A girl can dream, can’t she?
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Category Archives: Music
THE WALLS HAVE EARS
Another bit of sublimely surreal cinema from Elvis — the film is Girls! Girls! Girls! With thanks to Tony D’Ambra.
WHAT I’M SPINNING NOW
Dylan has created more important albums than this, more influential albums than this, but he’s never created a better album than this. It’s one of the greatest of all American works of art.
AN LP COVER FOR TODAY
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LLOYDZILLA
Between the two weekends of Jazz Fest there is, as I’ve mentioned, a vast amount of live music to be heard at various other venues around New Orleans. One is ChazFest, a one-day mini-festival in the Bywater district, a shabby old neighborhood which has been massively invaded of late by Bohemians, in part because it suffered little flooding during Katrina.
ChazFest takes place on two small stages set up in a large backyard in Bywater, and consists mostly of local groups not playing the big festival. Great acts, good food and drink are plentiful. One booth offered a selection of rare brands of saki. Only in New Orleans.
The ChazFest slogan this year was “BIg In Bywater”, it’s logo Godzilla looming over the place. Everyone was invited to put a face to Godzilla.
¡MEXICO!
Elvis’s double bicycles through the streets of Acapulco, Elvis himself visits the fabled resort by means of backscreen projection. All, in short, is as it should be, and the song is delightful.
KORA AT THE COLUMNS
Between the two weekends of the Jazz Fest, New Orleans is hopping with music at other venues. On Thursday, Adrienne, Bill and I went over to The Columns Hotel on St. Charles where Morikeba Kouyate, master of the kora, an African gourd harp, was sitting in with guitarist John Rankin.
It was awesome.
AN LP COVER FOR TODAY
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RECORD STORE
Jim Russell’s, on Magazine Street in New Orleans. There are a zillion LPs in this shop, but so disorganized that searching for anything becomes a bewildering chore. I picked up a couple of musical soundtracks, which I’ve yet to test on a turntable, but felt that there must be even finer treasures lurking on the shelves — it was just too much work to find out.
Still, it was wonderful to be surrounded by so much vinyl, and the chaos had its own kind of charm.
AN LP COVER FOR TODAY
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AN LP COVER FOR TODAY
Sensacional!
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AN LP COVER FOR TODAY
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SALVATION CENTRAL
On Friday, the first day of the Jazz Fest, we headed straight for The Gospel Tent. Adrienne, Bill, Paul and I were going to meet up there with Corinne, Cotty and J. B., in from Los Angeles for the festivities. The Gospel Tent was chosen because one of Corinne’s favorite acts, encountered on earlier trips to the Fest, The Electrifying Crown Seekers, was starting off the day’s program at the venue.
The Crown Seekers were indeed electrifying and The Gospel Tent became a favorite refuge throughout our subsequent days at the festival. The music was invariably thrilling — soul-stirring, you might say — the tent had shade and chairs on which to rest one’s weary bones . . . and of course there was the good news:
FREEWHEELIN’
On this day in 1963, Dylan released his second album. As John Lennon once said in discussing The Freewheelin’ Bob Dylan, which reached the Beatles in their Paris hotel almost eight months after it came out, “I think it was the first time I ever heard Dylan at all . . . And for the rest of our three weeks in Paris, we didn’t stop playing it.”
[With thanks to Paul Pearson]
AN LP COVER FOR TODAY
Sure — just not right now, thanks.
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