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."

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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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October 28

#470: r.e.m. - wendell gee (live, 1985)

young michael stipe fit three decades of extremely good hair styles into r.e.m.’s two best years: first the ’70s curls for the band’s 1984 t.v. debut, which a year later had grown into the ’60s jumble sported here (with ray bans, naturally), followed a few months later by the very short and very bleached 90’s look. bill berry’s hair changed too, but not for the better—though he looks quite good whistling here. more importantly, wendell gee, which doesn’t sound very interesting on record, quiets down to a pretty little attic ballad here, like tom waits’ georgia lee but slightly less devastating.

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April 16

#354: r.e.m. - electrolite (1996)

michael stipe once said that staring at los angeles from mulholland drive was like looking at bioluminescent fish, which a nice metaphor. but staring at upside-down plastic animals, shiny birthday balloons, fake silent interviews, people stuck in balls and chains, people driving dune buggies, bongo players in boas and accordion players in living rooms with fog machines is not a metaphor for anything, though it still makes for a good video. more importantly, electrolite’s surprise-packed black-and-white ending might secretly be the best minute in all of 90s alt rock.

it helps that the tune is awfully pretty, though it’s a little too pretty for a song about los angeles’ evils. but maybe that’s a metaphor for people like this guy?

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michael stipe knows that when a true gentleman goes bald he has to constantly surround himself with big and bright and shiny neon lights, wear lots of red jumpsuits, and make nifty gun signs at people to distract them from his dying hairline.

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May 7

image #33: r.e.m.’s chronic town ep (1982)

a good indie rock album cover featuring a gargoyle sticking its tongue out is like a fine wine: it only grows finer with age. and speaking of which:

in today’s paper! i wrote about the wine-liking baron eric de rothschild, two tisch brothers spending massive amounts for massive real estate, and a hip hotelier that likes to remind people he knew heath ledger.

and last week’s column had noted tom waits scholar scarlet johansson selling nonchalantly, a hearst widow selling to settle some debts, and a poor bear stearns exec buying before his firm tanked.

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#113: r.e.m. - radio free europe (1983, letterman)

elvis costello had radio radio and radio sweetheart, public enemy had how to kill a radio consultant, ll cool j had i can’t live without my radio, patti smith had radio ethiopia, and nirvana even had their radio friendly unit shifter, but none of them had the chorus of the first song on r.e.m.’s first album.

it’s a chorus that thwacks, thwaps and jangles, and it bounces (like this), cries (like this), and then it hooks. and it’s a chorus that needed to be on the radio so badly that a whole new kind of FM station—college rock—was invented around it. plus, young david letterman seems to like it, which is groovy.

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March 5

#55: r.e.m. - so. central rain (1983)

hey kids! did you know that nickelodeon had a teen talk show the early ’80s called livewire? it was super great. the opening sequence, with neon and everything, was basically the most neat-o thing of the decade.

not only is this post-punk r.e.m. classic great to hear live, but the show’s host, a cable ace award winner (and havard business school alumnus) named fred newman, happens to get into a fight with the show’s director right at the beginning, and then plays it off by doing a little dance with the crowd.

speaking of which, there’s some seriously cool 1983 skanking in this video. and speaking of 1983, michael stipe’s long hair doesn’t look half bad. i think i’ll grow my locks out.

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#54: r.e.m. - (don’t go back to) rockville (1984)

not only does this break the time-honored law that all songs with parenthetical titles are bad, but it has the added bonus of being from 1984, just like me.

plus, it has the best use of the twangy rickenbacker guitar since the byrds. (though as it happens, r.e.m. originally played the song in a “punk/thrash” style, but recorded this version with a country lilt as a joke for their manager.)

and there’s an essential little harmony from the bassist, mike mills, who wrote the song. and it makes sense he wrote it, because this is about a guy getting left by a girlfriend who’s going back to her hometown in maryland. and the only kind of rockstar that gets left by his maryland-bound girlfriend is a bass player. drummers don’t get ditched.

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