/|\(;,;)/|\ There's an ocean of music, and I'm swimming as hard as I can. I use this blog to post music & commentary; I hope you find something here that does it for you. Peace!
Because it’s Friday.
Doc Shoe posting on bonus-tunes:
Fuck yeah Tom Waits! From the Tales From The Underground bootleg, this is an alternate master of “Jersey Girl,” a song you may remember from the Heartattack And Vine album. You’ll notice this version doesn’t have the swelling accompaniment of a string section—it’s just Waits and his voice and an acoustic guitar.
Doc Shoe posting on bonus-tunes:
Here’s the Lost Sounds demo for their song “Blackcoats Whitefear” (album version HERE) featuring the talents of Alicja Trout and the late great Jay Reatard. The completed studio version of this song is like a amphetamine freak tearing down your front door with an axe, but the demo is more deliberate, with more obvious shades of early Synth Punk pioneers like Devo and The Screamers. Damn, I miss this band.
Doc Shoe posting on bonus-tunes:
Back when Radiohead was a rock band…
After Nirvana released their Unplugged album, a whole mess of Alternative bands followed suit buy releasing acoustic covers of their back-catalog. The idea was to demonstrate that there was more to their music than just abrasive volume. That’s how we got this cool acoustic version of “Creep” by Radiohead.
Doc Shoe posting on bonus-tunes:
“Trouble In Mind” was an outtake from the Slow Train Coming sessions, early in Bob Dylan’s weird Gospel phase. This track only saw release as a B-side for the “Gotta Serve Somebody” single. To the best of my knowledge that’s the complete release history of this song; I’ve got the old vinyl single (it’s not hard to find—”Gotta Serve Somebody” hit #24 on the Billboard charts), but I’ve never seen it on any official CD release. Which is a shame, because this is a great song, featuring the talents of guitar god Mark Knopfler.
Doc Shoe posting on bonus-tunes:
Here’s the kickass B-side to Wire’s 1978 “Dot Dash” single.
Doc Shoe’s Music Blog just reached 850 followers!
Records like this prove that Hardcore is alive and well, and still moving forward. From Walker, lead singer of Crazy Spirit:
We started practicing as a full band almost exactly a year ago. Our drummer, Henry, and our bass player, Sam, wanted to start a band that had early Discharge and Brazilian influences, then they got Eugene, who is the drummer of Perdition, to play guitar. They started practicing in Eugene’s room with tiny little amps and a wooden spool with plastic buckets attached to it as drums. They recorded an instrumental demo tape and then I started practicing with them, singing random shit into an acorn while we practiced. We added lyrics, then had our first show in September and recorded the demo. On a side note, no one seems to think this, but I’d say my biggest influence on singing is Battalion of Saints. We all grew up together and got into punk together, all local NYC/Brooklyn. Now we practice in Brooklyn at the same spot as Perdition and Dawn of Humans at the house of half of the band Question. Sam and Eugene are also in Dawn of Humans.
Al Green was part of an older generation of musicians who were raised to believe that they would literally burn in Hell for making secular music. Back in the day, if you were at all religious and you performed Jazz, Blues, Soul, Rock, R&B—really, anything other than Gospel music—you were made to understand that you risked your immortal soul to do so. Think about that a moment. Howlin’ Wolf’s own mother disowned him for playing “that Devil music.” Jerry Lee Lewis was convinced he was going to burn for all eternity. Muddy Waters’ grandmother beat him the first time she heard him play the Blues as a child. Elvis Presley received truckloads of hate mail informing him that he was a tool of Satan.
Al Green was a believer, and the conflict between his faith and his work was a torment to him. It came to a head when a former lover of his, Mary Woodson White, threw boiling-hot grits on him as he took a shower, then committed suicide. She blew her brains out right there in his Memphis home. Al Green took this to be a spiritual wake-up call. He began to lose interest in his R&B career, and became an ordained pastor—the Reverend Al Green.
Yes, I’m still on a James Brown kick. I’ve got a looooong day ahead of me, but it’s just about impossible for me not to feel better when I’m listening to Mr. Dynamite Himself.
Dangerhouse was one of the greatest Punk labels of all time, putting out 7” records of bands like Dils, Black Randy & The Metrosquad, Deadbeats, X (they released an early version of “Los Angeles” on Dangerhouse), Bags, Eyes, Deadbeats, and many more. This is Ground Zero for West Coast Punk. Here’s a track by The Weirdos, a band many of you already know and love and the rest of you hopefully soon will.
From the awesome new music blog bonus-tunes:
This is Doc Shoe of Doc Shoe’s Music Blog. I’m new to Bonus Tunes, and I’d like to start things off right with a live bootleg of Vic Chesnutt performing with the same amazing band he recorded North Star Deserter and At The Cut with.
Doc Shoe is now posting at an awesome new collaborative blog, bonus-tunes:
Here’s a rarity for you: Jeff Tweedy and Glenn Kotche of Wilco got together with collaborator Jim O’Rourke to form the side-project Loose Fur back in 2000. They only toured once, but they released this self-titled album back in 2003. Check it out.
One of my favorite hypothetical questions is, “If you had a time machine, what live performance would you most want to see? After you’ve finished killing baby Hitler, of course.”
Many of your favorite artists were also great performers, and even if that performance was captured on film or on vinyl, it’s not the same as being there. I would want to see James Brown rocking the house in the early ’70s for the same reason I’d want to see Shakespeare act in one of his own plays at the Globe Theater: Because I love seeing a genius at work.
It’s too late for me to see James Brown performing live in his prime, but we can hear it—the man left us a pile of kickass live records. Here’s a good one: Love Power Peace: Live At The Olympia, Paris, 1971. This, and all three of his Live At The Apollo albums, will tide me over until I’m done building my time machine.
