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, t.rex, 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

"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.

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January 29

#521: yoko ono (with antony hegarty) - i’m going away smiling (2009)

this morning i had a delicious breakfast bar, drank some o.j., and then spent a half hour on the phone with yoko ono, who turns out to be a radically lovely person to talk to. “it’s just that i’m myself, and me, and whatever comes to me, at the time, tends to be something probably, i don’t know, au courant, but then, it’s me, as usual,” she said. she offered some more future classics (to be used in an upcoming nyo article) like: “i think i’m wiser now. well. i hope i’m wiser. i make so many mistakes every day—oops!”

it turns out that she does not listen to 60s pop music. “i’m an emotionally frail person,” she explained. “i don’t listen to anything. i just listen to the music in my mind. it’s wrong to say i don’t listen to anything. you know what i listen to? i listen to john’s songs, because i have to. have to is not the right word. almost every day, i listen to it because people request it—‘can i use it?’ and for relaxation i listen to indian music, old.”

on eric clapton, paul simon, thurston moore, jim keltner, and the other guests at her upcoming brooklyn academy of music concert, she said: “each one of these people—people? these stars!—i know them personally.” basically it was like conversing with the inspiring elementary school art teacher i never had. “just remember, you’re talking to me,” she said at the end. “we’re talking the same way, we’re on the same page. you’re 25—don’t think i’m not 25.”

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October 23

#467: lou reed and antony - candy says (2007, dir. julian schnabel)

one excruciatingly sad thing about writing the observer’s column on viciously expensive new york real estate is that it’s very hard to watch julian schnabel’s film on lou reed’s berlin concerts. i want to listen to the music and think about guitars, spiders, whales, wales, wrinkles, velvets, undergrounds, love and death, but instead i wonder why julian schnabel wanted to charge $32 million for his triplex penthouse at palazzo chupi, where richard gere and palo alto bankers scamper around among antique moroccan window dressings, 12-foot doors, seven-foot fireplaces, giant claw-foot tubs, cast-concrete kitchen countertops dyed chromium-oxide green, and a very large swimming pool.

but this long national nightmare is over! mr. schnabel has sold the triplex. he got $10.5 million.

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August 14

#430: radiohead - the national anthem (2000)

the new york observer’s very own leon neyfahk, who might be one of the smartest people i’ve ever met, and certainly one of the lankiest, once mentioned to me that he thought antony and the johnson’s painfully beautiful cover of beyoncé’s crazy in love was lousy. he was wrong! sure, antony’s cover doesn’t have the original’s sizzle or swagger or sweatiness or sexiness, but it’s full of ecstacy and torment, and what else can you ask for from a pop song?

leon became even more wrong today, cosmically wrong, when he wrote on twitter that it is “the most tedious thing,” and “more boring” than a bad song on pink floyd’s ummagumma. then he had to go and say it is “more boring than treefingers,” which is an easy target—that’s the murky, dreamy, eno-esque song on radiohead’s kid a. speaking of which, only last week leon casually said that he not only prefers radiohead’s amnesiac to kid a (which, hello, is insane), but then went ahead and gave the national anthem as an example of kid a’s weaknesses.

that is where he crossed the line.

not liking the national anthem is not liking waterfalls, heavyweight boxing, trampolines, the smell of blood and getting to second base for the first time. it is a song that pounds and throbs and thuds and wallops, and it’s pretty. (and this video, made for an mtv contest, is a classic too.)

so leon, if you’re reading this, please open your ears and heart to antony’s beyoncé song and the national anthem. treefingers isn’t bad either.

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July 31

#421: antony and the johnsons - crazy in love (beyoncé cover) (2009)

next week, in what must surely be the best two-song single of the year, antony and the johnsons are releasing aeon, featuring a dementedly beautiful cover of beyoncé’s crazy in love. there’s no irony, but there are oboes (and a harp.)

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with all due respect to antony and the johnsons’ art director, i like aeon’s cover when it’s flipped right-side-up.

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March 14

album cover #9: antony and the johnsons’ i am a bird now - actually, this isn’t the album cover, it’s a photo from the album’s liner notes. maybe that’s why there’s so much eyeliner. heh.

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#69: antony and the johnsons - hope there’s someone (2005)

when antony gets halfway through the line “oh i’m scared of the middle place, between light and nowhere,” he stops to cry.

it’s the most upsetting thing ever filmed—worse than if tom waits started weeping while singing the opening of train song: “well I broke down in east st. louis, on the kansas city line…i fell down at the derby, and now the night’s black as a crow. it was a train that took me away from here, but a train can’t bring me home.”

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#68: antony and the johnsons - fistful of love (2005)

make it past the little opening monologue (spoken by sad-eyed lou reed on the album version), and you’ll get to the most crippling drag ballad you’ve ever heard. no chubby-cheeked white man has ever sounded so much like billie holiday and aretha franklin at the same time— but antony and the johnsons aren’t kitchy or campy, they’re just dreamy.

and they’re tragic. if the song title fistful of love doesn’t give the subject away, try the lyrics “i feel your fists/ and i know it’s out of love,” or “i accept and i collect upon my body/ the memories of your devotion.” physical abuse isn’t a new pop song subject, but hearing a soft obese man calling his scars “memories of your devotion” is upsetting. and the string trio makes it hard to not weep wildly.

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