Seeing as how the midnight hour impends, I thought I'd exercise my privileges and offer my two co-pilots, our fellow bloggers (you know who you is), and all our visitors all my best and all the brightest of hopes for the new year.
Happy new year, everyone!
Tom
And now, If Charlie Parker Was a Gunslinger . . . kicks off its New Year's Eve John Peel extravaganza:
In June of 1968, the singer/composer Tim Buckley recorded this set for Peel's broadcast
for the series:
Musical Indulgences
for the series:
Musical Indulgences
February 24, 1970 saw no less than Syd Barrett making this for-the-air offering.
for the series:
Musical Indulgences
for the series:
Musical Indulgences
Sandie Shaw
For your listening pleasure:
Sandie Shaw sings Cool About You, composed for her by Jim and William Reid from Peel Session, 27th November, 1988) link.
for the series:
Musical Indulgences,
The Cool Hall of Fame
April 25, 1977, saw Stratford's greatest entry in the Punk ledger, The Adverts, record the following session for John Peel
for the series:
Musical Indulgences
Billy Bragg sings for his supper.
For your listening pleasure:
Billy Bragg covers John Cale's Fear is a Man's Best Friend
-- Peel Session (27th July, 1983) link.
Billy Bragg gives us his unique take on Bobby Troup's (Get Your Kicks On) Route 66 with his A13 Trunk Road To The Sea from the same Peel Session, link.
for the series:
Artists in Action,
Musical Indulgences
Johnny Marr and Billy Bragg perform at one of the Red Wedge concerts.
for the series:
They Were Collaborators
On October 31, 1979, the aptly-named Joy Division generated these joyful sounds.
for the series:
Musical Indulgences
Billy Bragg, Ken Livingstone, Neil Kinnock and Paul Weller come together for a Red Wedge photo opportunity.
for the series:
When Legends Gather
Mike Joyce, Johnny Marr, Andy Rourke and Sandie Shaw.
For your listening pleasure:
The Smiths: This Charming Man - Peel Session (21st September, 1983) link.
Billy Bragg: Jeanne - Peel Session (28th August, 1985) link.
Sandie Shaw & The Smiths: Jeanne - Saturday Live, Radio 1 (14th April, 1984) link.
for the series:
Musical Indulgences,
They Were Collaborators
On October 19, 1988, Sonic Youth brought forth these incantations.
for the series:
Musical Indulgences
Michael Clark and Mark E. Smith, collaborators for The Fall's 1988 I Am Kurious Oranj album and ballet production.
The Fall performed more Peel Sessions than any other band.
Black Monk Theme from one of them (1st January, 1990), link.
for the series:
Musical Indulgences,
They Were Collaborators
The Smiths, spreading joy and peace and love wherever they went, recorded
this Peel Session on May 31, 1983
for the series:
Musical Indulgences
Croydon's greatest import, The Damned, rendered unto the ears of listeners (via John Peel) this session, recorded October 12, 1976
for the series:
Musical Indulgences
John Peel and Laura Cantrell
Peel declared Laura Cantrell's first album one his favourites of the last 10 years. Cantrell record Legend in My Time from John Peel's (February 2001), link.
for the series:
Musical Indulgences,
When Legends Gather
Today's Adventure: Jersey Joe Walcott unleashes his fury on the heavy bag,
held in place by trainer Dan Florio (1953)
for the series:
Adventures in the Fight Racket
Could there have been a more anachronistic album cover in 1973 than that of The Velvet Underground's final LP, Squeeze? Not only was there something embarassingly passe about its Psychedelicized artwork, but what in hell was the Empire State Building doing on an album that wasn't even released in the United States? Lou Reed had taken that New York after-hours aesthetic with him when he quit the band during the recording of their Loaded LP in 1970. Undaunted, the Velvets (what was left of them) soldiered on, with mystic Drummer Maureen 'Mo' Tucker and Bassist Doug Yule taking up the moribund standard by touring overseas. They had to add a couple of new faces to the act (Guitarist Sterling Morrison seems to have gotten lost somewhere along the way), and it all would have ended with as little fanfare as it started if Steve Sesnick, the group's manager, hadn't wrangled a recording deal with Polydor in Great Britain.
When the time came to record, another Pop music tradition was observed: With the exception of Doug Yule, who contributed the vocals, none of the Velvets (even the recent additions) participated. There would be no feedback workouts, no lyrics about all that gamy and beautiful subject matter infesting the earlier albums. This was a Pop exercise produced by the Drummer from Deep Purple (Ian Paice), and rendered with dispatch by a fleet of anonymous session players. Quick-buck textbook stuff; just like a Paul Revere and The Raiders LP.
When it was released in Europe, Squeeze failed to break open the album charts (but then, of what Velvet Underground album can this not be said?). It was, in fact, dead on arrival.
And that was, for all intent, the end of The Velvet Underground.
for the series:
Musical Indulgences
Le Coup du berger
(Fool's Mate)
(Jacques Rivette; 1956)
for the series:
Seminal Images
Joseph Lamb (1887-1960)
Though the vast majority of his work was composed prior to 1920, and though he long outlived such contemporaries as Scott Joplin, James Reese Europe and James Scott, Joseph Lamb did not record any of his compositions until August of 1959; a little more than one year before his passing at the age of 72.
The results were issued as an LP on the Folkways label, A Study in Classic Ragtime, and it is our offering today.
for the series:
The Present Day Composer
Shura-yuki-hime: Urami Renga
(aka Lady Snowblood: Love Song of Vengance)
(Toshiya Fujita; 1974)
for the series:
Seminal Images
Gaikoku jinbutsu zukushi - Amerika
(People from Foreign Lands: Americans)
(Yoshitora Utagawa; 1861)
for the series:
Woodcut Confidential
Monte Rock III holds a microphone in his right hand
for the series:
Artists in Action
Between 1977 and 1980, Elvis Costello recorded four sessions for Radio 1 eminence John Peel.
Each session consisted of four songs.
On all four he was accompanied by The Attractions.
All four sessions constitute today's offering.
for the series:
Musical Indulgences
Today's Adventure: Charles 'Sonny' Liston rises from the canvas after tanking out for the second time in his career (1965)
for the series:
Adventures in the Fight Racket
Marlene Dietrich sees what everyone else sees.
for the series:
Artists in Action
Alfred Lord Tennyson
for the series:
Poets are both clean and warm
In the early morning hours of January 26, 1966, Bob Dylan (accompanied by unnamed members of The Hawks) lurched into the studios of New York's listener-supported radio shrine WBAI-FM for an unscheduled appearance on Radio Unnameable, the weekly cavalcade of music and merriment hosted (then and now) by one of the great men of our time, Bob Fass.
It was an interesting period for this troubador; having spent the preceding six months letting it be known far and wide that he wasn't returning to the Protest song racket, no matter how forcefully the middle class white folks (who just adored songs about underclass misery) screamed their heads off or held their breath. By January, Dylan had at least managed to convince everyone that he wasn't kidding, and the volume of catcalls and boos appeared to be growing more faint by the hour (this would soon change later in the year as he faced one exceedingly ugly UK crowd after another during the course of his 1966 world tour). He could afford to take a momentary breather.
In a sense, this recording documents that brief moment of repose.
There's no music in these 93 minutes (save for a few notes from a Lightnin' Hopkins record) . . . there isn't even an interview in the conventional sense. Some back-and-forth between the host and his mystery guest (who seems to be under the influence of . . . something), a good deal of moving about (anyone who's worked in listener-supported radio knows how cramped a studio can get when more than two souls occupy it), and then Bob Fass opens up the phone lines.
The less said about what ensues . . .
Suffice it to say, all Talk Radio should sound like this.
Act One (49min.)
Act Two (44min.)
for the series:
Orpheus on the Air
The Knack
(aka The Knack... and How to Get It)
(Richard Lester; 1965)
for the series:
Art of Cinema
Hampton Court by Oleg Zinger; 1937
for the series:
Art of the London Underground
The Ford (Two Hour Sketch : The London Sketch Club)
for the series:
From the Sketch Book of Lawson Wood
On December 18, 2002, Belle and Sebastian performed an extended set at John Peel's Christmas bacchanal, broadcast live over Radio 1 in London.
Now, those of you who've been visiting this blog for more than a year will, in all probability, be scratching your heads (with some justice), asking yourselves if this is some kind of joke; if this year's Christmas Day offering could really be the same one as last year.
Well . . . it is; but for two very good (I think) reasons:
1) A regular visitor to this blog asked me to repost it this year.
and
2) I doubt if I've ever heard a better, less widely known musical Christmas bash than this. Of course, there is the Vince Guaraldi Trio's A Charlie Brown Christmas from 1965, but beautiful and haunting as that LP is, and will always be, it's so well-known and easily obtainable that posting it here would constitute laziness on a scale that outstrips my reposting the sublime Belle and Sebastian set.
Departing from last year, however, we are bringing you the broadcast in a single archive file, rather than track by track, and . . . to ameliorate our guilty conscience over throwing old material your way . . . tossing in another Belle and Sebastian Peel session from June of the previous year.
We here at If Charlie Parker Was a Gunslinger . . . would like to close by wishing all our visitors, be they regular, random or yet-to-come, and all our fellow bloggers (too numerous for words) all the best we can wish for this, the season of wintry holidays.
Merry Krimble to y'all!!
for the series:
Art of Public Performance
Unhappy word crosses the wires this Christmas morn' of the passing of James Brown, Mr. Dynamite, Godfather of Soul, the Hardest Working Man in Show Business, Soul Brother Number One, the Amazing Mr. 'Please, Please' himself; his age (a matter perpetually in dispute) given as 73. He was rushed last evening to a hospital in Atlanta, GA, with what was reportedly a severe case of Pneumonia, yet at this hour the cause of death is said to be in doubt.
Not the most cheerful news on any day; particularly if you, like me, have spent more than a few hours of your life contemplating the deeper beauties of Live at the Apollo (or Live at the Royal, for that matter). And while this Obit from the Mail & Guardian summarizes the case for his immortality neatly (if artlessly), a cursory listen to either of the aforementioned LPs (and about a half-dozen others I could name), would render all doubt to ash.
for the series:
Obits
James Brown and the Rev. Al Sharpton try to keep the peace.
for the series:
They Were Collaborators
James Brown backstage at the Apollo (1966)
for the series:
A is for Arbus
It's Not a Regular Christmas Unless You're With the Folks Back Home
(Words and Music: Bobby Heath)
(Joe Morris Music Co.; 1912)
for the series:
Art of Songwriting
When he wasn't marinating journalists in his contempt for the whole interview process, Miles Davis had an undeniable gift for being cryptic. It wasn't just the sound emitted from that self-sabotaged voice box of his (though that certainly didn't make the enterprise easier), it was his overarching determination to protect the essence of his art from revelation, even when purporting to explain it. In a sense, Davis couldn't be completely open about his work even if he wanted to be; perhaps because it relied on so many inarticulable components (the thousand alchemies in his interaction with other musicians, whether in a recording studio or on the bandstand, for example). At a certain point technique surrenders itself to a realm governed by forces beyond anyone's control; and only very few artists worth paying attention to will ever pretend to know where that point is, or where the work goes thereafter.
So even when speaking with relative candor, as he does in this recording from May of 1986, a Miles Davis interview was bound to have its impenetrable dimension. Fortunately (for us) Miles' interviewer on this occasion was not some stringer writing for a Jazz sheet or your average disc jockey . . . the kind of journalistic tragedy whom, it can be argued, fairly begged for his disdain . . . but historian and (perhaps crucially) musician Ben Sidran, for his NPR program Sidran On Record. Sidran knew enough about his subject . . . an often prickly individual even under the best of circumstances . . . to keep him talking by not trying to steer the conversation too directly. At its best (which is much of the recording), this may be the most interesting talk with Miles Davis ever committed to tape; at its worst it's not unlike the fawning S&M interviews critics in the late 60s used to conduct with washed-up movie directors (albeit without the sadism, latent or otherwise).
As an accompanying treat . . . something of an après dinner mint . . . is a 12 minute excerpt from another Sidran On Record interview (also from '86), this time with composer, arranger, wizard, saint and frequent Miles Davis co-conspirator, Gil Evans.
From now until December 31st, we here at If Charlie Parker Was a Gunslinger . . . will be bringing our visitors small offerings of this character; some musical, some not, but all music-related.
Thus do we (hopefully along with you) celebrate this holiday season.
for the series:
Intervista
Jack Benny portrays the spirit of generosity for Dennis Day and company.
for the series:
Stacks o' Wax,
They Were Collaborators
The Dave Clark Five with Ed Sullivan.
Last Sunday (17th December) it was reported that Denis Payton aka Denis West Payton, founder member and Saxophonist with the Dave Clark Five passed away.
Read the obituary from AP published in the International Herald Tribune, here.
for the series:
Obits,
When Legends Gather
Catch Us If You Can
(aka Having a Wild Weekend - US title)
(John Boorman; 1965)
for the series:
Art of Cinema
Joseph Barbera and Bill Hanna
Watch the Channel 4 News Obituary, here.
for the series:
They Were Collaborators
François Truffaut and Jean-Pierre Leaud laugh
for the series:
Artists in Action
Tricky delivers an address behind GOP crime scene tape (1971)
for the series:
Tricky: Scenes from a Life
El Sueño del pongo
(The Pongo's Dream)
(Santiago Alvarez; 1970)
for the series:
Seminal Images
Small girl and teacher spreading sheet over a cot (1960)
for the series:
G is for Gedney
Charlie Christian, Don Redman and William James Basie
for the series:
When Legends Gather
Nattvardsgästerna
(Winter Light)
(Ingmar Bergman; 1962)
for the series:
Seminal Images
Thomas Wright Waller (1904-1943)
for the series:
The Present Day Composer
A Bohemian sits under a white umbrella (1925)
for the series:
Fun at Bohemian Grove
Internal Revenue agents raid a Washington D.C. lunchroom (1923)
for the series:
American Dry Spell
Il Conformista
(The Conformist)
(Bernardo Bertolucci; 1971)
for the series:
Seminal Images
Die Vier Gesellen
(The Four Companions)
(Carl Froelich; 1938)
for the series:
Art of Cinema
Keith Moon and Vivian Stanshall plan a European tour.
for the series:
They Were Collaborators
Eddie Cantor, Kate Hepburn and Slim Summerville in The Autograph Hound.
(Disney; Jack King, 1939)
for the series:
The Ink and Paint Set
Sam Phillips and Ahmet Ertegun
My thanks to Gavin over at Testify for letting me know of Mr Ertegun's passing and recommending this excellent image.
BBC obituary.
for the series:
Obits,
When Legends Gather
Pete Roleum and His Cousins
(Joseph Losey; 1939)
In 1939, Joseph Losey became a walking emblem of what is still a relentlessly paradoxical and fitful accomodation between the imperatives of art and progressive ideas. He was at that time a stage director who could cite as accomplishments a tour of duty with the Federal Theater Project's Living Newspaper series; awards from the National Child Labor Committee and the International Ladies Garment Workers Union . . . both bestowed for his 1938 staging of Francis Faragoh's child labor melodrama Sunup to Sundown (which, despite this honorable amen corner, ran seven performances); a stillborn attempt to produce Ernest Hemingway's hideous Spanish Civil War play, The Fifth Column; and little else. Attendant to this, he had been occupied since 1937 as Production Supervisor for the Progressive Education Association's Experimental Film Project (his sole involvement in motion pictures to that point). To call him a committed man of the Left, in short, would be to understate the matter.
It is terribly odd, then, that the first film to bear the name of this future Blacklistee, Pete Roleum and His Cousins, was a deliberate work of propaganda produced for and financed by America's Petroleum industry for exhibition at the legendary New York World's Fair of 1939. Like all such works, its primary message is simple (if immodest): We . . . you, me, and everyone not reading this . . . would be nothing without Oil companies. Oil molds life as we know it; it makes the wheels of civilization turn with deceptive ease; it is as necessary to human existence as sunshine, or oxygen. With a panoply of animated oil drops (created by one of the early masters of stop-motion animation, Charles Bowers) preaching an industrial evangel that makes the average George Pal Puppetoon, by comparison, look like a Santiago Alvarez newsreel, Losey evinces a shift in values so drastic as to invite dark retrospective speculation about blackmail, extortion, moral compromise, all kinds of horror. Why else would this man, who would go on to direct such films as The Boy With Green Hair and The Assassination of Trotsky, leap head first into the hip pocket of Oil interests?
As usual, the answer is no less prosaic (and no less sinister) than a substantial payday. He was paid $10,000 out of the film's rather lavish $115,000 budget for this 15-minute Technicolor shill job and, personally, I find it hard to begrudge him a nickel of it. By his own account, none of the early work he had done in theater or film (with the exception of this, and his work on behalf of the Progressive Education Association . . . an organization which received its funding from the John D. Rockefeller Foundation) brought him more than a pittance. The life of a hardcore Progressive, staging dramas about social blight that won prizes given by Labor Unions, may have been . . . great. On paper. And it was certainly noble. But unless your name was Orson Welles, and you had enough of an instinct on how to turn a WPA poverty gig into something that eventually paid off (if only for a time), then the weight of that Great (and still ongoing) Depression was no less heavy on your shoulders than it was on any out of work mill-hand or any ex-banker reduced to pawning old suits and selling apples on 79th street.
I wish I could say that Pete Roleum and His Cousins is a slyly subversive film; a feast of subtle, undermining touches that reflect Losey's own anti-capitalist bent. It's not (according to Losey's biographer, David Caute, there is some evidence that the filmmaker in fact excised potentially ambiguous lines from the script). This is as straightforward an encomium for a multinational industry as one could ever dread. But it is an engaging piece, nonetheless.
for the series:
Movies of the Week
The Beatles stage a Merseybeat minstrel show for the benefit of easily amused broadcast and print reporters in New York
for the series:
Artists in Action
Poets W.H. Auden and Marianne Moore, shortly before she introduced his reading at the Guggenheim Museum in New York City. (April, 1964)
for the series:
A is for Arbus
Lew Ayres
(No. 4 in a series of 50 from Player's Navy Cut Tobacco)
"Lew Ayres was born in Minneapolis, December 28th, 1908. He comes of a musical family, for his mother was a pianist and his father a member of a symphony orchestra. It was natural that he also should turn to music, and after graduating from the University of Arizona, he became a musician in an orchestra. He began his film career as an extra in silent films and All Quiet on the Western Front was his first talkie. His latest include Cross Country Cruise, Millionaire for a Day and Servants' Entrance."
for the series:
Collect 'em All
Nancy Sinatra greets Boris Karloff and Basil Rathbone.
for the series:
When Legends Gather
Today's Adventure: Werner Herzog and Klaus Kinski settle a creative dispute
on the set of Cobra Verde (1987)
for the series:
Adventures in European Filmmaking
Augusto José Ramón Pinochet Ugarte (Rot in Hell, scumbag)
for the series:
So Loathsome I Could Cry
Coventry's finest; The Specials perform live at the Colchester Institute in 1979.
for the series:
Artists in Action
Tokyo senso sengo hiwa
(The Man Who Left His Will on Film)
(Nagisa Oshima; 1970)
for the series:
Seminal Images
Charles Brackett, Billy Wilder and Doane Harrison
for the series:
They Were Collaborators
Veruschka
for the series:
Sex Education,
When Models Were Models
Malcolm McLaren
for the series:
Great Con Artists of the 20th Century
Claude Jade, a strikingly lovely actress who was perhaps the only thing of value Alfred Hitchcock got from François Truffaut, passed away last Friday at the age of 58.
Associated Press obit, via the International Herald-Tribune
for the series:
Obits
¡Como ayudar a los hospitales de sancre! (1936)
for the series:
Art of Civil War
Nat King Cole clowns around in the studio while Nelson Riddle conducts.
for the series:
Artists in Action
Baisers volés
(Stolen Kisses)
(François Truffaut; 1968)
for the series:
Art of Cinema
The Edge of the World
(Michael Powell; 1937)
The Searchers
(John Ford; 1956)
for the series:
Similar Images
Variety by James Fritton; 1937
for the series:
Art of the London Underground
The Measured Mile
for the series:
From the Sketch Book of Lawson Wood
"Th' hell this ain't th' most important hole in th' world. I'm in it."
for the series:
M is for Mauldin
Internal Revenue agents confiscate the largest makeshift distillery yet found in the Washington, D.C. area (1922)
for the series:
American Dry Spell
