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, 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


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


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."


see album covers, photos, posters, quotes & staches


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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.


Creative Commons License
February 23
canyons, cocktails, penthouses, and aging go-go dancers is what leonard cohen’s  phil spector-produced 1977 masterpiece death of a ladies’ man smells like. it’s a woozy, brassy, oiled-up, wild-eyed, california king-sized album from a poet who otherwise sleeps on hardwood floors. and its cover is nearly as good as the poster for the 1961 jerry lewis film. its songs haven’t gotten what they deserved. rolling stone called fingerprints “wrongheaded country music,” as if country music was meant to be right-headed, and sighed that the hugely catchy don’t go home with your hard-on was a “rather pointless wallow in raunch,” like pointless leonard cohen raunchiness (with bob dylan and allen ginsberg yowling back-up!) could possibly be a bad thing. the magazine was wrong. even a minute with the album is a minute of bliss. download the album here—the password, if you need it, is power.

canyons, cocktails, penthouses, and aging go-go dancers is what leonard cohen’s  phil spector-produced 1977 masterpiece death of a ladies’ man smells like. it’s a woozy, brassy, oiled-up, wild-eyed, california king-sized album from a poet who otherwise sleeps on hardwood floors. and its cover is nearly as good as the poster for the 1961 jerry lewis film.

its songs haven’t gotten what they deserved. rolling stone called fingerprints “wrongheaded country music,” as if country music was meant to be right-headed, and sighed that the hugely catchy don’t go home with your hard-on was a “rather pointless wallow in raunch,” like pointless leonard cohen raunchiness (with bob dylan and allen ginsberg yowling back-up!) could possibly be a bad thing.

the magazine was wrong. even a minute with the album is a minute of bliss. download the album here—the password, if you need it, is power.

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#535: leonard cohen - memories (excerpt from a tour bus, 1979)

if you watch just one minute of a somber jewish mystic singing doo-wop about nudity on a moving bus, make it this one.

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February 16

#532 - carole king - you make me feel like a natural woman (1971)

all i’ve ever asked for is a woman with carol king’s exceptional songwriting abilities and deep knowledge of phil spector’s early production career but without the eyeshadow. is that so wrong? the only question that’s harder to answer: is her version of you make me feel like a natural woman better than aretha franklin’s?

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June 17

#146: john lennon - crippled insisde (1971)

speaking of phil spector, i think i’d rather listen to the cokey, crispy, screamy, boozy solo albums he produced for john lennon in the 70s than some shiny happy beatles albums. and i’d rather listen to the last ten seconds of crippled inside than almost anything in the universe.

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June 16
truly, the greatest thing in the world happened to me just now: tom wolfe phoned to talk about that interview i did with aby rosen (who basically called the writer an anti-semite). tangerine-flake streamline tom!! kool-aid pump-house bauhuas our hosue mauve glove mau-mauing wolfe!! i told him that “the first tycoon of tean,” his essay on phil spector from 1964, is one of my all-time favorites. (it’s on my facebook profile, so, yeah, it must be true.) then he asked if he could tell me a phil spector story, and this is what came out of tom wolfe’s mouth and through the telephone and into my ear: “we were having coffee or something to drink, i forget, at 2 a.m. 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 their 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?’ he didn’t bat an eye! he came back with it so fast.” yes yes yes yes yes yes yes. then i told mr. wolfe about that amazing leonard cohen/phil spector ‘i love you’ quote, and mr. wolfe laughed, and then we said goodbye, and then i sort of wept with glee.

truly, the greatest thing in the world happened to me just now: tom wolfe phoned to talk about that interview i did with aby rosen (who basically called the writer an anti-semite). tangerine-flake streamline tom!! kool-aid pump-house bauhuas our hosue mauve glove mau-mauing wolfe!!

i told him that “the first tycoon of tean,” his essay on phil spector from 1964, is one of my all-time favorites. (it’s on my facebook profile, so, yeah, it must be true.) then he asked if he could tell me a phil spector story, and this is what came out of tom wolfe’s mouth and through the telephone and into my ear:

“we were having coffee or something to drink, i forget, at 2 a.m. 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 their 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?’ he didn’t bat an eye! he came back with it so fast.”

yes yes yes yes yes yes yes. then i told mr. wolfe about that amazing leonard cohen/phil spector ‘i love you’ quote, and mr. wolfe laughed, and then we said goodbye, and then i sort of wept with glee.

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March 16
“ 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’… [he had] megalomania and insanity and a devotion to armaments that was really intolerable. in the state that he found himself, which was post-wagnerian, i would say hitlerian, the atmosphere was one of guns, the music was a subsidiary enterprise. leonard cohen on phil spector, who produced cohen’s death of a ladies’ man… see monday’s spector posts for more.
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March 10
“ record producer phil spector, awaiting trial for murder, is being sued for more than $5 million by his former personal assistant, whose claims include [that he] sometimes appeared naked in front of her and once asked her to find him a prostitute. ap news report, 2006. (i was feeling guilty that the two spitzer jokes below had nothing to do with phil spector, today’s subject, so i wanted to find a bridge. and i found it.)
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photograph #8: phil spector on trial for the second-degree murder of nightclub hostess lana clarkson, who was shot and killed in the foyer of his mansion, pyrenees castle. the jury was deadlocked—ten for guilty, two for not. don’t mess with a man with spherical hair, or an eponymous belt buckle.

photograph #8: phil spector on trial for the second-degree murder of nightclub hostess lana clarkson, who was shot and killed in the foyer of his mansion, pyrenees castle. the jury was deadlocked—ten for guilty, two for not. don’t mess with a man with spherical hair, or an eponymous belt buckle.

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#62: the ronnettes - be my baby / shout (1963)

sometimes it’s good not to know too much about your favorite bands. and if you want to enjoy the grinning, glowing, gleaming, gleeful innocence of the best pop song ever written, be my baby, it’s definitely very good to ignore everything about producer phil spector.

he wrote it for his girl group the ronnettes, whose lead singer became ronnie spector when they married. a few fun facts about that relationship: he made her do forty-two takes of this song; he forbade her from speaking to the rolling stones while the ronnettes toured with them; he had a glass-topped gold coffin in his basement which he promised to keep her in if she ever tried to leave; he hid her shoes to keep her from going—and so when she eventually left, she left barefoot.

so that means when she sings “be my little baby! say you’ll be my darling! be my baby now!” she was singing to her persecutor. and he wrote the song, which means he put those cute little words in her mouth.

but just those first four drum hits—let alone all the rumbling brass that comes afterward, or that celestial hook in the chorus—make up for all the cruelty in the world. (maybe not the gold coffin part, though.)

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