Dwight Yoakam Top 10 Music Videos – Happy birthday!

Iv’ve liked Dwight Yoakam since the late eighties. There was a music magazine here in Norway, Beat, that really championed those new country (country/rock) artists and I was smitten. His first two records really got worn out at my student home in Bergen.

Today I am going to list his 10 best videos (you know he came up at the same time as MTV and he’s always had great music videos). This is my own list and it is not discussed with Egil (the other half of BTL) before putting it out here.

1. Guitars, Cadillacs:

2. Streets of Bakersfield (with Buck Owens):

Dwight Yoakam to the magazine Country Guitar in 1994:

‘Bakersfield’ really is not exclusively limited to the town itself but encompasses the larger California country sound of the Forties, Fifties and on into the Sixties, and even the Seventies, with the music of Emmylou Harris, Gram Parsons, the Burrito Brothers and the Eagles — they are all an extension of the ‘Bakersfield Sound’ and a byproduct of it. I’ve got a poster of Buck Owens performing at the Fillmore West in 1968 in Haight Asbury! What went on there led to there being a musical incarnation called country rock. I don’t know if there would have been a John Fogerty and Creedence Clearwater Revival had there not been the California country music that’s come to be known as the ‘Bakersfield Sound’.

Continue reading “Dwight Yoakam Top 10 Music Videos – Happy birthday!”

October 21: Happy 79th Birthday Steve Cropper

[vc_row][vc_column][vc_message message_box_color=”mulled_wine” icon_fontawesome=”fa fa-quote-left”]Sure, I’ve always dug Steve Cropper… his guitar playing. Ever since the first Booker T. record. I heard that back in the Midwest. Yeah, everybody was playing like him.
~Bob Dylan (to Jann Wenner, 29 Nov. 1969)

Memphis is in a very lucky position on the map. Everything just gravitated to Memphis for years.
~Steve Cropper[/vc_message][/vc_column][/vc_row]

Booker T & The MG’s – Green Onions:

Continue reading “October 21: Happy 79th Birthday Steve Cropper”

October 20: Tom Petty Birthday – Bob Dylan & Tom Petty Singing Together & Covering Each Other

[vc_row][vc_column][vc_message message_box_color=”mulled_wine” icon_fontawesome=”fa fa-quote-left”]I remember playing shows [with Tom Petty & the Heartbreakers in the ‘80s] and looking out.. I didn’t have that many fans coming to see me,they were coming to see Tom Petty & the Heartbreakers.
~Bob Dylan (to Robert Hilburn, December 1997)[/vc_message][/vc_column][/vc_row]

Thomas Earl Petty (October 20, 1950 – October 2, 2017) was an American singer-songwriter, multi-instrumentalist, record producer, and actor. He was the lead singer of Tom Petty and the Heartbreakers, formed in 1976. He previously led the band Mudcrutch. He was also a member of the late 1980s supergroup the Traveling Wilburys.

Continue reading “October 20: Tom Petty Birthday – Bob Dylan & Tom Petty Singing Together & Covering Each Other”

October 19: Tom Petty & The Heartbreakers released Damn The Torpedoes in 1979

“…Tom Petty and his bar band defrilled classic rock: In 1979, he filed for bankruptcy; then Torpedoes took off, mostly because “Here Comes My Girl” seemed to keep the promises those like Jagger et al., forgot they’d made. Perfectly produced by future music-industry megamogul Jimmy Iovine, Torpedoes gave bright jangling Sixties rock a sheen that made pretty much everything else on AOR radio seem lumpy and stiff, while Petty’s obvious authenticity kept the music from ever seeming calculated or overly”
– Rolling Stone

I got this album on vinyl in January 1980, it is still my favourite Tom Petty and The Heartbreakers album.

Damn the Torpedoes is the third studio album by Tom Petty and the Heartbreakers, released on October 19, 1979. It built on the commercial success and critical acclaim of his two previous albums and reached #2 on the Billboard album chart. The album went on to become certified Triple Platinum.

In 2003, the album was ranked number 313 on Rolling Stone magazine’s list of the 500 greatest albums of all time, and 315 in a 2012 revised list. It is at 231 on the 2020 list from Rolling Stone magazine. It’s climbing!

Great documentary on Damn The Torpedoes in The Classic Album series , Part 1:

Continue reading “October 19: Tom Petty & The Heartbreakers released Damn The Torpedoes in 1979”

October 18: The late great Chuck Berry was born in 1926

chuck berry

 “Roll over, Beethoven, and tell Tchaikovsky the news.”

Keith Richards Inducts Chuck Berry into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame (1986):

“Chuck was my man. He was the one who made me say ‘I want to play guitar, Jesus Christ!’…Suddenly I knew what I wanted to do.”
~Keith Richards (1992)

 

Continue reading “October 18: The late great Chuck Berry was born in 1926”

October 17: Bruce Springsteen released The River 40 years ago today – 1980

October 17: Bruce Springsteen released The River in 1980

But I remember us riding in my brother’s car
Her body tan and wet down at the reservoir
At night on them banks I’d lie awake
And pull her close just to feel each breath she’d take
Now those memories come back to haunt me
They haunt me like a curse
Is a dream a lie if it don’t come true
Or is it something worse?
~Bruce Springsteen “The River”

Put on your best dress baby
And darlin’, fix your hair up right
Cause there’s a party, honey
Way down beneath the neon lights
~Bruce Springsteen “Out In The Street”

 

Continue reading “October 17: Bruce Springsteen released The River 40 years ago today – 1980”