August 22: Blues Legend John Lee Hooker was Born in 1917

[vc_row][vc_column][vc_message message_box_color=”mulled_wine” icon_fontawesome=”fa fa-quote-left”]I don’t think about time. You’re here when you’re here. I think about today, staying in tune.
~John Lee Hooker

I don’t play a lot of fancy guitar. I don’t want to play it. The kind of guitar I want to play is mean, mean licks.
~John Lee Hooker

When they say true blues, pure blues, John Lee Hooker is as close to it as anyone I’ve ever heard.
~B.B. King

One bourbon, one scotch, and one beer
Hey mister bartender come here
I want another drink and I want it now
~John Lee Hooker (One bourbon, one scotch, and one beer)[/vc_message][/vc_column][/vc_row]

JLH was inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in 1991. Here from the ceremony he performs “In The Mood” together with Bonnie Raitt:

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Bob Dylan: 5 Brilliant live performances from the year 1979

[vc_row][vc_column][vc_message message_box_color=”mulled_wine” icon_fontawesome=”fa fa-quote-left”]Right. I follow God, so if my followers are following me, indirectly they’re gonna be following God too because I don’t sing any song which hasn’t been given to me by the Lord to sing.
-Bob Dylan (Bruce Heiman Interview, Hollywood, CA – 7 December 1979)[/vc_message][/vc_column][/vc_row]

In 1979 Bob Dylan had a performance @ NBC Studios, Studio 8H, NYC (Saturday Night Live) October 20. Then he played 26 concert more, 14 of them @ Fox Warfield Theatre in San Francisco (November 1 – 16).

Many brilliant & passionate performances, gospel Bob was truly inspired & on fire.

..and btw, you don’t have to be religious to LOVE these concerts.

NBC Studios, Studio 8H
New York City, New York
20 October 1979
Saturday Night Live

  • Bob Dylan (vocal & guitar)
  • Fred Tackett (guitar)
  • Spooner Oldham (keyboards)
  • Tim Drummond (bass)
  • Terry Young (keyboards)
  • Jim Keltner (drums)
  • Regina Mcrary , Helena Springs , Mona Lisa Young (background vocals)

I Believe In You

[vc_row][vc_column][vc_message message_box_color=”mulled_wine” icon_fontawesome=”fa fa-quote-left”]They ask me how I feel
And if my love is real
And how I know I’ll make it through
And they, they look at me and frown
They’d like to drive me from this town
They don’t want me around
‘Cause I believe in you[/vc_message][/vc_column][/vc_row]

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August 21: Bob Dylan Portland, Oregon 1990 (audio)

[vc_row][vc_column][vc_message message_box_color=”mulled_wine” icon_fontawesome=”fa fa-quote-left”]..they were terrific, spectacularly good… superb!
… Most of all, I think, the wondrous music this team is creating at this show is a reflection of the mind-state of the singer/rhythm guitarist/bandleader/harmonica player – Bob Dylan, the author of this magnificent work of accidental art, this recording which stops time and leaves me as a listener breathless and thrilled, over and over again.
-Paul Williams (Bob Dylan: Performance Artist 1986-1990 And Beyond)[/vc_message][/vc_column][/vc_row]

Arlene Schnitzer Concert Hall
Portland, Oregon
21 August 1990

  • Bob Dylan (vocal & guitar)
  • G. E. Smith (guitar)
  • Tony Garnier (bass)
  • Christopher Parker (drums)
  • Steve Bruton (guitar)

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August 21: Watch Rolling Stones at Knebworth 1976

The Rolling Stones ended their European tour in 1976 at the third Knebworth festival August 21. It was filmed and has been heavily bootlegged. The picture quality is so and so, but the sound is terrific.

[vc_row][vc_column][vc_message message_box_color=”mulled_wine” icon_fontawesome=”fa fa-quote-left”]As the lights went up, Jagger stepped forward, “Thanks for waiting . . . ” and suddenly they were into “Satisfaction” – the anthem of mid-Sixties disaffection and anger. Jagger set off on a martial strut down the curving tongue, left arm outstretched, body bending and twisting from the waist, lights playing on a blue leather jacket, green pants and flashing off his rhinestone-studded vest and diamanté armlets; a long multicolored silken scarf around his neck, and on his head a silver tinsel contraption – a mockery of a crown – which he dispatched to the side of the stage almost immediately.
– Rolling Stone Magazine (great article)[/vc_message][/vc_column][/vc_row]
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August 21: The Late Joe Strummer was born in 1952

joe-strummer

[vc_row][vc_column][vc_message message_box_color=”mulled_wine” icon_fontawesome=”fa fa-quote-left”]“We aren’t particularly talented. We try harder!”
― Joe Strummer

“—Authority is supposedly grounded in wisdom, but I could see from a very early age that authority was only a system of control and it didn’t have any inherent wisdom. I quickly realised that you either became a power or you were crushed”
― Joe Strummer

As frontman and main songwriter of the Clash, Joe Strummer created some of the fieriest, most vital punk rock — and, indeed, rock & roll — of all time. Strummer expanded punk’s musical palette with his fondness for reggae and early rock & roll, and his signature bellow lent an impassioned urgency to the political sloganeering that filled some of his best songs.
~Steve Huey (allmusic.com)[/vc_message][/vc_column][/vc_row]

The Edge inducts the Clash Rock and Roll Hall of Fame inductions 2003:

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1963: 20 songs released in 1963 you must hear

The Year 1963 summary

  • Washington-to-Moscow “hot line” communications link opens, designed to reduce risk of accidental war (Aug. 30). Background: cold war
  • Kenya achieves independence.
  • There are 15,000 US military advisers in South Vietnam. Background:
  • 32 independent African nations establish the Organization for African Unity.
  • “March on Washington,” civil rights rally held by 200,000 blacks and whites in Washington, D.C.; Martin Luther King delivers “I have a dream” speech (Aug. 28).
  • President Kennedy shot and killed in Dallas, Tex. Lyndon B. Johnson becomes President same day (Nov. 22). Background: Timeline of Kennedy tragedies
  • Lee Harvey Oswald, accused Kennedy assassin, is shot and killed by Jack Ruby (Nov. 24).
  • Beatlemania hits the U.K. The Beatles, a British band composed of John Lennon, George Harrison, Ringo Starr and Paul McCartney, take Britain by storm.
  • The Rolling Stones emerge as the anti-Beatles, with an aggressive, blues-derived style.


Rules:

  • Only one song per artist/group
  • The song must be released that specific year
  • Songs from live albums not allowed (that’s another & more complicated list)
  • Max 20 songs

Please feel free to publish your own favorite songs from 1972 in the comments section…

 

A Hard Rain’s a-Gonna Fall – Bob Dylan

bob dylan - the_freewheelin

Written by Bob Dylan in the summer of 1962. It was first recorded in Columbia Records’ Studio A on 6 December 1962 for his second album The Freewheelin’ Bob Dylan – released May 27, 1963. The lyric structure is based on the question and answer form of the traditional ballad “Lord Randall”, Child Ballad No. 12.
[vc_row][vc_column][vc_message message_box_color=”mulled_wine” icon_fontawesome=”fa fa-quote-left”]Oh, where have you been, my blue-eyed son?
And where have you been my darling young one?
I’ve stumbled on the side of twelve misty mountains
I’ve walked and I’ve crawled on six crooked highways
I’ve stepped in the middle of seven sad forests
I’ve been out in front of a dozen dead oceans
I’ve been ten thousand miles in the mouth of a graveyard
And it’s a hard, it’s a hard, it’s a hard, and it’s a hard
It’s a hard rain’s a-gonna fall.[/vc_message][/vc_column][/vc_row]


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