Tim Riley's Blog, page 7
July 29, 2014
Fever: How Rock Transforms Gender
Now a feature-length ebook available from fine digital outlets everywhere…(Apple iTunes Store)
St. Martin’s 2002 hardcover by Tim Riley
July 27, 2014
We Get Tips: Chubbies Shorts Facts
THE FACTS
Chubbies are the best shorts ever. (Note: this is not “Opinion 1″, this is “Fact 1″)
Chubbies may or may not be made with lightning. Yes, lightning like the electric, molten-hot s*** that comes from the skies.
Any sexual relations you have after purchasing a pair of Chubbies are DIRECTLY because �of said Chubbies. Nothing else. Don’t kid yourself.
Chubbies most likely make you at least 4.2x faster (Obviously because of their aerodynamics. Can’t argue with science.) …David Thomson on Hard Day’s Night:
“Fuck” was not said yet, but it was there between the lines.
(He does know that Lennon appeared in Lester’s How I Won the War, right?)
Ethan Hawe’s Black Album (from Boyhood rdio playlist, full points for “Let Me Roll It”):
July 21, 2014
riley rock index album of the month: Greilsammer’s Scarlatti, Cage
ALBUM OF THE MONTH
FRESH LINKS
“The South’s too fat to rise again…“
Ground Down to Molasses, Dave Byrne
Christgau on Tommy Ramone
(1948-2014)
music think tank
July 7, 2014
A Thousand Times Yes, Zacharek on Hard Day’s Night
“…Ringo is the language mangler who says exactly what he means, usually inadvertently—though sometimes his eyes, good-natured but also ringed with dark circles that suggest excessive worry, say more: On a train, he passes a glass-windowed compartment where a stunning young woman sits, stroking a furry cat that rests suggestively in her lap. She sees him, smiles, and crooks her finger; he does a double take — that cat! — and then demurs, half-shocked, half-flattered, and having no idea what to do.”
Stephanie Zacharek in Fifty Years On, A Hard Day’s Night Is Still Revelatory | Village Voice
Joshua Wolf Shenk gathers a lot of pre-digested quotes for the masses in his Atlantic feature, The Power of Two, and gets a break mostly since he wrote the mighty Lincoln’s Melancholy.
Also: Chuck Gunderson’s Some Fun Tonight!, on stadium tour infancy 1964-66. Gunderson participates in the Beatles Roundtable.
And the Criterion Collection has just put out A Hard Day’s Night on DVD/Blu-Ray
Related articles
Podcast: A Hard Day’s Night Gets a Beautiful Re-Release on Its 50th Anniversary
How The Beatles Invented the Stadium Tour
‘A Hard Day’s Night’ still fresh after 50 years |Movie preview
‘A Hard Day’s Night’: A re-release shows the movie has lost none of its joy
The Beatles: Behind the Scenes on A Hard Day’s Night
June 12, 2014
Where Links Roam Free
Spotifys huvudkontor på Humlegårdsgatan (Photo credit: Wikipedia)
NOT THE ABC SATURDAY MORNING BEATLES CARTOONS: thebeatoons, Episode 1-2 ”You Can’t Do That”
Related articles
Forgotify Helps You Discover Unloved Music On Spotify
Forgotify: The Tool for Discovering Spotify’s 4 Million Unheard Tracks
Forgotify Streams Only Spotify Songs That Have Never Been Played
Forgotify Only Plays Spotify Songs That No One Has Ever Played Before
Forgotify site launched to promote 4 million songs that have never been played on Spotify
June 9, 2014
The Counselor, Cormac McCarthy
penelope cruz (Photo credit: crguerra)
I got sucked into by the cast too, enjoying Cameron Diaz’s wicked villain and marveling at the word “goner” stenciled on Penelope Cruz’s forehead from the opening pillow talk with Fassbender. But trashy seems too kind for this somber meditation on decapitation, with all the slow dipping mechanisms “artfully” called out ahead of time, and the sense of foreboding hurling itself sloppily through dialogue way too bland for Javier Bardem’s decadent mousse. Confounding how one of our prized novelists slums in Hollywood with degenerate glee.
ALSO: Why hasn’t anybody else written about Springsteen’s bizarrely literal rendition of Suicide’s “Dream Baby Dream,” which resembles a high school production of Blue Velvet?
MAD MEN: enjoyed the half-finale, which finally gave Robert Morse his long-awaited musical number, his only pitch, and picked up on how scary the moon landing/walk seemed to those left behind. Still puzzled how somebody who works so hard to evoked the era willfully ignores race.
Related articles
New Trailer for Ridley Scott/Cormac McCarthy Drug Thriller THE COUNSELOR!
The Counselor
The Counselor – I Object, to Cameron Diaz
First Trailer for Cormac McCarthy’s The Counselor
Does ‘The Counselor’ have the best cast of any 2013 movie?
May 20, 2014
Today in HeadButler.com
Guest Butler Joe DePreta, a New York marketing consultant and writer on cultural trends, is a student of musicology from Sinatra to the Sex Pistols.When I was a kid, my friends and I sat on a park bench and debated and talked over each other like a Robert Altman ensemble about the important hierarchies of the musical meritocracy. Beach Boys vs. Four Seasons. Hendrix vs. Clapton. To a handful of vociferous fifth graders the wining point of view was acutely important, and musical factoids were more relevant than Shakespeare or the Yankees. To convert someone by your rationale was better than a trophy. Album covers and liner notes were biblical…
via Lennon: The Man, the Myth, the Music, The Definitive Life | HeadButler.
May 5, 2014
Why isn’t this bigger news?
Keystone XL demonstration, White House,8-23-2011 Photo Credit: Josh Lopez (Photo credit: Wikipedia)
From Jeff Goodell in Rolling Stone: …Although no final decision has been made, two high-level sources in the Obama administration told me recently that the president has all but decided to deny the permit for the [Keystone] pipeline – a dramatic move that would light up Democratic voters and donors while further provoking the wrath of Big Oil. Finally, Obama is positioning the U.S. to play a key role in negotiations on a new global-climate treaty that will begin next year, establishing American leadership on climate issues and giving him one last chance to lead the world to a cooler future before he leaves the Oval Office…
Related articles
Report: Obama Will Reject Keystone Pipeline After Midterm Elections…
Report: President Obama Likely to Reject Keystone XL Pipeline
Report: Obama Will Reject Keystone Pipeline After Midterm Elections
Rolling Stone: Obama largely has decided to reject Keystone XL
Rolling Stone: Obama “has all but decided” to reject Keystone
Harry Reid Opens Door To Keystone Pipeline Vote
Latest delay to Keystone XL pipeline review won’t quell political wrangling in 2014 races
April 29, 2014
PARLOR GAME: FIVE FAVORITE CONCERTS
Off My Rocker , by Kenny Weissberg
[Weissberg wrote a Friday column called "Hot Licks & Rhetoric" for the Boulder Daily Camera that I devoured while growing up in Colorado. He also hosted Bill Murray on a Sunday night KCRW radio show one night just a Murray started to break on SNL. We recently got back in touch...]
Dear Kenny, my first thought was, “You played Brinsley Schwarz on your first KCRW show… and you remember it?” I finally picked up a BS twofer after turning into a rabid Nick Lowe fan in the 1980s and remember being quite disappointed… was he any kind of known quantity that early on?
I realize we must have some mutual friends. I got in touch with Gil Asakawa when he writing for Westword when home from college one break, and he took me to lunch with Leland Rucker. Both have been grand friends ever since. I think I told you I wrote my very first piece of criticism for Sam at Cakeeaters, wondering if you have any old issues of that thing rolling about? Great name/graphic, who came up with that?
One Saturday afternoon my drummer and I were hanging out downtown, sprawled about the second floor of Pearl street offices reading Rolling Stone for some reason (Dylan Rolling Thunder overage), we sniffed out the studio and introduced ourselves to Peter Rodman, who put on Quadrophenia and read a few band announcements on the air for us. We played Fred’s a few times and the like.
Did you ever hear of a band called The Mary Jane Band? Would have been very early 1970s. My mother was good friends with the mother of the bass player, remember being awed by rehearsals in their Pine Street house. One of the girlfriends gave me a nylon-string guitar, my first. Bass player’s sister cued up “Happiness Is A Warm Gun” for me, sheer wow moment.
We MUST engage in my favorite parlor game: check for overlaps. Promoter shows don’t count:
TOP FIVE CONCERTS
1) Dylan, Band at Denver Coliseum, 1974
2) Springsteen, Red Rock, June 1978
3) The Who, Denver Coliseum 1975
4) Richard Thompson, full band, Rochester, NY, 1985
5) Steely Dan, with guests Michael McDonald, Phoebe Snow, 1991
Thanks for writing the WHOLE thing as candidly as you did. Great backstage stuff…. TR
Hey Tim,
First of all, thanks for taking the time to read Off My Rocker. I feel honored when writers (especially those who are avid readers/professors/etc) take the time to read and respond to my debut effort. My “encore career” as an author (all seven months since publication) has brought me a lot of satisfaction and joy. While exceeding all my expectations already, it makes for a lot of ‘what if’ moments. What if I had played the game and held out for a major agent and publisher? What if I had hired the publicist four months before the book came out as opposed to four months after? Ad infinitum. Still, I get emails, phone calls, acknowledgments, and reviews nearly every day that validate all the lonely time I put into the writing. But what if
Re: Brinsley Shwarz . . . I threw in that paragraph of absolute obscure names to demonstrate how “free” freeform radio was. The only Brinsley Schwarz songs I can remember without looking at the back cover of the LP is “The Ballad of a Has-Been Beauty Queen” and “Rock and Roll Women.”
Re: our mutual “friends,” I didn’t know Gil that well and finally met Leland for the first time last October as a guest on his KGNU show. He told me how happy he was that I left Boulder, because he inherited my job at Audience (his first gig in Boulder). We had a lot of fun doing a membership drive at my alma mater KGNU that day, plus he let me plug my Boulder Book Store signing.
Remember the Mary Jane Band by name only.
Off the top of my head (I’m sure I’d change this list with even ten minutes of thought), my TOP FIVE CONCERTS (and there is significant overlap as I attended your #1, 2 and 3 favorites):
1) The eight hour block of CCR, Janis Joplin, Sly & the Family Stone, and the Who (especially!) at Woodstock, 1969 (life changing for obvious reasons). (two nights of the Who at the Fillmore East in October, 1969 tie with Woodstock)
2) Spirit, The Kinks, and the Bonzo Dog Band, Fillmore East in NYC, 1969 (Spirit is my favorite live band of all time)
3) Bruce Springsteen at CW Post University, 1975 and at Red Rocks, 1978. The Red Rocks show was more spectacular, but the marathon CW Post show was my introduction to Bruce.
4) Roy Orbison at Humphrey’s, San Diego, 1987 (I was a fan in the audience as well as promoter, so you have to throw me a bone, plus it’s the last show I remember crying tears of joy at.)
5) three-way tie: Dire Straits at Bottom Line, NYC in ’79, Iron City Houserockers at Blue Note, Boulder in ’81 and Little Steven & the Disciples of Soul, Rainbow in Denver, ’83.
By the way, I’m a huge Richard Thompson fan too. Presented him as an opening act at Humphrey’s six times. Six jaw dropping experiences. I’ve seen him a dozen other times elsewhere.
THANKS AGAIN, Tim for taking the time to read and comment on my book!
–Kenny
Related articles
45 Years Ago: Janis Joplin Plays MIT in a Time of National Protest
Feature Year: 1969 (Part 1 – 9a) (Part 2 – 9p) ET @RadioMax
KGNU’s longtime station manager steps down
Soul Serenade: Soul Survivors, “Expressway To Your Heart”
April 24, 2014
The Absurdist Beatle
James, I’ve always loved MacDonald’s book even though I carry one major critical gripe: he structures it song-by-song in chronological order, arguing that understanding the “correct” sequence of recording helps trace thematic and musical development. But never quite follows through on this theme: seldom comments on whether, or how far, say, “A Day in the Life” stands from “Tomorrow Never Knows” from the previous year. Or how “Julia,” the final track session for the White Album may be more intricately shaped than even “Happiness…” Then he continues to argue that considering the tracks in their conceptual sequences, as albums, misses this thread, and yields little or no interesting insight. So “A Day in the Life” as a FINALE to Pepper misses the point somehow since it was the FIRST track recorded for same.
I’ve never seen his prose so lovingly dissected, though. And I adore your opening graph, especially Ringo, “the absurdist Beatle, syncopates his hair and stirs his drum kit with a distant smile, as if resigned and reconciled already to the madness.” That’s fine. TR
Related articles
On Film, the Beatles Had a Mixed Track Record
Harold Bronson: The Beatles’ Humor
Rejoice: More Beatles BBC Sessions On The Way!
