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."


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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 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 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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February 28
the woman in the mysterious photograph from the inside of my 60s junior walker record might have the best hair in the long history of found photos. i hope she’s still alive and looking exactly the same. [taking photos of my pretty lps, part 7]

the woman in the mysterious photograph from the inside of my 60s junior walker record might have the best hair in the long history of found photos. i hope she’s still alive and looking exactly the same.

[taking photos of my pretty lps, part 7]

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February 27
just discovered this photograph inside of my old copy of the junior walker album. either someone put it there or it’s a promotional shot of jr. walker himself, at a party or a chinese restaurant (or both). i can’t quite make it out but i think the upside-down bowls on the table say hon kong restaurant. what is this? and who are these people? the fellow at center looks like lyle lovett’s awesome uncle, and he’s staring at a woman who looks like my mother at age 22. then for some reason there’s a very menacing and furious man hovering around, next to a guy who looks awfully happy. it’s lovely. [taking photos of my pretty lps, part 6]

just discovered this photograph inside of my old copy of the junior walker album. either someone put it there or it’s a promotional shot of jr. walker himself, at a party or a chinese restaurant (or both). i can’t quite make it out but i think the upside-down bowls on the table say hon kong restaurant. what is this? and who are these people? the fellow at center looks like lyle lovett’s awesome uncle, and he’s staring at a woman who looks like my mother at age 22. then for some reason there’s a very menacing and furious man hovering around, next to a guy who looks awfully happy. it’s lovely.

[taking photos of my pretty lps, part 6]

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the dollar lp bin at good records is a penny more expensive than the 99-cent section at bleecker street records, but you can taste the difference: this morning i picked up a copy of junior walker and the all stars’ soul session from 1966. it’s on tamla motown, whose logo was just incredibly perfect back then. it looks like a tattoo. [taking photos of my pretty lps, part 5]

the dollar lp bin at good records is a penny more expensive than the 99-cent section at bleecker street records, but you can taste the difference: this morning i picked up a copy of junior walker and the all stars’ soul session from 1966. it’s on tamla motown, whose logo was just incredibly perfect back then. it looks like a tattoo.

[taking photos of my pretty lps, part 5]

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February 22

#534: joe tex - the love you save (may be your own) (1966, hullabaloo)

the truly extraordinary thing about the love you save isn’t its eyelash-soft lilt—which brings to mind a description of opiates from vice magazine (“i like swimming through a sea of warm blankets fresh from the euphoria dryer as much as the next person.”) it’s the lyrics: joe tex’s love song is barely about love. it’s about violence and civil rights. “i’ve been taken outside and i’ve been brutalized, and i’ve had to always be the one to smile and apologize,” is the scariest line in r&b outside of marvin gaye’s what’s going on (an album that was released a half-decade later).

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February 21
after a horrible multi-month hiatus, the 99-cent LP section at bleecker street records is back. yesterday evening i picked up a 1962 design spotlight series soul compilation whose exact title is joe tex!!! brook benton!!!!! marvin davis!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!, which is as good as the name would leave you to believe, and took this picture to celebrate it. even though mr. tex gets the least amount of exclamation points, he steals the show. the man knew how to make music for the first nice sunny sunday of the year. [taking photos of my pretty lps, part 4]

after a horrible multi-month hiatus, the 99-cent LP section at bleecker street records is back. yesterday evening i picked up a 1962 design spotlight series soul compilation whose exact title is joe tex!!! brook benton!!!!! marvin davis!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!, which is as good as the name would leave you to believe, and took this picture to celebrate it. even though mr. tex gets the least amount of exclamation points, he steals the show. the man knew how to make music for the first nice sunny sunday of the year.

[taking photos of my pretty lps, part 4]

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February 15

#531: wilson simonal - scene from na onda do iê iê iê (1966)

with the mysteries life, as with the mysteries of musical numbers in mid-60s brazalian films, sometimes we should accept what we can’t understand.

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February 8

#527: bill monroe - uncle pen (1965)

the nice thing about bluegrass is that even the jolly songs about fiddle-playing uncles end in death. it was like goth music with no black makeup and ten-gallon hats.

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February 1

#522: willie nelson - mr. record man (1965)

the fact that all five of last night’s grammy rock nominees are older than 50, and that their average age, according to my calculations, is 61.4 years, would lead a reasonable viewer to conclude that young people were not interested in (or good at) making superlative rock music last year. that is wrong.

so in january 2011, instead of nominating bob dylan, john fogerty, bruce springsteen, eric clapton, steve winwood, jeff beck, stevie wonder, booker t. jones, david byrne, elvis costello, levon helm, rambin’ jack elliott, loudon wainwright iii, willie nelson and (of course) neil young for grammys again, the academy should spend some of the ceremony showing clips of these glorious veterans in their prime (see above), take a few minutes to bring everyone up to speed on what they’ve been up to lately, and then dedicate the rest of the broadcast to serious quality time with the gloriously gaga and grizzly youth of today.

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January 25

#518: arethan franklin - you make me feel like a natural woman (1968)

one year after president barack obama’s historic inauguration, it’s important to take a moment to pause and appreciate aretha franklin’s hat. say what you will about this troubled and imperfect presidency, but that hat is exactly the hat we thought it was on that fateful winter morning 12 months ago. and yet even millinery, like presidential performance, has its limits. when it comes right down to it, the great hat is not as cosmically tremendous as the concert aretha franklin played in stockholm in 1968—which is probably the best full concert available on youtube, considering, among other things, the bottomless baritone saxes on i never loved a man the way i loved you and the pharmacological lilt of dr. feelgood. here’s hoping that the country can reach the tremendous heights of natural woman’s last chorus.

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January 18

#514: willie dixon & memphis slim - nervous (1962, american folk blues festival)

watching a 1930s golden gloves heavyweight champion pretending to be flustered, flappable, fidgety and feverish is like watching an indie rocker pretending not to be. the only difference is that an ironic willie dixon and memphis slim song about anxiety is a lot easier to listen to than an ironic ben gibbard or owl city about aplomb.

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memphis slim’s 1959 album at the gate of horn (download it here) is so good that the u.s. senate eventually named him ambassador-at-large of good will, which is a true story. from now on i’m only listening to blues pianists named after cities and adjectives.

memphis slim’s 1959 album at the gate of horn (download it here) is so good that the u.s. senate eventually named him ambassador-at-large of good will, which is a true story. from now on i’m only listening to blues pianists named after cities and adjectives.

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January 11

#510: little richard - jenny jenny and send me some lovin’ (1966)

semi-shirtless and sweaty little richard in paris in 1966 is like prince in new york in 1980 multiplied by baudelaire in a bathroom in 1851. the version of send me some lovin’ recorded in england two years earlier wasn’t bad, but this one single-handedly halved citywide reports of male impotence for an entire year.

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