#899: ry cooder - tattler (live at the record plant, 1974)
this year, i’m thinking of making a series of sentimental ry cooder-themed valentine’s day cards. “true love can be such sweet harmony… if you do the best that you can!” the first one will say, underneath a drawing of ryland in his mid-70s hawaiian shirt and ponytail. the kids will love that! it’s my ticket out of this godforsaken town, i can feel it. all kidding aside, ry cooder’s guitar playing can beat up yours.
#898: ry cooder - tattler (or, you can’t stop the tattler) (live, 1973)
ry c.’s the only man on earth who could make david foster wallace look like a bad bandana wearer, while at the same time giving the distinct impression that lowell george and keith richards and everyone else didn’t really know much about slide guitar. he was and is just that perfect, even when playing a relatively tuneless early acoustic version of an anti-polygamy pop number.
#894: u-roy - natty rebel (1978)
when u-roy does that walk at 2:45, halfway between a glide and a wiggle and a wade, wearing his spotless orange suit, what he’s doing is apologizing for the relatively light posting recently on this blog. it’s a magical walk, readers, and it can mean whatever you need it to mean.
but i can change. and you can change, too, if you in your arrogant blindness have somehow conducted your lifelong affairs without at least once enjoying u-roy’s perfect orange-suited shuffle. enjoy it, friends.
#893: the band - rocking chair (festival express, 1970)
not liking the band is like not liking human virtue. it is disliking childhood and the sun. it is exactly like disliking comfort, foothills, telecasters, tobacco, oceans, and your better parent. it would be like disliking brassieres and brasseries at the same time. it is disliking accordions, chairs, and half-sour pickles pickled by your friend’s smiley older sister. it is disliking geriatric beards. it is disliking mint, oyster sauce and soil, and old hats. and salt.
#890: parliament-funkadelic - p. funk (wants to get funked up) (1976, live in houston)
how appropriate that these five minutes begin softly and dimly and end in the bright flashes of all-encompassing funk. because george clinton’s intergalactic army found the road from lifelessness and silence to the great ear-bopping bang. to the aqua-boogieing, space-wiggling, affair-motoring, rubbery flashes of truth and goodness! funk for humanity, and funk for those devoid of funk! funk from trombones stretching across all seas! funk for all ages! loving funk that loves all! universal funk!
#887: harry nilsson - gotta get up (1971)
yes! here we are! it’s a new day, a new month, a new year! let’s do this! come quick, everybody! that’s the spirit! team! on three! stretch! up and at them! onwards! upwards! onwards and upwards!
#886: tom waits - silent night & christmas card from a hooker in minneapolis (1978)
the trick to happy holidays is remembering that one december tom waits met a nun from johnsburg illinois whose convent let her out to celebrate new year’s eve. he found a wedding chapel for them in the yellow pages next to “massage,” and a registrar named watermelon called them mr. tom and ms. kathleen watts. they spent their honeymoon in william blake’s old irish house, where the radio was broken. the man at the front desk they called for assistance had gone out, looking for radio parts, and came back four days later. it was that or they met at a hollywood party while roy brown played. but friends, either way, may a little bit of some kind of heavenly peace be yours, too, this holiday season. see you in 2012.
#878: donovan - happiness runs (1972, bbc)
i’ve been strongly considering quickly tossing up 122 music videos willy-nilly so we can get to #1000, therefore justifying a month-long most-significant-videos-of-all-time list. i’d like to say right away that donovan’s happiness runs from the bbc in 1972 will qualify for the list because of its gender-divided round singing led by a man sitting on the floor in an outer space-themed shirt. and it may land up in the single digits thanks to the fact that it’s a song about how happiness runs in a circular motion that itself runs in a circular motion. and those la la las! so cuckoo.
#866: emmylou harris - leaving louisiana in the broad daylight (live, 1978)
the way emmylou harris hops up and down in place while young ricky skaggs and his mustache play their fiddle solo would bring a tear to hank williams’ cold corpse on a cold night in the oakwood annex.
#863: roy orbison - it’s over (1975, bbc)
history’s most effective pairing of a giant fern with a studded spread collar with a human neck that looks like a b-movie prosthetic but is real—so very real and thrilling.
#862: roy orbison - blue bayou (recorded 1963, live 1973)
any nincompoop could have dressed up this year as steve jobs or hipster cop or occupy wall street or an updside-down herman cain 9-9-9 plan, but i wanted to try out pompadoured roy orbison on the mid-60s blue bayou album cover, before i realized that the real gift to halloween would be going as roy playing blue bayou live a decade later after he was made a widower but before undergoing a triple bypass.
and then it hit me that, of course, dressing as the three bowtied backup guitarists in roy orbison’s mid-70s band would be the greatest gift of all.
so i here am, all blue, wearing three dinner jackets, mouth slightly agape in that rhythm guitarist way, just to the side of the spotlight, picks in hand, singing backup about roy’s bayous, just for you.
#860: caetano veloso - asa branca (1972)
best brow in the brazilian business. and the most beautiful branca, whatever a branca is.
#853: pink floyd - green is the colour (1970)
when tough guys like me listen to ballads about ladies with green eyes in white dresses under blue canopies, we make sure they’re by bands who normally sang about axes, money, schoolyard frustration and other man issues.
just kidding, i’m crying softly while typing this. such a pretty song!
#846: john lennon and george harrison - oh my love (1971)
a little george harrison deserves a little more, but it also deserves ‘til there was you in 1963’s royal variety concert, baby’s in black in 1966 in munich, michael lindsay-hogg’s rain video, george on a beach on his honeymoon, all you need is love on the beatles’ telecast in 1967, maxwell’s silver hammer and good old you really got a hold on me in let it be, plus the spanish let it be poster, george’s true love on a boat in 1976, and, maybe most importantly of all, george singing blow away with a green-screen blue sky and giant orange duck.
