s “underwater” or “buried in sand at the beach.” At one point Elliott sings, “When I go, don’t you follow”; live alone “with your pain.” Even the record cover follows suit. Elliott’s not on it. It’s Neil Gust and a girl.
Everyone has his personal favorite. For me, it’s “Last Call,” the penultimate tune. It’s electrified, so it leaps out, great winding lead guitar loitering around the sung melody like a pissed off friend. In some ways the song returns to the title track, but here Elliott loses. He’s sick of it all, he’s “sick of your sound, sick of you coming around.” But he’s done, the unnamed “tongueless talker” nemesis having “won” — “you can switch me off safely.” He drinks himself into “yesteryear.” He waits for sleep to overtake him — “I wanted her to tell me that she would never wake me.”
When Cavity Search brought the record out hopes were not exactly high. Swofford had no idea what to expect. Odds were split — it could go nowhere or modestly somewhere. Elliott toured in support of the record. Something about his humility, combined with a sort of sincerely intense vulnerability, quieted the small crowds who came. The record itself is full of “whispers.” Fans listened hard, as if every line was a fraught, sotto voce secret. It’s funny, because lyrically Elliott is always declaring let’s just forget about it, let’s not talk about it. When people whisper, it tends to be “quiet terror news.”
The Greenhouse Sleeve — Cassette sleeve from Murder of Crows release
1988, with first appearance of Condor Avenue
(photo courtesy of Glynnis Fawkes)
This would be Elliott’s leitmotif: elliptical, sideways truth telling. There’s a saying: If you don’t know what you’re talking about, speak loudly. What Elliott did was whisper, because he knew.
Showing posts with label rock and roll. Show all posts
Showing posts with label rock and roll. Show all posts
Sunday, July 13, 2014
Elliott Smith’s “Roman Candle” Turns 20: Secrets of an Accidental Masterpiece
The 20th anniversary of a brilliant album by a brilliant musician who died far too young.
Thursday, April 10, 2014
Animated Video: Johnny Cash Explains Why Music Became a Religious Calling
If you are a fan of the late Johnny Cash, this is a cool little animated video. As always, this is courtesy of Open Culture, the curators of cool on the interwebs.
Animated Video: Johnny Cash Explains Why Music Became a Religious Calling
April 9th, 2014
Blank on Blank is back with another animated video. This one animates a long lost interview with the great Johnny Cash. Interviewed by Barney Hoskyns back in 1996, Cash talked about music as a religious calling. Playing music was akin to preaching the gospel, and he knew he’d continue making music until his final days. Should we be surprised then, that seven years later, Cash completed more than 60 songs during the last four months of his life? He died with his boots on indeed.
Below we’ve highlighted for you some great Johnny Cash material from our archive.
Related Content:
- The First Episode of The Johnny Cash Show, Featuring Bob Dylan & Joni Mitchell (1969)
- The 1969 Bob Dylan-Johnny Cash Sessions: Twelve Rare Recordings
- Johnny Cash Sings “Man in Black” for the First Time, 1971
- Two Prison Concerts That Defined an Outlaw Singer: Johnny Cash at San Quentin and Folsom (1968-69)
Monday, April 07, 2014
Nine Inch Nails on Austin City Limits (April 5, 2014)
Courtesy of Rolling Stone, we get to see the video performance of Nine Inch Nails that aired on Austin City Limits Saturday night. They recorded 19 songs in their live show, 10 of which made it onto the show. There is also a 15-minute interview with Trent Reznor - a real bonus for fans.
Enjoy!
Watch Nine Inch Nails' 'Austin City Limits' Show
The show also posted a 15-minute interview with Trent Reznor, in which he explains why he has shied away from television concerts
By Kory Grow
April 7, 2014
It may have taken Nine Inch Nails a quarter of a century, but the industrial rock pioneers played the first television-specific concert of their career last week on Austin City Limits. The full, hour-long concert is now streaming here. The band's set list drew tracks from its 1989 debut, Pretty Hate Machine, as well as Year Zero, The Fragile and The Downward Spiral, but it weighed most heavily on the group's most recent album, 2013's Hesitation Marks. In fact, the group played 19 songs at Austin, Texas' 2,750-person-capacity Moody Theater for the taping, 11 of which were from Hesitation Marks, but only 10 songs made it to air. The show also put one outtake, Hesitation Marks' "Satellite," online.
Prior to the taping, Austin City Limits released an impossibly short comment from frontman Trent Reznor about the taping: "We've waited a long time to do anything like this." But now the show has also posted a 15-minute interview with Reznor, viewable below. "I've shied away from really any television, live or otherwise, because I think a lot about the context in where you hear the performance and the experience that the audience goes through," he said. "And we spent a lot of time thinking about that before tour, how we're going to present it, and a lot of emphasis goes into production and the right setting. So you're coming into our place and we're framing the music in an experience that's special. It's an event, it's a thing."
Here is the set list that aired from Nine Inch Nails' Austin City Limits performance:
"All Time Low"
"Sanctified"
"Came Back Haunted"
"Copy of A"
"The Frail"/"The Wretched"
"The Big Come Down"
"In This Twilight"
"While I'm Still Here"
"Hurt"Related
Monday, March 10, 2014
John Hammond - The Search for Robert Johnson
Robert Johnson is one of legendary blues guitarists of the Mississippi Delta Blues tradition - and we know very little about his life and his death at the age of 27. Largely forgotten until the 1960s, Johnson's blues style and guitar skill influenced a generation of guitarists and musicians, including Keith Richards, Jeff Beck, Eric Clapton, Jimmy Page, and many others.
This documentary by John Hammond tries to trace the life of Johnson with the limited and contradictory information available, As an added bonus, I have included the Radiolab episode (from NPR) on the "crossroads" myth on Johnson's skills.
The Search for Robert Johnson
Uploaded on Mar 14, 2011
A very good bio-doc (from 1992) effort to untangle the life and myths of blues legend Robert Johnson. This is a challenging task, as not a lot is known about Johnson except through his music and through lore. There is speculation at times, but this is inevitable. It still uncovers a lot, from his rejection by his family (blues was the work of the devil) to the darkness of his lyrics and the mysterious circumstances surrounding his death.
I would have preferred the original music of Johnson, but narrator John Hammond does a very satisfactory job in his renditions. Relatively minor players "Honeyboy" Edwards and Johnny Shines give classic delta blues performances that stand out. Appearances by Eric Clapton and Keith Richards help to emphasize Johnson's lasting impact on blues and rock.
Johnson was never interviewed, and his performance was never captured on film. Beside his music, all that are left are oral accounts, peppered by exaggeration and myth. An accurate, objective bio may be impossible to achieve. But The Search for Robert Johnson comes about as close as might be expected, and has great entertainment value as well.
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Crossroads
Monday, April 16, 2012
In this short, we go looking for the devil, and find ourselves tangled in a web of details surrounding one of the most haunting figures in music--a legendary guitarist whose shadowy life spawned a legend so powerful, it's still being repeated...even by fans who don't believe a word of it.
For years and years, Jad's been fascinated by the myth of what happened to Robert Johnson at the crossroads in Clarksdale, Mississippi. The story goes like this: back in the 1920s, Robert Johnson wanted to play the blues. But he really sucked. He sucked so much, that everyone who heard him told him to get lost. So he did. He disappeared for a little while, and when he came back, he was different. His music was startling--and musicians who'd laughed at him before now wanted to know how he did it. And according to the now-famous legend, Johnson had a simple answer: he went out to the crossroads just before midnight, and when the devil offered to tune his guitar in exchange for his soul, he took the deal.
Producer Pat Walters bravely escorts Jad to the scene of the supposed crime, in the middle of the night in the Mississippi Delta, to try to track down some shred of truth to all this. Not because they really thought something spooky would actually happen, but because deep down, there's a part of this story that--as much as the facts fall apart--still feels kind of true.
To help us get close to the real human behind the tall tales, we talk to Robert Johnson experts Tom Graves, Elijah Wald, David Evans, and Robert “Mack” McCormick. And we hear, posthumously, from Ledell Johnson...a man of no relation to Robert, who unintentionally helped the world fall for a blues-imbued ghost story.
Read more:
- Tom Graves, Crossroads: The Life and Afterlife of Blues Legend Robert Johnson
- Elijah Wald, Escaping the Delta: Robert Johnson and the Invention of the Blues
- David Evans, Tommy Johnson
- Peter Guralnick, Searching for Robert Johnson
Saturday, February 22, 2014
The Doors: Live in Denmark & Los Angeles (1968) - Jim Morrison Near His Charismatic Peak
Via Open Culture, the curators of cool on the interwebs.
The Doors Play Live in Denmark & LA in 1968: See Jim Morrison Near His Charismatic Peak
Open Culture | February 21st, 2014
Do they look a bit scruffy, the Doors on live Danish TV in 1968? My image of the Doors is forever colored by Oliver Stone’s The Doors. But the real Jim Morrison had even better hair than his doppelgänger Val Kilmer (“not a case of casting,” quoth Ebert, “but of possession”), even if the above performance is less Lizard King than lounge lizard. John Densmore lays back on the beat, gets out the way of Morrison’s free associative poetry. Guitarist Robbie Krieger riffs intently, looks subdued. Always the one to watch, the recently departed Ray Manzarek plays hypnotic baselines with his left hand while his right dances around melodic blue note phrases. It’s a very cool show, but the lack of an audience is palpable.
Morrison was at his best, and probably also worst, before crowds of admirers. He has no lack of them in another ’68 performance, this time at the Hollywood Bowl. Where the Danish gig is cabaret, this is a shamanistic happening: Morrison wears something like a sleeveless toreador’s jacket and the band plays loud, especially Densmore, who bashes his drums like John Bonham. Jim Morrison seems entranced, and really stoned. Densmore later said he’d just dropped acid: “I could tell once we hit the stage because his movements, his performance, was a little deliberate; a little like he was holding it together. But he was fantastic.”
The Hollywood Bowl is the show to see. It was a magical night. It was a big deal to play the Hollywood Bowl. We were all so excited. We’d had dinner with Mick Jagger just before the show and he was right in the front. For any fan of The Doors — young or old — this is really the way it was; this is the way to see what it was all about.In neither of these concerts is Morrison quite the unhinged maniac of legend, but things, as they say, had already begun to unravel. Two years later the band would play its last show with Morrison at The Warehouse in December of 1970. Some believe the Doors peaked in 1967 and never topped their debut (a “stoned, immaculate classic” and the dark underbelly of Sgt. Pepper’s sunny psychedelia). I don’t buy that at all. But even if these shows catch them on the start of a decline, it was a long slow burn, and beautiful to watch.
Related Content:
- Doors Keyboardist Ray Manzarek (1939-2013) Tells the Story of the Classic Song, ‘Riders on the Storm’
- “The Lost Paris Tapes” Preserves Jim Morrison’s Final Poetry Recordings from 1971
- A Young, Clean Cut Jim Morrison Appears in a 1962 Florida State University Promo Film
Josh Jones is a writer and musician based in Durham, NC. Follow him at @jdmagness
Monday, November 11, 2013
Tool - The Ultimate Review - Full Documentary - Plus, a 2012 Live Show in Full
Tool has been one of the most innovative hard rock/art metal bands in the last 20 years. This documentary looks at the history of the band and their origins in the LA "hair metal" scene that revolved around Motley Crue and Guns and Roses.
Besides the raw emotion of their first full album, Undertow (1993), one of the things that grabbed my attention was the use of Brothers Quay style story-telling (created by Adam Jones) in videos for that album. The Brothers Quay are certainly among my favorite film-makers.
Here is the video for "Sober" from the album Undertow:
Tool have also had an on-going collaboration with visual artist Alex Grey, another intriguing artist.
Included after the documentary is a bonus live concert from 2012.
Tool - The Ultimate Review - Full Documentary (2008)
Published on Aug 24, 2012
The entire Ultimate Review documentary on one of the greatest bands of the last twenty years, Tool. Features samples and videos of some of Tool's defining songs as well as interviews with people that know and worked with the band well and the band members themselves. A must see for a Tool fan. Made in 2008.
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But wait . . . there's more!
Tool ~ Live 2012/01/31 [HD DVD - Full/Uncut Concert] @ Mohegan Sun Arena, Uncasville, CT
Published on Jan 18, 2013
Tool concert. Performed Live @ Uncasville, CT, 01/31/2012. Physical Video Information: 1080 HD Quality/1:41:18 Minutes.
Sunday, November 10, 2013
Monday, October 28, 2013
Lou Reed Is Dead at Age 71 (Includes a Live Performance of "Magic and Loss")
Lou Reed during his stint in the Velvet Underground (1967-1970)
As Rolling Stone's Gavin Edwards notes in his video tribute to the music of Lou Reed, who died Sunday of suspected liver failure at the age of 71, 20 Essential Lou Reed Tracks:
After leaving the Velvet Underground in 1970, Lou Reed went to work for his dad's accounting firm as a typist. If he had never played a note of music again in his life, the four albums he made with the Velvets would be enough to establish him as one of rock's leading songwriters and visionaries.Here is the obituary from Rolling Stone, followed by a video playlist of a live performance of his generally ignored 1992 album Magic and Loss (transformative in my life, and my favorite of all of his work).
Lou Reed, Velvet Underground Leader and Rock Pioneer, Dead at 71
New York legend, who helped shape nearly fifty years of rock music, underwent a liver transplant in May
By Jon Dolan
October 27, 2013
Lou Reed - Lex van Rossen/MAI/Redferns
Lou Reed, a massively influential songwriter and guitarist who helped shape nearly fifty years of rock music, died today on Long Island. The cause of his death has not yet been released, but Reed underwent a liver transplant in May.
Look back at Lou Reed's remarkable career in photos
With the Velvet Underground in the late Sixties, Reed fused street-level urgency with elements of European avant-garde music, marrying beauty and noise, while bringing a whole new lyrical honesty to rock & roll poetry. As a restlessly inventive solo artist, from the Seventies into the 2010s, he was chameleonic, thorny and unpredictable, challenging his fans at every turn. Glam, punk and alternative rock are all unthinkable without his revelatory example. "One chord is fine," he once said, alluding to his bare-bones guitar style. "Two chords are pushing it. Three chords and you're into jazz."
Lewis Allan "Lou" Reed was born in Brooklyn, in 1942. A fan of doo-wop and early rock & roll (he movingly inducted Dion into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in 1989), Reed also took formative inspiration during his studies at Syracuse University with the poet Delmore Schwartz. After college, he worked as a staff songwriter for the novelty label Pickwick Records (where he had a minor hit in 1964 with a dance-song parody called "The Ostrich"). In the mid-Sixties, Reed befriended Welsh musician John Cale, a classically trained violist who had performed with groundbreaking minimalist composer La Monte Young. Reed and Cale formed a band called the Primitives, then changed their name to the Warlocks. After meeting guitarist Sterling Morrison and drummer Maureen Tucker, they became the Velvet Underground. With a stark sound and ominous look, the band caught the attention of Andy Warhol, who incorporated the Velvets into his Exploding Plastic Inevitable. "Andy would show his movies on us," Reed said. "We wore black so you could see the movie. But we were all wearing black anyway."
Listen to 20 essential Lou Reed tracks here
"Produced" by Warhol and met with total commercial indifference when it was released in early 1967, VU’s debut The Velvet Underground & Nico stands as a landmark on par with the Beatles' Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band and Bob Dylan's Blonde On Blonde. Reed's matter-of-fact descriptions of New York’s bohemian demimonde, rife with allusions to drugs and S&M, pushed beyond even the Rolling Stones’ darkest moments, while the heavy doses of distortion and noise for its own sake revolutionized rock guitar. The band’s three subsequent albums – 1968’s even more corrosive sounding White Light/White Heat, 1969’s fragile, folk-toned The Velvet Underground and 1970’s Loaded, which despite being recorded while he was leaving the group, contained two Reed standards, “Rock & Roll” and “Sweet Jane,” were similarly ignored. But they’d be embraced by future generations, cementing the Velvet Underground’s status as the most influential American rock band of all time.
After splitting with the Velvets in 1970, Reed traveled to England and, in characteristically paradoxical fashion, recorded a solo debut backed by members of the progressive-rock band Yes. But it was his next album, 1972’s Transformer, produced by Reed-disciple David Bowie, that pushed him beyond cult status into genuine rock stardom. “Walk On the Wild Side,” a loving yet unsentimental evocation of Warhol’s Factory scene, became a radio hit (despite its allusions to oral sex) and “Satellite of Love” was covered by U2 and others. Reed spent the Seventies defying expectations almost as a kind of sport. 1973’s Berlin was brutal literary bombast while 1974’s Sally Can’t Dance had soul horns and flashy guitar. In 1975 he released Metal Machine Music, a seething all-noise experiment his label RCA marketed as a avant-garde classic music, while 1978’s banter-heavy live album Take No Prisoners was a kind of comedy record in which Reed went on wild tangents and savaged rock critics by name (“Lou sure is adept at figuring out new ways to shit on people,” one of those critics, Robert Christgau, wrote at the time). Explaining his less-than-accommodating career trajectory, Reed told journalist Lester Bangs, “My bullshit is worth more than other people’s diamonds.”
Reed’s ambiguous sexual persona and excessive drug use throughout the Seventies was the stuff of underground rock myth. But in the Eighties, he began to mellow. He married Sylvia Morales and opened a window into his new married life on 1982’s excellent The Blue Mask, his best work since Transformer. His 1984 album New Sensations took a more commercial turn and 1989’s New York ended the decade with a set of funny, politically cutting songs that received universal critical praise. In 1991, he collaborated with Cale on Songs For Drella, a tribute to Warhol. Three years later, the Velvet Underground reunited for a series of successful European gigs.
Read Rolling Stone's 1989 Lou Reed cover story
Reed and Morales divorced in the early Nineties. Within a few years, Reed began a relationship with musician-performance artist Laurie Anderson. The two became an inseparable New York fixture, collaborating and performing live together, while also engaging in civic and environmental activism. They were married in 2008.
Reed continued to follow his own idiosyncratic artistic impulses throughout the ‘00s. The once-decadent rocker became an avid student of T'ai Chi, even bringing his instructor onstage during concerts in 2003. In 2005 he released a double CD called The Raven, based on the work of Edgar Allen Poe. In 2007, he released an ambient album titled Hudson River Wind Meditations. Reed returned to mainstream rock with 2011’s Lulu, a collaboration with Metallica.
“All through this, I’ve always thought that if you thought of all of it as a book then you have the Great American Novel, every record as a chapter,” he told Rolling Stone in 1987. “They’re all in chronological order. You take the whole thing, stack it and listen to it in order, there’s my Great American Novel.”
* * * * *
When Lou Reed released Magic and Loss in 1992, I was finally beginning to process my father's death (he died in 1980) through poetry (writing), music (listening to), and other avenues, including a spirituality influenced by the Tarot, shamanism, and Jungian psychology.
This is from the review at All Music (linked above):
Reed lost two close friends to cancer within the space of a year, and the experience informed Magic and Loss, a set of 14 songs about loss, illness, and mortality. It would have been easy for a project like this to sound morbid, but Reed avoids that; the emotions that dominate these songs are fear and helplessness in the face of a disease (and a fate) not fully understood, and Reed's songs struggle to balance these anxieties with bravery, humor, and an understanding of the notion that death is an inevitable part of life -- that you can't have the magic without the loss. It's obvious that Reed worked on this material with great care, and Magic and Loss contains some of his most intelligent and emotionally intense work as a lyricist.From there, the review takes the common "But" route to discredit most of what was just said.
The live performance of the album was recorded on VHS and Laser Disc (wow, those were the days). All of the songs, in order, are presented below. The live versions are a little different than the album versions, to both good and bad effect.
Sunday, September 01, 2013
Watch Big Time, the Concert Film Capturing Tom Waits on His Best Tour Ever (1988)
Awesome - happy Sunday! This comes courtesy of Open Culture.
Watch Big Time, the Concert Film Capturing Tom Waits on His Best Tour Ever (1988)
August 30th, 2013
Here at Open Culture, we’ve often featured the many sides of Tom Waits: actor, poetry reader, favored David Letterman guest. More rarely, we’ve posted material dedicated to showcasing him practicing his primary craft, writing songs and singing them. But when a full-fledged Tom Waits concert does surface here, prepare to settle in for an unrelentingly (and entertainingly) askew musical experience. In March, we posted Burma Shave, an hour-long performance from the late seventies in which Waits took on “the persona of a down-and-out barfly with the soul of a Beat poet.” Today, we fast-forward a decade to Big Time, by which point Waits could express the essences of “avant-garde composer Harry Partch, Howlin’ Wolf, Frank Sinatra, Astor Piazzolla, Irish tenor John McCormack, Kurt Weill, Louis Prima, Mexican norteño bands and Vegas lounge singers.” That evocative quote comes from Big Time‘s own press notes, as excerpted by Dangerous Minds, which calls the viewing experience “like entering a sideshow tent in Tom Waits’s brain.”
Watch the 90-minute concert film in its entirety, though, and you may not find it evocative enough. In 1987, Waits had just put out the album Franks Wild Years, which explores the experience of his alter-ego Frank O’Brien, whom Waits called “a combination of Will Rogers and Mark Twain, playing accordion — but without the wisdom they possessed.” The year before, the singer actually wrote and produced a stage play built around the character, and the Franks Wild Years tour through North America and Europe made thorough use of Waits’ theatrical bent in that era. Its final two shows, at San Francisco’s Warfield Theatre and Los Angeles’ Wiltern Theatre, along with footage from gigs in Dublin, Stockholm and Berlin, make up the bulk of Big Time‘s material. As for its sensibility, well, even Waits fans may feel insecure, and happily so, about quite what to expect. (Fans of The Wire, I should note, will find something familiar indeed in this show’s rendition of “Way Down in the Hole.”)
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~ Colin Marshall hosts and produces Notebook on Cities and Culture and writes essays on literature, film, cities, Asia, and aesthetics. He’s at work on a book about Los Angeles, A Los Angeles Primer. Follow him on Twitter at @colinmarshall.
- Tom Waits, Playing the Down-and-Out Barfly, Appears in Classic 1978 TV Performance
- Tom Waits Reads Charles Bukowski
- Tom Waits and David Letterman: An American Television Tradition
- Tom Waits Shows Us How Not to Get a Date on Valentine’s Day
Wednesday, June 19, 2013
The Art of Punk, MOCA’s Series of Punk Documentaries, Begins with Black Flag
The degree of cool in this post from Open Culture is so beyond cool . . . . If you lived through the punk era or just like the ethos and the music, these short documentaries are awesome. By the way, that's Joe Strummer of The Clash in the image above.
The Art of Punk, MOCA’s Series of Punk Documentaries, Begins with Black Flag
June 18th, 2013
First you set out to smash all institutions, but then you find the institutions have enshrined you. Isn’t that always the way? It certainly seems to have turned out that way for punk rock, in any case, which vowed in the seventies to tear it all up and start over again. Now, in the 2010s, we find tribute paid to not just the music but the aesthetics, lifestyles, and personalities of the punk movement by two separate, and separately well-respected, institutions. We recently featured the Metropolitan Museum of Art’s exhibition Punk: Chaos to Couture. Today, you can start watching The Art of Punk, a series of documentaries from MOCAtv, the video channel of Los Angeles’ Museum of Contemporary Art. Its trailer, which appears at the top of the post, emphasizes its focus on, literally, the visual art of punk: its posters, its album art, its T-shirts, and even — un-punk as this may sound — its logos.
The series opens with the episode just above on Black Flag and Raymond Pettibon, designer of the band’s well-known four-bar icon. It catches up with not just him, but founding singer Keith Morris and bassist Chuck Dukowski, as well as Flea from the Red Hot Chili peppers, who grew up a fan of the greater Los Angeles punk scene from which Black Flag emerged. The episode concludes, needless to say, with Henry Rollins, who, though not an original member of the band and now primarily a spoken word performer, has come to embody their punk ethos in his own highly distinctive way. In the latest episode, just out today, The Art of Punk series takes you inside the world of Crass, the English punk band formed in 1977.
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~ Colin Marshall hosts and produces Notebook on Cities and Culture and writes essays on literature, film, cities, Asia, and aesthetics. He’s at work on a book about Los Angeles, A Los Angeles Primer. Follow him on Twitter at @colinmarshall.
Saturday, May 18, 2013
Keith Richards Waxes Philosophical, Plays Live with His Idol, the Great Muddy Waters
Very cool. Modern rock-n-roll owes everything to the great blues guitarists who came before them, and it's nice to see that recognition. Jeff Beck and Eric Clapton have often mentioned Robert Johnson as the greatest guitarist of all time, and Muddy Waters is not far behind on that list (I'm partial to Lightnin' Hopkins, personally, although when I listen to Robert Johnson on headphones, it seems there are sometimes two guitars being played, but that was never the case).
Keith Richards Waxes Philosophical, Plays Live with His Idol, the Great Muddy Waters
May 16th, 2013
Cadillac Records—a 2008 biopic about the rise and fall of Chicago’s Chess Records—won acclaim for bravura performances, garnered Beyonce a White House performance and threats of violence from Etta James, and took it on the chin for its deeply muddled history. But nobody goes to the movies for a history lesson, right? What stuck with me was its dramatization of that moment (okay, decade) when R&B and “race records” got rebranded by Alan Freed as “Rock n’ Roll” and crossed over the color line. Hundreds of bands hijacked Chuck Berry’s licks (as he saw it), and then Jagger crashed the party with his Muddy Waters impression while his band took their name from one of his blues songs.
The Stones may not have been the first British band to make American electric blues their own, but they were arguably the most popular. In an excerpt (below) from a longer interview from 1973, Keith Richards namechecks both Waters and Berry, as well as usual suspects Little Richard, Bo Diddley, Jimmy Reed, Slim Harpo, and the much earlier Robert Johnson and Blind Lemon Jefferson. The host pushes Keith on his roots influences and the part of black music in the Stones’ sound, asking if their lack of sentimentalism came from the blues. Keith replies,“I don’t get sentimental about things because… it doesn’t lead to clarity of thought.” And when I think clarity, I think Keith Richards. But seriously, it’s a gem of an interview.
Asked about how black musicians reacted to his blues appropriation, Richards gets philosophical: “Probably as many different reactions from them as anybody else.” We know how Chuck Berry felt—robbed—but Keith tells us Waters took it in stride, “grateful” for the introduction to the white college circuit which put more bread in his pocket. Maybe so, but Waters’ crossover before white audiences predated the Stones. Before the British invaded—two years before the Stones formed—Muddy hit England’s shores in 1958 (one year after Sister Rosetta Tharpe brought her electric blues across the pond). While the usual belief that Waters’ blues shocked the Brits may be a misconception, he won a new audience on the folk circuit, returning to England in ‘64. After laying low for a while, Waters saw a career revival late in life, performing into his final years with The Stones, Eric Clapton, Johnny Winters, and his own band. In the video above, see a full performance of Waters with the Stones from 1981, two years before Waters’ death from heart failure. He’s 66 at this gig, three years younger than Richards is now.
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- Chuck Berry Takes Keith Richards to School, Shows Him How to Rock (1987)
- Revisit The Life & Music of Sister Rosetta Tharpe: ‘The Godmother of Rock and Roll’
- Muddy Waters and Friends on the Blues and Gospel Train, 1964
~ Josh Jones is a writer and musician based in Washington, DC. Follow him @jdmagness
Friday, May 10, 2013
Tom Waits Sings and Tells Stories in Tom Waits: A Day in Vienna, a 1979 Austrian Film
Via Open Culture, a cool old Tom Waits film. Happy Friday!
Tom Waits Sings and Tells Stories inTom Waits: A Day in Vienna, a 1979 Austrian Film
May 8th, 2013
The film opens at a derelict gas station. A paper sign, peeling from the wall, warns in German that open flames and smoking are dangerous and strictly forbidden. In walks Tom Waits, smoking a cigarette.
“This reminds me of a place I used to work in National City, California, called Spotco Self Service,” Waits says as he leans against a pump. “I worked for a gentleman named Charles Spotco. I was always late for work. I used to stay out at night. I’d come dragging to work, used to get there about ten-thirty in the morning. He’d chew me out and scream at me for being late. He always said I’d never amount to nothing. I never thought I’d be standing in a gas station in Vienna Austria. If I’d of told him that one day, Spotco, I’ll be leaning on a gas pump at a gas station in Vienna Austria, he would have said you gotta be out of your mind.”
The scene is from Tom Waits: A Day in Vienna, a half-hour Austrian TV film shot on April 19, 1979, and shown above in its entirety. Filmmakers Rudi Dolezal and Hannes Rossacher approached Waits when he arrived in Vienna on a short European tour, according to Barney Hoskyns in Lowside of the Road: A Life of Tom Waits. “He came in from Amsterdam saying he hadn’t slept all night, but he agreed on the spot to let us film him,” Rossacher told Hoskyns. “He didn’t want to do a proper interview but instead he wanted to tell stories.”
Dolezal and Rossacher drove Waits to the old gas station and later to a Greek cafe, where he told a comic story about a saxophone player. At the Konzerthaus that night they filmed Waits performing “Sweet Little Bullet From a Pretty Blue Gun,” “Pasties and a G-String” and “Christmas Card from a Hooker in Minneapolis.” Backstage before the encore, Dolezal can be seen, an amused look on his face, holding the boom mic as Waits paces back and forth singing “When the Saints Go Marching In.” Afterward, in a lounge, Waits sits down at a piano and plays a few bars of “I Can’t Wait to Get Off Work” before dancing with a bar girl and retiring for the night.
Tom Waits: A Day in Vienna will be added to our collection of 525 Free Movies Online.
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Wednesday, April 17, 2013
The Meat Puppets Create 'Real Blown-Out Folk Music' on 'Rat Farm' - Album Premiere
Via Rolling Stone, The Meat Puppets have a new "real blown-out folk" music album. A short blurb below is followed by a track by track listening opportunity. The album, Rat Farm, was officially released April 16 (yesterday) - it is reviewed at Consequence of Sound.
The Meat Puppets Create 'Real Blown-Out Folk Music' on 'Rat Farm' - Album Premiere
Arizona punks are set to release their 14th LP
By Jon Blistein
April 14, 2013
Arizona punk luminaries the Meat Puppets have been making music for 33 years, and on April 16th they'll release Rat Farm, their 14th LP via Megaforce, which you can now listen to in full here. Frontman Curt Kirkwood described the record as "real blown-out folk music," and it's easy to hear what he means. On tracks like "Sometimes Blue" and "Waiting," both of which amble forward with ramshackle melodies and the lithe, dry simmer of Kirkwood's vocals, while the sun-drenched "You Don't Know" is laced with the crackle of electric guitars. Throughout the album, the band shows their knack for melding styles and sounds to fit their liking, like on the opening title-track, which flips between a dub-y verse and wide open, alt-rock chorus, and the delightful "Time and Money," which sounds like a lost Allman Brothers rambler channeled through a Superfuzz pedal.
Saturday, February 09, 2013
PINK FLOYD: THE MAKING OF DARK SIDE OF THE MOON
Pink Floyd's 1973 album Dark Side of the Moon is probably one of the two or three greatest rock albums of fall time - it remained on the Billboard 200 for a staggering 741 consecutive weeks, and nearly every one of its songs is recognizable to music lovers. Wikipedia offers an overview of the album's conceptual foundations:
The Dark Side of the Moon built upon experiments Pink Floyd had attempted in their previous live shows and recordings, but lacks the extended instrumental excursions which, according to critic David Fricke, had become characteristic of the band after founder member Syd Barrett left in 1968. Guitarist David Gilmour, Barrett's replacement, later referred to those instrumentals as "that psychedelic noodling stuff", and with Waters cited 1971's Meddle as a turning-point towards what would be realised on the album. The Dark Side of the Moon's lyrical themes include conflict, greed, the passage of time, death, and insanity, the latter inspired in part by Barrett's deteriorating mental state; he had been the band's principal composer and lyricist.[8] The album is notable for its use of musique concrète[4] and conceptual, philosophical lyrics, as found in much of the band's other work.Here is the documentary.
Each side of the album is a continuous piece of music. The five tracks on each side reflect various stages of human life, beginning and ending with a heartbeat, exploring the nature of the human experience, and (according to Waters) "empathy".[8] "Speak to Me" and "Breathe" together stress the mundane and futile elements of life that accompany the ever-present threat of madness, and the importance of living one's own life—"Don't be afraid to care".[23] By shifting the scene to an airport, the synthesiser-driven instrumental "On the Run" evokes the stress and anxiety of modern travel, in particular Wright's fear of flying.[24] "Time" examines the manner in which its passage can control one's life and offers a stark warning to those who remain focused on mundane aspects; it is followed by a retreat into solitude and withdrawal in "Breathe (Reprise)". The first side of the album ends with Wright and vocalist Clare Torry's soulful metaphor for death, "The Great Gig in the Sky".[4] Opening with the sound of cash registers and loose change, the first track on side two, "Money", mocks greed and consumerism using tongue-in-cheek lyrics and cash-related sound effects (ironically, "Money" has been the most commercially successful track from the album, with several cover versions produced by other bands).[25] "Us and Them" addresses the isolation of the depressed with the symbolism of conflict and the use of simple dichotomies to describe personal relationships. "Any Colour You Like" concerns the lack of choice one has in a human society. "Brain Damage" looks at a mental illness resulting from the elevation of fame and success above the needs of the self; in particular, the line "and if the band you're in starts playing different tunes" reflects the mental breakdown of former band-mate Syd Barrett. The album ends with "Eclipse", which espouses the concepts of alterity and unity, while forcing the listener to recognise the common traits shared by humanity.[26][27]
PINK FLOYD: THE MAKING OF DARK SIDE OF THE MOON
If there are a handful of albums in the rock universe that deserve a bells-and-whistles DVD treatment, Dark Side of the Moon is clearly among them. In the ’70s and ’80s, the classic 1973 album by Pink Floyd remained on the Billboard 200 for a staggering 741 consecutive weeks, a record that will likely stand forever. Echoing themes of alienation, paranoia, and death, it is a dreamy, often trancelike tour through the subconscious of Floyd lyricist Roger Waters.
This 84-minute DVD offers a track-by-track look at the making of Dark Side of the Moon, featuring interviews with band members Waters, David Gilmour, Nick Mason, and Richard Wright, plus rare acoustic versions of “Breathe” and “Brain Damage.”
For those fans interested in the story behind the crafting of one of rock’s true landmark records, this is the equivalent of ambrosia. Discussions involve the studio-specific techniques used to create the clock loops on “Time,” the cash register sounds on “Money,” and the vocal chorus on “The Great Gig in the Sky.” Special features include alternate versions of “Brain Damage,” “Breathe,” and “Time.”
Sunday, January 06, 2013
Documentary: Punk’s Not Dead
This cool documentary, Punk's Not Dead, follows the evolution of punk music from its roots to its acceptance into popular culture with The Adicts, Bad Religion, Black Flag, The Damned, Green Day, Minor Threat, NOFX, The Ramones, Rancid, Social Distortion, and many more.
Punk’s Not Dead
Punk’s Not Dead is more than just a tribute documentary. It takes you on an era-by-era journey that puts punk rock’s non-conformist reputation under the knife.
Officially sanctioned by the bands in the film who donated personal photos, fliers and home videos, Punk’s Not Dead follows the evolution of punk music from its anarchic roots, to its use as a corporate marketing tool and acceptance into popular culture, to its reinvention in today’s underground scene.
It is self-financed, independent documentary true to the D.I.Y. spirit of punk culture and combines intelligent, insightful commentary with live performances, behind-the-scenes anecdotes and a killer soundtrack.
Punk’s Not Dead takes you into the sweaty underground clubs, backyard parties, recording studios, and yes, shopping malls and stadium shows where punk rock music and culture continue to thrive.
Watch the full documentary now - 97 min
Saturday, December 29, 2012
Stevie Ray Vaughan at the Montreux Jazz Festival, 1985: The Concert Film
Incredible musician, and an interesting look at a man at the height of his powers and fame. Brought to you by Open Culture.
Stevie Ray Vaughan at the Montreux Jazz Festival, 1985: The Concert Film
December 27th, 2012
In the 1980s, Stevie Ray Vaughan tore through the international music scene like a Texas tornado. His amazingly fluid and dexterous guitar playing on a series of platinum albums established Vaughan as a household name and helped spark a blues revival. But in the summer of 1990 a helicopter he was riding on crashed into a hill in Wisconsin, and the whirlwind had passed.
This concert film captures Vaughan in full force. It was made on July 15, 1985, during Vaughan’s second appearance at the Montreux Jazz Festival. His first, in 1982, had seemed like a disaster at the time. Vaughan and his band Double Trouble had never made a record and were virtually unknown outside of Texas in 1982, and their performance at Montreux was met by booing from the some members of the audience. Vaughan was shaken. He had never been booed before. But the 1982 Montreux performance turned out to be the most important of Vaughan’s career, as Chris Gill explains in Guitar World:
David Bowie was in the audience, and he made a point of meeting Vaughan and his manager in the after-hours lounge. John Paul Hammond, the son of record producer John Hammond, also saw the show and asked for a tape of the performance to give to his father. Jackson Browne caught the band’s performance in the after-hours lounge, and he sat in with the group until early the next morning. Within the next few months, Browne invited Vaughan and Double Trouble to his L.A. studio to record a demo, Bowie asked Stevie to appear on his next album [Let's Dance], and John Hammond, who helped develop the careers of Bob Dylan and Bruce Springsteen, helped the band sign a deal with Epic Records and offered to produce their debut album. The rest, as the cliché goes, is history.So the 1985 Montreux appearance was something of a triumphal return for Vaughan. There was no booing this time. Vaughan had a pair of platinum albums under his belt, and he and Double Trouble were touring Europe to promote their third album, Soul to Soul. In the film, Vaughan and the band are introduced by festival founder Claude Nobs, who gave them their big shot in 1982. The trio of Vaughan on guitar and vocals, Tommy Shannon on bass, and Chris Layton on drums had just been expanded to include Reese Wynans on keyboards. They play 13 songs, including three with Texas bluesman Johnny Copeland, who joins them on “Cold Shot,” “Tin Pan Alley” and “Look at Little Sister,” in which Copeland and Vaughan trade blistering guitar solos. Another song, Copeland’s “Don’t Stop By the Creek, Son,” was apparently performed that night but cut from the film. The rest of the concert appears to be intact.
Here’s the set list:
- Scuttle Buttin’
- Say What!
- Ain’t Gone “N’ Give Up on Love
- Pride and Joy
- Mary Had a Little Lamb
- Cold Shot
- Tin Pan Alley
- Look at Little Sister
- Voodoo Child (Slight Return)
- Texas Flood
- Life Without You
- Gone Home
- Couldn’t Stand the Weather
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‘Electric Church’: The Jimi Hendrix Experience Live in Stockholm, 1969
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