max abelson's super groovy music video spectacular

1960s on mon
1970s on tues
1980s on wed
1990s on thurs
2000s on fri


featuring the fine musical stylings of: the beatles, the rolling stones, serge gainsbourg, yo la tengo, the kinks, harry nilsson, ike & tina turner, antony, aretha franklin, wilco, elvis, talking heads, stephen foster, dr. dre, bonnie 'prince' billy, elvis c., neil young, the smiths, dusty springfield, al green, jimi hendrix, r.e.m., ray charles, belle & sebastian, randy newman, cat power, the cure, queen & pavement


i write for the observer, email me at mabelson at observer.com


"mtv makes me want to smoke crack." -beck


see the archives, or a random post.


"i just happen to be here, and it's okay." -caetano veloso


"it took me about three or four weeks to toilet train my cat, nightlife. most of the time is spent moving the box very gradually to the bathroom. do it very slowly and don't confuse him." -charles mingus


"sing a simple song but keep the swing strong." -de la soul


"his wife was a spent piece of used jet trash, made good bloody marys, kept her mouth shut most of the time, had a chihuahua named carlos that had some kind of skin disease and was totally blind." -tom waits


"i’ve still got things inside me—sad things, happy things—that people don’t know about." -loretta lynn


"after cheesecake with all of your friends and family, who's gonna front the bill? me... say you want to take first-class trips, well i want to work those first-class hips. yes i do." -r. kelly


"i drive a rolls-royce, cause it's good for my voice." -t.rex


gotta think straight, keep a clean plate." -joanna newsom


"keep a clean nose, watch the plain clothes." -bob dylan


"my mother used to tell me about vibrations. i didn't really understand too much of what that meant when i was just a boy. to think that invisible feelings, invisible vibrations existed scared me to death." -brian wilson


"i'll be the wind, the rain and the sunset." -lou reed


"hey there, hey now, well, you can make a pacemaker blink, yeah, easy thing, make a man's heart go bibbity bom like a gentle drum: dirty ass rock and roll. -john cale


"i'm dealing in rock and roll. i'm not a bonafide human being." -phil spector


"at a certain point phil approached me with a bottle of kosher red wine in one hand and a .45 in the other, put his arm around my shoulder and shoved the revolver into my neck and said, 'leonard, i love you.' i said, 'i hope you do, phil.'" -leonard cohen


"we were having coffee or something to drink, i forget, at 2 am at the plaza hotel. phil had this long hair, down to his shoulders, he’s a very strange looking guy, it’s, well, anyway, this was before longish hair was everywhere, it goes back. i could see at this table nearby, there were two couples, i remember, they were older people, at least in the 60s, they’d whisper at each other and look at phil and whisper at each other. finally this lady, tanked, comes over to phil and says, 'alright, sonny, what’s your problem?' and he said, 'premature ejaculation, what’s yours?'" -tom wolfe


"i bite my nails and if that fails i go get myself stoned, but when i do i think of you and head myself back home" -gram parsons


woody allen's reasons to live: "i would say groucho marx, to name one thing, and willie mays, and the second movement of the jupiter symphony, and louis armstrong’s recording of potatohead blues, swedish movies, naturally. sentimental education by flaubert, marlon brando, frank sinatra, those incredible apples and pears by cézanne, the crabs at sam wo’s, tracy’s face."


"i'm going to boogie my scruples away" -lowell george


"the first time i got stoned on grass was with john paul jones of led zeppelin. we'd been talking to ramblin' jack elliott somewhere and jonesy said to me, 'come over and i'll turn you on to grass.' he had a huge room with nothing in it except this huge vast hammond organ, right next door to the police. i ate two loaves of bread. then the telephone rang. jonesy said, answer that for me will you? so i went downstairs to answer the phone and kept on walking right out into the street." -david bowie


brian eno songs that will make good book titles for my 10-volume memoir, in order: here he comes, baby's on fire, golden hours, brutal ardour, taking tiger mountain, events in dense fog, through hollow lands, some of them are old, everything merges with the night, dead finks don’t talk


ry cooder albums that every man should own: into the purple valley, boomer's story, paradise and lunch


#1 song on the white album (tie): long long long, happiness is a warm gun


"the only word is love." -john lennon


thelonious monk's middle name: sphere


"think about something else. was art tatum talented?" -charles aznavour in shoot the piano player


"really, we don't want people twiddling their goatees over our stuff" -radiohead


"i don't rap fast, i rap slow, 'cause i mean every letter in the words in the sentences of my quotes." -lil' wayne


"i love songs about horses, railroads, land, judgment day, family, hard times, whiskey, courtship, marriage, adultery, separation, murder, war, prison, rambling, damnation, home, salvation, death, pride, humor, piety, rebellion, patriotism, larceny, determination, tragedy, rowdiness, heartbreak and love. and mother. and god." -johnny cash


"the moon is clear, the sky is bright, i'm happy as the horse's shite." -the pogues


"i hope that you all out there, young, old, tall, short, fat or thin, quick or slow, no matter what kind or color or shape or person you are, if you like to make music, why, go ahead, don't let the microphones and loudspeakers faze you, make some yourself.” -pete seeger


"but chuck berry isn't merely the greatest of the rock and rollers, or rather, there's nothing mere about it. say rather that unless we can somehow recycle the concept of the great artist so that it supports chuck berry as well as it does marcel proust, we might as well trash it altogether." -robert christgau


mashable.com says about the spectacular: "you can expect the unexpected with this awesome gem. groovy."


the 33 1/3 book series' blog says: "whenever i start playing around on youtube i always end up watching that lady fall over while stomping grapes, so it's nice to have someone steer me in a more worthwhile direction."


see album covers, photos, posters, quotes & staches


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2008: j. f. m. a. m. j. j. a. s. o. n. d.


2009: j. f. m. a. m. j. j. a. s. o. n. d.


2010: j. f.


Creative Commons License
March 11

#545: sparklehorse - saturday (1998)

the world didn’t need mark linkous’ suicide to know he didn’t mean it when he named his masterpiece it’s a wonderful life. he was the type of person who could write a song called sad and beautiful world that’s exclusively about ugliness. he named his home studio, where this upsettingly good version of saturday was recorded, static king. even when he talks about his guitars in the interview at the end, a surefire fun rockstar topic, the 60-second conversation turns to the smell of old ladies in church and the instrument that camper van beethoven’s singer left for him in a hospital and forgot about. but the music he played on the smelly and forgotten guitars was pretty, which is all anyone can ask. he died at 47.

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March 10
in this week’s observer, i wrote about a very bald and large israeli businessman named yuval tal, whose new york company makes the prepaid private-label debit mastercards that were used in january’s assassination of a senior hamas militant. the whole time i was writing it i thought about james bond, except mr. tal’s secret manhattan headquarters turned out to be sort of sad and dingy.

in this week’s observer, i wrote about a very bald and large israeli businessman named yuval tal, whose new york company makes the prepaid private-label debit mastercards that were used in january’s assassination of a senior hamas militant. the whole time i was writing it i thought about james bond, except mr. tal’s secret manhattan headquarters turned out to be sort of sad and dingy.

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sean connery as james bond, 1964 not yuval tal.

sean connery as james bond, 1964

not yuval tal.

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March 9

#544: three dog night - mama told me not to come (live, 1973)

the three best live versions of three dog night’s cover of randy newman’s mama told me not to come are basically anti-drug commercials. this version from 1973 is obviously about the dangerous matching of floral patterned shirts with vests that cocaine causes, 1970’s performance from the war memorial auditorium in rochester warns against heroin’s thick and monochromatic heaviness, and a televised show from the same year should be forced upon all pill-popping teenagers when they’re caught rummaging through dad’s medicine cabinet to prove what kinds of green and yellow bell-bottoms you wear when amphetamines take over your brain. still, that is one delectable electric keyboard riff.

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March 8
do yourself a solid and make stan getz’s 1964 live album getz au go go the soundtrack to your mid-march. it doesn’t have the girl from ipanema, which is okay because it can only be heard so many times, but there is astrud gilberto fluttering by to sing rodgers and hammerstein’s it might as well be spring, plus nine others with very good vibes and vibraphones.

do yourself a solid and make stan getz’s 1964 live album getz au go go the soundtrack to your mid-march. it doesn’t have the girl from ipanema, which is okay because it can only be heard so many times, but there is astrud gilberto fluttering by to sing rodgers and hammerstein’s it might as well be spring, plus nine others with very good vibes and vibraphones.

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#543: stan getz and astrud gilberto - the girl from ipanema (1964)

it’s worth limping through a long new york winter, not to mention the treacherous chill of a sad manhattan autumn, to get to afternoons like this one. footsteps have pep, sweaters are yellow, the sunny side of the street smells like sunflowers, and astrud gilberto is playing on the radio.

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March 6
i don’t see what would be wrong with appreciating joan collins unironically. the lady was a stone cold fox. (january 1953)

i don’t see what would be wrong with appreciating joan collins unironically. the lady was a stone cold fox. (january 1953)

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March 5

#542: badly drawn boy - pissing in the wind (2000)

a very little known fact about both millennial indie rock and joan collins’ oeuvre is that her best naked lip-syncing work was done in badly drawn boy’s highly underrated pissing in the wind video, made around the time of the cinematic milestone these old broads (costarring debbie reynolds, shirley maclaine and elizabeth taylor). it’s a very erotic movie, plus a very erotic music video. and even though badly drawn boy is a poor man’s elliott smith, this song is secretly a twangy beauty.

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i have recently conducted thorough research with colleagues, and our conclusion is that joan collins once had gams from here to next tuesday. the original caption of this photo reads, “1956: british actor joan collins holding a cigarette while leaning against a fence in shorts.” hemingway couldn’t have said it better himself.

i have recently conducted thorough research with colleagues, and our conclusion is that joan collins once had gams from here to next tuesday. the original caption of this photo reads, “1956: british actor joan collins holding a cigarette while leaning against a fence in shorts.” hemingway couldn’t have said it better himself.

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March 4

#541: the roots ft. erykah badu - you got me (woodstock, 1999)

if i ever sit down to write a book about the soulful duets that perpetually blow my top, chapter one will be about ray charles and betty carter (i’ve been trying to listen to baby it’s cold outside as much as possible before it becomes seasonally inappropriate), chapter two will be on otis redding and carla thomas (with careful attention paid to the tramp intro about continental clothes and stetson hats), and chapter three will be about erykah badu and the roots, who are now well into their second decade of playing together exceedingly beautifully.

woodstock ‘99 didn’t deserve to have a song this intense. i wish my middle name were soulquarian, not joseph.

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soulquarian pun of the century, so far

  • me: holy cow, that erykah badu clip on theawl.com? so beautiful
  • leoncrawl: yeah i'm watching that right now!
  • me: we are soulquarian mates!
  • leoncrawl: haha
  • me: that was the most amazing pun
  • leon: i'm sorry, i didn't get it : (
  • me: the soulquarians were a loosely-knit hiphop collective involving the roots and erykah badu and like common before he started sucking it up in gap commercials
  • leon: wow, that is a good pun!
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March 3
here’s the beginning of my story from today’s observer: “last friday, while manhattan suffered through another desperately slushy storm, the 57-year-old financier steven rattner was holed up inside his family’s westchester horse farm. there were no taxis to splash through icy curbside puddles. the snow fell from the pretty white sky. it was bad. there are only two things that can happen after a hugely baroque manhattan scandal: survival or ruin. but sometimes a new yorker gets trapped in between, in the gooey limbo of semi-disgrace, which you wouldn’t wish on your worst enemy. important chief executives ask aloud if the united states attorney general’s office, never mind new york’s, might be interested in having a chat with you. over iced teas at midtown hotel bars, important publicists nudge reporters about around-the-corner indictments. friends speak about you gently, and foes, voices even gentler, purr about your fate…” beautiful rattner portrait, not costello-related, by edel rodriguez

here’s the beginning of my story from today’s observer:

“last friday, while manhattan suffered through another desperately slushy storm, the 57-year-old financier steven rattner was holed up inside his family’s westchester horse farm. there were no taxis to splash through icy curbside puddles. the snow fell from the pretty white sky. it was bad. there are only two things that can happen after a hugely baroque manhattan scandal: survival or ruin. but sometimes a new yorker gets trapped in between, in the gooey limbo of semi-disgrace, which you wouldn’t wish on your worst enemy. important chief executives ask aloud if the united states attorney general’s office, never mind new york’s, might be interested in having a chat with you. over iced teas at midtown hotel bars, important publicists nudge reporters about around-the-corner indictments. friends speak about you gently, and foes, voices even gentler, purr about your fate…”

beautiful rattner portrait, not costello-related, by edel rodriguez

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March 2

#540: elvis costello - watching the detectives and you belong to me (1979)

i’m awfully excited about my cover story in tomorrow’s observer about the sad limbo that private equity prince steven rattner has been suffering through lately. while i was writing the article, i couldn’t help but think about the incredibly slight physical resemblance between mr. rattner and elvis costello & the attractions’ bassist bruce thomas. frankly, that would get me thinking about lots of costello-related topics, especially, as it happens, the time he started an all-lady new wave dance party on stage by telling the crowd, “now, we think there’s rather too many tall people in the audience, so the young ladies in the audience can’t see all that well. and what we want all those guys to do is move away from the front here, so all the girls can come down front.” actually, now that i think about it, the bassist and investor don’t really look alike. but who’s really counting.

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this is probably inappropriate to point out, but i’m swelling with pride that both the publisher and editor-in-chief of the observer managed to sneak into the backgrounds of the new york times’ lead photographs for its governor paterson story. photobombing is really going mainstream! god job, team.

this is probably inappropriate to point out, but i’m swelling with pride that both the publisher and editor-in-chief of the observer managed to sneak into the backgrounds of the new york times’ lead photographs for its governor paterson story. photobombing is really going mainstream! god job, team.

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March 1

#539: loretta lynn (with don helms) - your cheatin’ heart (1966)

bob dylan said that when he found out hank williams had been killed, the silence of outer space never seemed so loud. and when loretta lynn plays hank williams’ saddest song with his own pedal steel guitar player, even the dark matter in the colliding galaxies of the famous bullet cluster sheds tears and sniffles. those twangs are hazy cosmic screams.

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