max abelson's super groovy music video spectacular

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"sing a simple song but keep the swing strong." -de la soul


"mtv makes me want to smoke crack." -beck


see the archives & a random post


"i just happen to be here, and it's okay." -caetano veloso


"gotta think straight, keep a clean plate." -joanna newsom


"keep a clean nose, watch the plain-clothes." -bob dylan


"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


"she had a chihuahua named carlos that had some kind of skin disease and was totally blind." -tom waits


"you can't hold the hand of a rock 'n' roll man." -joni mitchell


"think about something else. was art tatum talented?" - shoot the piano player


"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. -john cale


"i’ve still got things inside me, sad things, happy things, that people don’t know about." -loretta lynn


"to try to maximize the relationship of listening to a record through promotion is like experiencing driving a car by reading about stimulus programs." -bonnie 'prince' billy


"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


"we can make each other happy, or we can make each other happy." -harry nilsson


"my mother used to tell me about vibrations. to think that invisible feelings, invisible vibrations existed scared me to death." -brian wilson


"i'm an idiot for you." -iggy pop


"i mean every letter in the words in the sentences of my quotes." -lil' wayne


"lyrics choochoo from my mouth like locomotion." - pato banton


"i'm going to boogie my scruples away." -lowell george


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


"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


"he's got a mind like a sewer, and a heart like a fridge" -elvis costello


"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


"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


"where have you been all my life?" -emmylou harris, to my brother tommy


"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." -david bowie


"tired of the tango? fed up with fandango? dance on moonbeams, slide on rainbows, in furs or blue jeans. you know what I mean." -roxy music


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


thelonious monk's middle name: sphere


"really, we don't want people twiddling their goatees over our stuff." -radiohead


#1 song on the white album (tie): long long long, happiness is a warm gun


"the only word is love." -john lennon


"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


"i could even find it in my heart to love mike love." -belle & sebastian


"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.” -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


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#871: antony and the johnsons - thank you for your love (2010)

for reasons that are currently too complex to discuss i didn’t listen to all of antony and the johnson’s the crying light and swanlights, and for that matter somehow didn’t open my copy of robert penn warren’s all the king’s men, until this past week. the albums are like the kid a and amnesiac of decaying forests and fluttered eyelashes and empty bedsheets and throbbing clarinets. and so far all the king’s men is better than both randy newman’s good old boys and a.j. leibling’s the earl of louisiana, which is unlikely and immense. i am grateful for them.

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#848: radiohead - dollars and cents (2001)

radiohead songs, in chronological order, that would make for good celebratory headlines in tomorrow’s papers for radiohead’s rumored #occupywallstreet concert: million dollar question, the trickster, karma police, lucky, how i made my millions, the national anthem, optimistic, knives out, dollars and cents, hail to the thief (an album title, but it counts), we suck young blood, a wolf at the door, house of cards and little by little.

radiohead songs that would make for good condescending headlines: you never wash up after yourself, (nice dream), sulk, street spirit (fade out) and paranoid android.

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things in electronics magazine that totally look like covers for singles from late-70s wire (or mid-90s radiohead): #1 
if you’re the type of person who googles “wire 1977” in search of images from that fine band’s finest year—and who isn’t?—you’ll be sorry to know that there aren’t many, and happy to know that what comes up instead are these late-1970s advertisements from electronics magazine. 
but try not to worry: any of the ads could’ve been wire album covers, so it’s not so bad.

things in electronics magazine that totally look like covers for singles from late-70s wire (or mid-90s radiohead): #1 

if you’re the type of person who googles “wire 1977” in search of images from that fine band’s finest year—and who isn’t?—you’ll be sorry to know that there aren’t many, and happy to know that what comes up instead are these late-1970s advertisements from electronics magazine. 

but try not to worry: any of the ads could’ve been wire album covers, so it’s not so bad.

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#644: radiohead - no surprises (1997)

this may not be the official best video of the 90s, but, gosh, it’s my best video of my 1990s. i was a wee sleepaway camper at laurel south when i walked into a room of counselors watching a vhs of 7 television commercials, radiohead’s compilation of videos from the bends and ok computer, and even though i’d grown up in love with mtv, especially daisy fuentes, i’d never seen something so perfect. a head, singing about a heart filling up like a landfill, in a fishbowl filling up with water! slowly drowning? holding his breath for the final silence? opening his misshapen eyes for his final bellyache? and saved at the last moment by his chorus! i’ll take no surprises, please.

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i don’t think napster has an important place in anyone’s heart any longer, but i’ll never forget the afternoon i found how i made my millions, the soft b-side on radiohead’s no surprises single. it eventually became the title to a cnbc series that featured the wealthy inventors of roomba, lovesac and 1-800-got-junk (good job, america!), but back before the turn of the century it was the soundtrack to some awfully hearty and outstandingly unrequited pubescent love in larchmont, ny, let me tell you.

i don’t think napster has an important place in anyone’s heart any longer, but i’ll never forget the afternoon i found how i made my millions, the soft b-side on radiohead’s no surprises single. it eventually became the title to a cnbc series that featured the wealthy inventors of roomba, lovesac and 1-800-got-junk (good job, america!), but back before the turn of the century it was the soundtrack to some awfully hearty and outstandingly unrequited pubescent love in larchmont, ny, let me tell you.

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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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if the universe officially turns out to sound like a radiohead song, then it also officially looks like a painting from radiohead album cover-designer stanley donwood.

if the universe officially turns out to sound like a radiohead song, then it also officially looks like a painting from radiohead album cover-designer stanley donwood.

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