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"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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#642: gram parsons and emmylou harris - streets of baltimore (live, 1973)

first came a bookstore-bathroom run in with ultra rare hipster runoff graffiti. and this afternoon, in the middle of a very stressful observer deadline, i got to have an actual back and forth with pitchfork founder ryan schreiber, who, let’s face it, is a true indie-and-internet god. if you’re interested, and who could blame you if you’re not, it was a gentlemanly twitter disagreement over his site’s top-videos-of-the-90s list, which ends with aphex twin’s dementedly dark come to daddy.

not the decade’s single best video, i said.

agree to disagree, he proposed.

and what, he wanted to know, would i have chosen?

no surprises, wow and flutter, c.r.e.a.m., or even windowlicker, i said.

the finale came with his excellent point that anthony kiedis’ ocean rap should have been number one. and just like that our conversation had ended! the irony is that i started the day by spending 90 minutes compiling my list of the top 10 videos of grainy live versions of beautiful country rock songs about major maryland metropolitan areas. this one ended up on top, and it goes out to you-know-who.

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#448: tracy nelson and mother earth - wait, wait, wait/you win again (1968)

if it’s true that janis joplin really did sleep with leonard cohen at the chelsea hotel, then it’s not clear why tracy nelson, who was slightly better, couldn’t have known hank williams carnally in the middle of some desert—or, considering that he died when she was in the third grade, gram parsons. “country music is so pretty and clean and simple,” she says here, “and yet it says something that’s relative to the average young person’s life.”

she means that her band mother earth’s weird version of a barnyard gospel blues is so cosmically good that anyone who’s anyone will want to sing along. in other words, this is 60s nashville music by san fransisco stoners for 00s sweet sentimental fools.

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#63: the byrds (with earl scruggs) - you ain’t going nowhere (1971)

druggy country music is the best thing that ever happened to me. gram parsons, the harvard drop-out who took gobs of morphine and lcd and then basically invented the idea that grungy rock and roll could be be played with a honky rural twang.

and before he died in 1973 at age 26, he introduced the byrds, the rolling stones, and emmylou harris to the sound of what he called “cosmic american music.”

here the byrds play the opening song from their only album with gram parsons, sweetheart of the rodeom, written by bob dylan while he was holed up in woodstock after his famous motorcycle crash.

gram parsons had fallen out with the band, mostly because leadsinger roger mcguinn was annoyed with his scene-stealing. mcguinn even wiped some of parsons’ vocals from songs—he rerecorded them himself and “fucked it up,” the album’s producer later admitted.

to make up for gram parsons’ absence, the byrds have north carolina banjo godfather earl scruggs playing with them here. i think mr. scruggs looks slightly discomforted by all those darned shaggy mops and long facial hair.

meanwhile, mcguinn is still alive today, looking terrible and with a bad case of glaucoma. serves him right for fucking with gram parsons.

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