Stylistically, the album varies from traditional sounding folk and sea chanty music (such as the aforementioned “Jolly Roger”) to hard, gritty rock tunes strongly influenced by the burgeoning punk rock movement (such as “Rock and Roll Time” that sound very much like a Clash song!). Continue reading “Roger McGuinn – Up To Me – The Best Dylan Covers”
“I think pure country music includes rock and roll. I’ve never been able to get into the further label of country-rock. How can you define something like that?”
~Gram Parsons“I just say this – it’s music. Either it’s good or it’s bad; either you like it or you don’t.”
~Gram ParsonsIn a way, it’s a matter of lost love. Gram was everything you wanted in a singer and a songwriter. He was fun to be around, great to play with as a musician. And that mother-fucker could make chicks cry. I have never seen another man who could make hardened old waitresses at the Palomino Club in L.A. shed tears the way he did.
It was all in the man. I miss him so.
~Keith Richards (Rolling Stone Magazine, 2005)
Continue reading “November 5: The late great Gram Parson was born in 1946”
My rules:
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[vc_row][vc_column][vc_message message_box_color=”mulled_wine” icon_fontawesome=”fa fa-quote-left”]Madame George is the album’s whirlpool. Possibly one of the most compassionate pieces of music ever made, it asks us, no, arranges that we see the plight of what I’ll be brutal and call a lovelorn drag queen with such intense empathy that when the singer hurts him, we do too.
-Lester Bangs[/vc_message][/vc_column][/vc_row]
A song from the album Astral Weeks, released in 1968. It was recorded during the first Astral Weeks session that took place on September 25, 1968 at Century Sound Studios in New York City with Lewis Merenstein as producer.
In 1974, after he had recorded eight albums, Morrison told Ritchie Yorke when he asked him what he considered his finest single track and the one that he enjoyed the most that it was: “Definitely ‘Madame George’, definitely. I’m just starting to realize it more and more. It just seems to get at you… it just lays right in there, that whole track. The vocals and the instruments and the whole thing. I like that one.”
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Down on Cyprus Avenue
With a childlike vision leaping into view
Clicking, clacking of the high heeled shoe
Ford and Fitzroy, Madame George
Marching with the soldier boy behind
He’s much older now with hat on drinking wine
And that smell of sweet perfume comes drifting through
The cool night air like Shalimar
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Continue reading “1968: 20 Songs Released in 1968 You Must Hear”
Christopher “Chris” Hillman (born December 4, 1944 in Los Angeles, California) is an American musician. He was one of the original members of The Byrds, which in 1965 included Roger McGuinn, Gene Clark, David Crosby and Michael Clarke. With frequent collaborator Gram Parsons, Hillman was a key figure in the development of country rock, defining the genre through his work with The Byrds, The Flying Burrito Brothers, Manassas and the country-rock group Desert Rose Band.