#900: randy newman, ry cooder and linda rondstadt - rider in the rain (1983)
friends, thank you so much for making it to music video #900. randy, linda, ry and i would like to remind you that we’re all riders in rain. and we’re on the prairie together.
#899: ry cooder - tattler (live at the record plant, 1974)
this year, i’m thinking of making a series of sentimental ry cooder-themed valentine’s day cards. “true love can be such sweet harmony… if you do the best that you can!” the first one will say, underneath a drawing of ryland in his mid-70s hawaiian shirt and ponytail. the kids will love that! it’s my ticket out of this godforsaken town, i can feel it. all kidding aside, ry cooder’s guitar playing can beat up yours.
#898: ry cooder - tattler (or, you can’t stop the tattler) (live, 1973)
ry c.’s the only man on earth who could make david foster wallace look like a bad bandana wearer, while at the same time giving the distinct impression that lowell george and keith richards and everyone else didn’t really know much about slide guitar. he was and is just that perfect, even when playing a relatively tuneless early acoustic version of an anti-polygamy pop number.
ry cooder didn’t need a guitar that said this machine kills fascists, he would just smile and wave and they’d die.
#842: ry cooder - how can a poor man stand such times and live? (1987)
here is mr. cooder seven months before 1987’s black monday stock market collapse, playing a song that was first recorded in new york city two months after 1929’s black tuesday. he’s alongside accordionist flaco jimenez, who started performing 1946, but who wasn’t there to play the song with him in june 1974, the summer that nixon resigned with peace signs and india detonated its first nuclear bomb under the project name smiling buddha.
related: soaring poverty casts spotlight on ‘lost decade’ & coming apart
#828: ry cooder - how can a poor man stand such times and live? (1974)
ry, i don’t know.
ry cooder, wearing the week’s second-best hawaiian shirt
(from 1978’s antipodean tour poster)
if you like the way ry cooder or ali farka toure or joseph spence play trembly little love songs, not necessarily softly or gently but just like every note had been baptized—or if you’re just in the mood to listen to something that will rush you away from a weekend that’s been cold and very grim—these four old, small, perfect songs from the seychelles islands are for you.
(ripped straight from the decca records vinyl by ghostcapital.)
#670: the hollies - sorry suzanne (1969, top of the pops)
the other day i was thinking very hard about how weezer’s suzanne, with its references to not one or two but three members of guns n’ roses, stacks up to leonard cohen’s suzanne, which is perfect, basically. as if it weren’t complicated enough already, i just remembered randy newman’s suzanne, a song that not only begins “i saw your name, baby, in a telephone booth, and it told all about you, i hope it was the truth,” but has what i believe is ry cooder’s slide guitar moaning lasciviously the whole way through. and then, amazingly, there’s also the hollies, singing to a fourth suzanne, in white suits, holding silly microphones, and with a very nice guitar solo, too. plus also lou reed’s mid-8s i love you, suzanne, last and very much least, thanks especially to a video that begins with 32 seconds of a phone ringing loudly.
being on vacation is like lounging around naked or eating grapes from the vine—totally resplendent, and wildly relaxing, and without a doubt something one should do only very rarely. these are the albums i’ve been listening to with my family while slouching around this week in massachusetts. not only are they perfect, especially at certain parts of a mid-august day, but they’re available for semi-legal download thanks to glorious blogs like zamboni soundtracks, which, thank god, is back from a long hiatus.
10:35am: harry nilsson’s nilsson schmilsson - i’m sure it’s been said before, but the gotta get up/driving along/early in the morning triptych must be one of history’s great album openers. while you’re showering there’s the coconut/let the good times roll/jump into the fire trio to put even more pep into your already peppy stepping.
12:15pm: ry cooder’s paradise and lunch - over sandwiches you learn everything you need to know about melody, martinis, r&b harmonies, divorcees, tobacco, cornets, and coroners. as if the album needed more heart, ry’s wife painted the cover.
3:30pm: tom zé’s todos os olhos - the only early-70s brazilian album that sounds like the sun, looks like an eye, and turns out to be a marble in an ass.
6:00pm: yo la tengo’s fakebook - sad like dusk, happy like dusk.
8:05pm: caetano veloso’s jóia - good for digestion, great for creaky joints, perfect for easing that summer evening choleric yellow bile feeling in the old gall bladder.
10:55pm: the monkees’ pisces, aquarius, capricorn & jones ltd. - beer drinking music at its finest. was cuddly toy written by 10:35am’s harry nilsson? it was! is pleasant valley sunday 1967’s best song about the suburbs? of course. doesn’t drummer mickey dolenz’s face remind you of my college friend alex nemser? how could it not!
12:05am: blind willie johnson’s sweeter as the years go by - if you meet the special someone who considers this semi-appropriate music to make love to your special someone by, you will know for sure that you have met a very sweet special someone.
#558: ry cooder - alimony (live at the record plant studios, sausalito, 1974)
i wish ill upon anyone who claims that ry cooder’s guitar playing is not the finest in all the land.
new year’s resolution ‘10: listen to ry cooder in the a.m. to get days started right
#502: ry cooder - the dark end of the street (1976)
now that december 2009 is winding down, it’s very important to identify the single greatest guitar solo of the decade—a two-and-a-half-minute ry cooder solo without a lick of fast-fingered shredding, played with such sweet modesty that you can hear the three back up singers clapping along. even lowell george would have a hard time explaining where this kind of soft sparkle comes from. it’s guitar playing that sounds like a first kiss. in fact, the solo of the decade is so good it was recorded 33 years ago on the bbc’s old gray whistle test, though we wouldn’t be watching and listening to it now without the wonders of modern video sharing! technology is probably going to kill us all, but first it’s providing lots of good music.
#188: ry cooder - vigilante man (1973)
for some reason rolling stone’s 100 greatest guitarists of all time feature lists ry cooder (#8) as a member of the californian hardcore band black flag, which is like listing woody guthrie as a fat boy.
even more unfortunate is the opening line of rolling stone’s entry: “in ry cooder’s hands, the guitar becomes a time machine.” what the magazine meant to say was that listening to ry cooder play guitar is like overhearing your wife talking long distance in the bedroom, whispering into the phone that she loves another man, because ry cooder tears your heart out of your chest.
