September 20: Watch Neil Young @ Farm Aid 2008

farm-aid-2008-neil-young

September 20: Neil Young at Farm Aid in 2008 (full set, videos)

[vc_row][vc_column][vc_message message_box_color=”mulled_wine” icon_fontawesome=”fa fa-quote-left”]Just as rock & roll is loud and proud, so is Farm Aid. Farm Aid’s greatest accomplishment, I believe, is in the spirit. It’s the fact that we represent the spirit of the good fight, to keep something good happening. It just keeps getting stronger and stronger….”
– Neil Young[/vc_message][/vc_column][/vc_row]

Farm Aid was started by Willie Nelson, Neil Young and John Mellencamp in 1985 to keep family farmers on the land and has worked since then to make sure everyone has access to good food from family farmers.

FARM_AID-2008_LOGO

Farm Aid has been going on for 31 years, and they have had a lot of great music through the years. Today we’ve picked a very fine set from Neil Young in 2008. Enjoy!

Continue reading “September 20: Watch Neil Young @ Farm Aid 2008”

The Best Songs: Famous Blue Raincoat (Leonard Cohen)


[vc_row][vc_column][vc_message message_box_color=”mulled_wine” icon_fontawesome=”fa fa-quote-left”]It’s four in the morning, the end of December
I’m writing you now just to see if you’re better
New York is cold, but I like where I’m living
There’s music on Clinton Street all through the evening.

The problem with that song is that I’ve forgotten the actual triangle. Whether it was my own – of course, I always felt that there was an invisible male seducing the woman I was with, now whether this one was incarnate or merely imaginary I don’t remember, I’ve always had the sense that either I’ve been that figure in relation to another couple or there’d been a figure like that in relation to my marriage. I don’t quite remember but I did have this feeling that there was always a third party, sometimes me, sometimes another man, sometimes another woman. It was a song I’ve never been satisfied with. It’s not that I’ve resisted an impressionistic approach to songwriting, but I’ve never felt that this one, that I really nailed the lyric. I’m ready to concede something to the mystery, but secretly I’ve always felt that there was something about the song that was unclear. So I’ve been very happy with some of the imagery, but a lot of the imagery.
~Leonard Cohen (BBC Radio Interview 1994)

Sometime in the early 1970s, a thief stole Leonard Cohen’s old raincoat from Marianne Ihlen’s New York apartment. God only know what happened to it, but the thief almost certainly had no idea he was stealing an object that belongs in the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame, if not the Smithsonian. It was that very coat that inspired Cohen to write one of his most beloved and mysterious songs. It’s written in the form of a letter, possibly to the narrator’s brother, who stole his lover, Jane.
~rollingstone.com[/vc_message][/vc_column][/vc_row]

Famous Blue Raincoat (from the album – Songs of Love and Hate)

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Van Morrison: 5 lovely live versions of “Caravan”

[vc_row][vc_column][vc_message message_box_color=”mulled_wine” icon_fontawesome=”fa fa-quote-left”]And the caravan is on it’s way
I can hear the merry gypsies play
Mama mama look at Emma Rose
She’s a-playin with the radio
La, la, la, la…[/vc_message][/vc_column][/vc_row]

Originally recorded on July 30, 1969 at Mastertone Studios in New York City with Lewis Merenstein as producer. Released on “Moondance” January 27, 1970.

[vc_row][vc_column][vc_message message_box_color=”mulled_wine” icon_fontawesome=”fa fa-quote-left”]The gypsy life and the radio are both images of harmony, images that bless. Van is “getting back into the romanticism bit with gypsies and all that. I´m really fascinated by gypsies. I love them.” Van Morrison also based the song on real memories while living in a rural house in Woodstock, New York, where the nearest house was far down the road. He described why he included the reference to radio in the song:
-Brian Hinton (Celtic Crossroads)[/vc_message][/vc_column][/vc_row]

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Tom Waits: Live at Premio Tenco San Remo Italy Nov 22 1986

 

L’altra America (1986)

Television concert documentary from the San Remo Festival (Club Tenco), Teatro Ariston.
With Greg Cohen on upright bass. Aired on Italian television by RAI DUE. Rebroadcast in 1988.

“I’m not big on awards. They’re just a lot of headlights stapled to your chest, as Bob Dylan said. I’ve gotten only one award in my life, from a place called Club Tenco in Italy. They gave me a guitar made out of tiger-eye. Club Tenco was created as an alternative to the big San Remo Festival they have every year.

It’s to commemorate the death of a big singer whose name was Tenco and who shot himself in the heart because he’d lost at the San Remo Festival. For a while, it was popular in Italy for singers to shoot themselves in the heart. That’s my award.”
– Tom Waits 1987 (Source: “Tom Waits, 20 Questions”. Playboy magazine via Tom Waits Library) Continue reading “Tom Waits: Live at Premio Tenco San Remo Italy Nov 22 1986”

Tom Waits On The Tube TV Oct 16 1985

“The Tube”
Channel 4 Television
October 16th 1985

Around this time Tom Waits played 8 Times in London
from Oct 16- 1985 – Oct 24 -1985 . at Dominion Theatre.

Hosted by Jools Holland and Paula Yates. From Tyne Tees TV Studio 5, Newcastle/ UK. Performs: “16 Shells From Thirty-Ought Six”, “Cemetery Polka”, “Walking Spanish” and “In The Neighborhood”. Rebroadcast in 1994 by Tyne Tees. Shortened version rebroadcast December, 2004 in “The Best of The Tube” (info from Tom Waits Library) Continue reading “Tom Waits On The Tube TV Oct 16 1985”

Great Tom Waits Song: Goin’ Out West

[vc_row][vc_column][vc_message message_box_color=”mulled_wine” icon_fontawesome=”fa fa-quote-left”]I’m goin’ out west where the wind blows tall
‘Cause Tony Franciosa used to date my ma
They got some money out there, they’re givin’ it away
I’m gonna do what I want and I’m gonna get paid
Do what I want and I’m gonna get paid[/vc_message][/vc_column][/vc_row]

[vc_row][vc_column][vc_message message_box_color=”mulled_wine” icon_fontawesome=”fa fa-quote-left”]Bone Machine’s standout track was “Goin’ out West,” a throwback to the demonic R&B of “Heartattack and Vine” and “16 Shells from a Thirty-Ought Six.” Over possibly the greatest drum sound ever—Waits whacking what sounds like a metal door— Joe Gore and Larry Taylor created an infernal Cramps-ish racket that put the likes of the Jon Spencer Blues Explosion utterly in the shade. Waits raged away in the guise of a wannabe actor en route to California, a deluded ex-con who claimed he looked good with his shirt off and planned to call himself Hannibal or Rex. The song was Elmore Leonard’s Be Cool distilled into three frenzied minutes, a capsule snapshot of a dumb Everglades hunk with a head full of celluloid fantasies. Waits had seen dolts like this swarming into LA for years.
-Barney Hoskyns (Lowside of the Road: A Life of Tom Waits)[/vc_message][/vc_column][/vc_row]

Continue reading “Great Tom Waits Song: Goin’ Out West”