max abelson's super groovy music video spectacular

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"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


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"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

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emmylou harris


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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


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"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


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#20: chuck berry - the things that i used to do (1965)

i found an even better introductory speech. it’s godly but it’s sad: “i shall do for you at the moment a little taste of what we call blues. and when i say blues i say it with two lips: bl-u-es. and this is a music that has a feeling, a feeling of hardships, and things that one goes through when he doesn’t have any money—you know, francs and what have you. this is the blues.”

goddamn.

but why is this song so sad? maybe because ray charles, a year before he made it big, wrote the arrangements, and produced eddie “guitar slim” jones’ original version.

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#19: chuck berry - roll over beethoven (1965)

the constitution of this website dictates that monday have a 60s video, tuesday have 70s, up until the 00s on friday. recently i’ve been straying from that scheme, and for that i’m sorry.

it’s back—although, technically, roll over beethoven was released in 1956. still, this mid-60s chuck berry performance on french television (which always has good music) is entirely, completely, amazingly perfect.

isn’t it odd that clean-cut old rock and roll can look and sound so much more punkish than mohawk-and-nose-ring punk? “this is a song about a man who had a lot to do with music,” chuck berry snarls, “as a matter of fact, a relished memory in my mind he was. and a good musician, might i say so. this man was named beethoven. ladies and gentlemen, i ask him to forgive us. roll over! and listen to a little of this…”

the only thing better than that introduction is his homocidal solo, especially considering that he’s hopping on one leg while he plays. chuck berry invented that dance move—the duck walk—the year this song was written, during a show in new york, to hide the wrinkles in his rayon suit.

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