[vc_row][vc_column][vc_message message_box_color=”mulled_wine” icon_fontawesome=”fa fa-quote-left”]Can a song be so perfect, so successful, that it eclipses its creator? It can if it’s Bobbie Gentry’s Grammy-winning 1967 chart-topper Ode to Billie Joe, one of the most elegantly powerful pieces of storytelling ever to travel the airwaves.
~Dorian Lynskey (The Guardian)[/vc_message][/vc_column][/vc_row]
Ode to Billie Joe:
Continue reading “July 27: Happy 74th Birthday Bobbie Gentry”
[vc_row][vc_column][vc_message message_box_color=”mulled_wine” icon_fontawesome=”fa fa-quote-left”]Keep going, you’ll be all right. You’re going to last, don’t worry about it!
– Mick Jagger (asked if he could give one advice to the 20-year-old Mick Jagger), Esquire, 2012[/vc_message][/vc_column][/vc_row]
Continue reading “July 26: Happy 75th Birthday Sir Michael Philip Jagger”
[vc_row][vc_column][vc_message message_box_color=”mulled_wine” icon_fontawesome=”fa fa-quote-left”]“It was a funky record – it’s one of my favorite Beatle tracks, or, one of my favourite Lennon tracks, let’s say that. It’s funky, it’s bluesy, and I’m singing it pretty well. I like the sound of the record. You can dance to it. I’d buy it!”
“The thing was created in the studio. It’s gobbledygook, Come Together was an expression that Leary had come up with for his attempt at being president or whatever he wanted to be, and he asked me to write a campaign song. I tried and tried, but I couldn’t come up with one. But I came up with this, Come Together, which would’ve been no good to him, you couldn’t have a campaign song like that, right?”
– John Lennon (Playboy, 1980)[/vc_message][/vc_column][/vc_row]
“Come Together” is a song by The Beatles written by John Lennon and credited to Lennon–McCartney. The song is the opening track on the album Abbey Road, and was released as a double A-sided single with “Something”, their twenty-first single in the United Kingdom and twenty-sixth in the United States. The song reached the top of the charts in the US, and peaked at number four in the UK.
John Lennon: vocals, rhythm guitar, handclaps and tambourine
Paul McCartney: harmony vocals,electric piano and bass
George Harrison: lead guitar
Ringo Starr: drums, maracas
| A-side | “Something“ |
|---|---|
| Released | 6 October 1969 (US), 31 October 1969 (UK) |
| Format | 7″ |
| Recorded | 21 July 1969, EMI Studios, London |
| Genre | Blues rock, hard rock |
| Length | 4:18 |
| Label | Apple |
| Writer(s) | Lennon–McCartney |
| Producer | George Martin |
Continue reading “July 21: The Beatles Recorded “Come Together” in 1969″
Happy Birthday, Jack White!
John Anthony White (né Gillis; born July 9, 1975) is an American singer and songwriter. He is best known as the lead singer and guitarist of the duo The White Stripes, but has also had success in other bands and as a solo artist. White has enjoyed consistent critical and popular success and is widely credited as one of the key artists in the garage rock revival of the 2000s. He has won twelve Grammy Awards, and all three of his solo albums have reached number one on the Billboard charts. Rolling Stone ranked him number 70 on its 2010 list of “The 100 Greatest Guitarists of All Time”. David Fricke‘s 2011 list ranked him at number 17.
“Blues singers and people who are singing on stage have the same feelings and emotions that someone who is called to be a priest might have.” – Jack White
Music is Jack White’s calling, it is his mission in life, and we at JV are regulars when he preaches. Jack White is a musical genius. He’s a rock auteur. You can hear “his voice” on everything he’s involved in. That is a good thing, and his solo albums really shines.
Continue reading “July 9: Jack White was born in 1975 – Happy Birthday!”
[vc_row][vc_column][vc_message message_box_color=”mulled_wine” icon_fontawesome=”fa fa-quote-left”]When we were working with Bob Dylan and we moved to Woodstock, everybody referred to us as the band. He called us the band, our friends called us the band, our neighbors called us the band.
~Robbie Robertson (from “The Last Waltz”)[/vc_message][/vc_column][/vc_row]
Continue reading “July 5: Happy 75th Birthday Robbie Robertson”
“No one can penetrate me. They only see what’s in their own fancy, always.”
– Ray Davies
Sir Raymond Douglas “Ray” Davies, CBE (born 21 June 1944) is an English musician. He was the lead vocalist, rhythm guitarist and main songwriter for The Kinks, which he led with his younger brother, Dave. He has also acted, directed and produced shows for theatre and television.
Ray Davies is one of my favorite british songwriters, he really is up there with Lennon/McCartney and Jagger/Richards. He is that good!
Ray Davies’ influence on british music is large and important. It really became visible during the brit-pop period, but I can hear his way of talking about the english way of live in today’s pop and rap/hip-hop also. They might not know why they do it the way the do, but we do, it is the way Ray Davies taught them through his songs .
While almost every other songwriter working in a rock band at the time was talking about altered states or sticking it to squares, Ray Davies developed a vocabulary of traditional English life, and even mocked Carnaby Street fashion on “Dedicated Follower of Fashion”. The Kinks were culture without the “counter” prefix, a rock band that anomalously acknowledged the dignity in the middle-aged woman who went out and bought a hat like the one Princess Marina wore, the one that adopted the mannerisms of music hall without pastiche or irony, the one that sang about tea and gooseberry tarts and favoring neighborhood life over new patterns of development.
– Pitchfork (Joe Tangari)
20 Century Man (Storytellers, vh1):
Continue reading “June 21: Ray Davies was born in 1944 Happy Birthday”