max abelson's super groovy music video spectacular

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2000s on fri


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this website ft. the beatles, aretha franklin, neil young, dr. dre, will oldham, serge gainsbourg, the kinks, dusty springfield, jimi hendrix, pavement, the clash, the smiths, al green, rolling stones, cat power, yo la tengo, stevie wonder, antony, wilco, elvis, talking heads, elliott smith, r.e.m., ray charles, velvet underground, the monochrome set, randy newman, the cure, queen, duke ellington & more


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


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


see the archives & a random post


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


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


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


"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


"she had a chihuahua named carlos that had some kind of skin disease and was totally blind." -tom waits


"you can't hold the hand of a rock 'n' roll man." -joni mitchell


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


"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. -john cale


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


"to try to maximize the relationship of listening to a record through promotion is like experiencing driving a car by reading about stimulus programs." -bonnie 'prince' billy


"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


"we can make each other happy, or we can make each other happy." -harry nilsson


"my mother used to tell me about vibrations. to think that invisible feelings, invisible vibrations existed scared me to death." -brian wilson


"i'm an idiot for you." -iggy pop


"i mean every letter in the words in the sentences of my quotes." -lil' wayne


"lyrics choochoo from my mouth like locomotion." - pato banton


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


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


"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


"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


"he's got a mind like a sewer, and a heart like a fridge" -elvis costello


"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


"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." -woody allen


"where have you been all my life?" -emmylou harris, to my brother tommy


"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." -david bowie


"tired of the tango? fed up with fandango? dance on moonbeams, slide on rainbows, in furs or blue jeans. you know what I mean." -roxy music


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


thelonious monk's middle name: sphere


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


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


"the only word is love." -john lennon


"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


"i could even find it in my heart to love mike love." -belle & sebastian


"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.” -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 us: "you can expect the unexpected with this awesome gem. groovy," 33 1/3 says: "it's nice to have someone steer me in a more worthwhile direction," others say: "pulitzer."


download albums, see album covers, photos, posters, quotes & 'staches


the olden days: 08 j. f. m. a. m. j. j. a. s. o. n. d. 09 j. f. m. a. m. j. j. a. s. o. n. d. 10 j. f. m. a. m. j. j. a. s. o. n. d. 11 j. f. m. a. m. j. j. a. s. o. n. d. 12 j.


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February 11
the gerry mulligan page on the website brainy quote is the horse e books of jazz. “new york is still where i live most of the time,” gerry mulligan once said, it claims. “i’ve appeared on some other people’s albums,” he reportedly stated another time. because gerry mulligan played the baritone saxophone like an ice pick, an ice pick made out of ice (especially on mainstream of jazz), one can only assume he had much profounder things to say. in fact—after writing that sentence i’ve found a recording of his oral autobiography about being a scratch-your-eyes-out drug addict, on the library of congress’ website. it’s about the “one time when we gave artificial respiration for about eight hours straight to keep a guy going,” and when “after gail and i split up, i started to get back into my old habits with heroin. not ever to the extent that i had been involved in new york, but still enough that it was an ongoing thing, and it was time-consuming and constant.” in other words, gerry mulligan’s period after splitting up with whomever gail was of constant heroin use was somehow not as horrible as another period in new york city. to imagine what could possibly have made that other period worse provides a small peak into the misery of the word “habits.” update: and so does the story about whitney houston’s death on the cover of the times. 

the gerry mulligan page on the website brainy quote is the horse e books of jazz. “new york is still where i live most of the time,” gerry mulligan once said, it claims. “i’ve appeared on some other people’s albums,” he reportedly stated another time.

because gerry mulligan played the baritone saxophone like an ice pick, an ice pick made out of ice (especially on mainstream of jazz), one can only assume he had much profounder things to say. in fact—after writing that sentence i’ve found a recording of his oral autobiography about being a scratch-your-eyes-out drug addict, on the library of congress’ website. it’s about the “one time when we gave artificial respiration for about eight hours straight to keep a guy going,” and when “after gail and i split up, i started to get back into my old habits with heroin. not ever to the extent that i had been involved in new york, but still enough that it was an ongoing thing, and it was time-consuming and constant.”

in other words, gerry mulligan’s period after splitting up with whomever gail was of constant heroin use was somehow not as horrible as another period in new york city. to imagine what could possibly have made that other period worse provides a small peak into the misery of the word “habits.”

update: and so does the story about whitney houston’s death on the cover of the times. 

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January 29
sometimes when no one’s around and i’m feeling optimistic i whisper, “you can get an original you can get it if you really want trojan pressing if you really want” over and over.

sometimes when no one’s around and i’m feeling optimistic i whisper, “you can get an original you can get it if you really want trojan pressing if you really want” over and over.

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January 22
i would never under any circumstances get a tattoo, but if i did it’d be this. or “mom!”. thank you, u-roy.

i would never under any circumstances get a tattoo, but if i did it’d be this. or “mom!”. thank you, u-roy.

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+
even though these are partisan times filled with divisions and prejudices, i think we can all maturely agree that the best use of melodica was not actually on an augustus pablo album, despite his ferocious playing, but at the end of u-roy’s dread in a babylon. another inarguable thing is that those pictures of u-roy on the back cover are reggae’s only use of drug photographs that’s both glamorizing and also a caricature of an ad council warning not to get lost in a metaphoric (or literal!) cloud of smoke.

even though these are partisan times filled with divisions and prejudices, i think we can all maturely agree that the best use of melodica was not actually on an augustus pablo album, despite his ferocious playing, but at the end of u-roy’s dread in a babylon. another inarguable thing is that those pictures of u-roy on the back cover are reggae’s only use of drug photographs that’s both glamorizing and also a caricature of an ad council warning not to get lost in a metaphoric (or literal!) cloud of smoke.

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January 11
the litigable banana

the litigable banana

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January 10
let’s shed a tear for eddie hazel’s album covers. and a second for his parliament-funkadelic guitar playing. and a third for his album covers.

let’s shed a tear for eddie hazel’s album covers. and a second for his parliament-funkadelic guitar playing. and a third for his album covers.

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December 17
the first annual spectacular gift guide (holidays 2011, no. 1) if you really love your special someone, and want to let him or her know that you have not only good taste in jazz but also an acute sensitivity to the passage of time, won’t you try charles mingus’ oh yeah from 1961, now quietly celebrating its 50th anniversary? best of all it’ll prepare your gift recipient for christmas 2013’s the black saint and the sinner lady, which will then be half a century old too and is the most cosmic and extraordinary thing charles mingus ever recorded (despite my regularly omniscient father danny’s preference for mingus ah um). for gift givers on a budget, just click on the high-resolution image above and print your sweetie a nice big version of the oh yeah cover, which has something for everyone. if that’s too much work for santa, try singing the lyrics to eat that chicken at the dinnertable on christmas eve—he and she are sure to love it. but if even that’s too much, and you’re a thief, click here.

the first annual spectacular gift guide (holidays 2011, no. 1)

if you really love your special someone, and want to let him or her know that you have not only good taste in jazz but also an acute sensitivity to the passage of time, won’t you try charles mingus’ oh yeah from 1961, now quietly celebrating its 50th anniversary? best of all it’ll prepare your gift recipient for christmas 2013’s the black saint and the sinner lady, which will then be half a century old too and is the most cosmic and extraordinary thing charles mingus ever recorded (despite my regularly omniscient father danny’s preference for mingus ah um). for gift givers on a budget, just click on the high-resolution image above and print your sweetie a nice big version of the oh yeah cover, which has something for everyone. if that’s too much work for santa, try singing the lyrics to eat that chicken at the dinnertable on christmas eve—he and she are sure to love it. but if even that’s too much, and you’re a thief, click here.

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December 11
did you know: wkcr 89.9 fm, the greatest radio station in new york city—great despite its affiliation with lowly columbia university—is playing adolph johannes “dollar” brand, the man you may have known as abdullah ibrahim in the 1970s, all day long?

did you know: wkcr 89.9 fm, the greatest radio station in new york city—great despite its affiliation with lowly columbia university—is playing adolph johannes “dollar” brand, the man you may have known as abdullah ibrahim in the 1970s, all day long?

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November 30
the front cover of gang of four’s to hell with poverty single should be more famous considering it features andy warhol stealing the black flag logo?

the front cover of gang of four’s to hell with poverty single should be more famous considering it features andy warhol stealing the black flag logo?

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+
the back cover of gang of four’s to hell with poverty makes good use of the bowtie.

the back cover of gang of four’s to hell with poverty makes good use of the bowtie.

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November 28
the mid-60s members of the rolling stones went on album covers with the facial expressions they had, not the facial expressions they might want.

the mid-60s members of the rolling stones went on album covers with the facial expressions they had, not the facial expressions they might want.

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November 14
olá, elis. more elis regina is here, and the photo is from this album cover.

olá, elis.

more elis regina is here, and the photo is from this album cover.


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November 13
this is from the cover of one of the charlie christian/benny goodman albums i found the other day, which has fletcher henderson and count basie playing piano, cootie “no cooties” williams on trumpet, lionel hampton playing the vibe-iest instrument in the world, and the alliterative cutty cutshall and billy butterfield on brass on the last song. here’s something related.

this is from the cover of one of the charlie christian/benny goodman albums i found the other day, which has fletcher henderson and count basie playing piano, cootie “no cooties” williams on trumpet, lionel hampton playing the vibe-iest instrument in the world, and the alliterative cutty cutshall and billy butterfield on brass on the last song. here’s something related.

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+
more magic christian.

more magic christian.

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November 6
photographs of roy orbison crying on the inside: #5

photographs of roy orbison crying on the inside: #5

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