Stunning

Posted on 27 August, 2015 by jb

Screen Shot 2014-10-20 at 19.47.43

https://500px.com/JayDaley

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Top of their game….

Posted on 26 August, 2015 by jb

You might like the Eagles.

You might not.

I did for the longest time until they started taking 2 years to produce a record and DAYS to get a single drum pattern right.

(Read “Is it rolling, Bob?” to get an insight into how it used to be done. And listen to “Like a Rolling Stone” – done in a single take.

I saw the Eagles at Carlaw Park in Auckland in 1975 – just after Joe Walsh had joined the band – and listened to a pirated cassette of the 1980 release of “Eagles Live” and was stunned (“delighted”-stunned…) by the hard edge that Joe brought to the band.

These clips are a snapshot of a band at the top of its game.

But the stand-out has to be Randy Meisner’s “Take it to the limit”- the quiet Mid-Western kid, son of share-croppers, the walking definition of stage-fright hitting the falsetto notes with perfection

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My friend used to say….

Posted on 26 August, 2015 by jb

IMG_5394“America is run by 100,000 really smart people. The rest are just sheep”

This stamp is a classic:

Round, because even your dimmest employees will recognise that it’s for international mail. And doesn’t need an airmail sticker.

Undenominated, because it costs what it costs.

Unless, of course, you think it’s worthwhile to stockpile stamps in case the Post Office will keep increases lower than inflation.

Thinks: If the USPS is so smart, how come they’re almost bankrupt…?

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“Is it rolling, Bob?”

Posted on 25 August, 2015 by jb

This July 1973 photo shows Nashville music producer Bob Johnston. Johnston, who played a key role in landmark recordings of Bob Dylan and Johnny Cash, is being remembered as a maverick who helped bring folk rock to Nashville. He died Friday, Aug. 14, 2015 at the age of 83. (Joe Rudis/The Tennessean via AP)

This July 1973 photo shows Nashville music producer Bob Johnston. Johnston, who played a key role in landmark recordings of Bob Dylan and Johnny Cash, is being remembered as a maverick who helped bring folk rock to Nashville. He died Friday, Aug. 14, 2015 at the age of 83. (Joe Rudis/The Tennessean via AP)

Bob Johnston, record producer to Bob Dylan and others, died the other day at 83.

He replaced Tom Wilson on “Highway 61” (but not before the latter produced “Like a Rolling Stone)

From the Telegraph’s obituary:

Despite being told by Dylan’s managers that he would be sacked if he raised the idea again, it was Johnston – a country-music-loving Texan – who persuaded Dylan to re-locate to Nashville to work with session musicians there. The outcome was Blonde on Blonde (1966), often voted the best rock album ever made, not least because it captured the spontaneous ferment of Dylan’s talent. Johnston facilitated that.

(I love this movie – I watched it 3 times back-to-back on a flight home from Singapore)

But he’s best known for the lead in to “To be alone with you” as Dylan asks his producer whether they’re recording

“Is it rolling, Bob?”

Here’s the Telegraph’s obituary – behind a paywall, but you’re good for 10 articles a month

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Why I’m not allowed to cook dinner anymore…

Posted on 25 August, 2015 by jb

  

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Sailing close to the wind…..

Posted on 24 August, 2015 by jb

Especially after she says ” STOP!” at 00:54

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Michael Clarke

Posted on 23 August, 2015 by jb

Most of the people reading this will have no idea what it’s all about, but here we go anyway.

Michael Clarke is the current Australian cricket captain, retiring at the end of the current tour of England, badly out of form and on a downward spiral.

And in case we’ve forgotten how good he was, look at his first test match in 2004.

Scored a century at the age of 23 and wasn’t even at the top of his game.

And cricket being cricket, the England team lined up as a guard of honour for him as he came onto the field for (possibly) his last innings to a standing ovation from the (highly partisan) crowd

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England captain, Alistair Cook, doffs his cap and shakes his hand….

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You know you’re in France……

Posted on 23 August, 2015 by jb

IMG_8898….. when a small-ish supermarket in a small town just over the border has heritage (Black Crimean) tomatoes in the veggie section and the till automatically sorts and groups the wine you’ve bought into appellation d’origine contrôlée (AOC) – controlled designation of origin – and vins courant – – cheap shit….

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Ich kenne nichts…

Posted on 22 August, 2015 by jb

This ties in with the “Best concert? Close” post from the other day.

My friend Petrea wrote:

What a pleasure. I watched the whole thing; don’t need subtitles because I love listening to languages. All of them. And the music is enthralling. Good musicians can do that. They don’t need a lot of rehearsal because they know the key and they can wing it. They’re like fine improvisational actors running with a good theme.

This clip is in the same vein – the band had never worked with Xavier Naidoo and picked up this stunningly complex song in a flash.

Lovely song, inspired editing in the segue from rehearsal to concert

Ich kenne nichts

I could talk about you for days
Without once mentioning your name
Under pain or in tears
Your name soothes
The way you move fills me with desire
And each moment with you is worth living.

Nothing compares with the things that you give
With those you show us how you live, how you love.

I’ve never seen
I’ve never seen
Something as beautiful as you…

Beautiful days with you are precious
So precious as the way to the morning star
I celebrate them like a feast,
Where I always learn something new from you .

At the moment, knowing you, is the most beautiful thing
Knowing you is the best thing that I have.
Forgive me, but I’ll say this again:
Mentioning your name is the most beautiful thing that I say.

I’ve never seen
I’ve never seen
Something as beautiful as you…

I’ve never seen
I’ve never seen
Something as beautiful as you…

I’ve never seen
I’ve never seen
Something as beautiful as you…

I’ve never seen
I’ve never seen
Something as beautiful as you…

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Best concert? Close….

Posted on 20 August, 2015 by jb

Hubert von Goisern is an Austrian musician, giving traditional folk music a harder, rockier edge.

It goes under the genre of Alpenrock – Alpine Rock.

Excellent live band, but nothing quite as memorable as the Mainz concert in 2008.

The tour started in Linz, his home town, and followed the Danube, Main and Rhine rivers to Amsterdam, picking up and dropping off musicians along the way.

On a barge which – at the same time – was the stage.

Backstory: Hubert von Goisern had been dragging a chest infection around with him for weeks and in Offenbach, it turned into full-blown pneumonia.

Hospital, 2 weeks enforced time-out.

One of the musicians they’d picked up along the track was Xavier Naidoo, a German Soul and R&B singer/songwriter and record producer.

He jumped in at the Offenbach concert to take the strain off Hubert von Goisern’s voice and did the same in Mainz.

Except that he had to learn the entire Goisern set.

And the band had to learn his music.

Within a day.

The film’s in German (no subtitles, more’s the pity…), the musicians talk about the risk of performing without a safety net but if you jump to 5:00, you’ll see musicians who are working waaaay outside their comfort zone and nailing it.

Still gives me (and a bunch of other folk)  goosebumps…

Heast as nit
wia die Zeit vergeht
Huidiei jodleiri Huidiridi

Gestern nu’
ham d’leut ganz anders g’redt
Huidiei jodleiri Huidiridi

Die Jungen san oid wordn
und dia oid’n san g’storbn
Duliei Jodleiridldudieiouri

Und Gestern is’ heit wordn
und heit is’ boid morgn
Huidiei jodleiri Huidiridi

Heast as nit
Heast as nit
Huidieridiri
Hollareiridiridldoueio hallouri

Heast as nit, wia die Zeit vergeht
Heast as nit, wia die Zeit vergeht….

Can’t you hear it
how the time flies?

Yesterday
people spoke differently

The young have grown old
and the old ones have gone

And yesterday has become today
and today will soon be tomorrow

Can’t you hear it?
Can’t you hear it?

Can’t you hear it, how the time flies?
Can’t you hear it, how the time flies?

Posted in Music, Too good to miss | Tagged | 3 Comments