Someone posted a Nat Myers clip having a work out with his pals (note the expert spoon player!) so we had to track down the full piece of course . . . . . . .
GemsOnVHS
Nat Myers and DUG - God Don’t Like it (n I don’t either!) Blind Willie McTell
Gems says:
My pals in Ireland, DUG (the band) invited me on the road with them for a string of USA tour dates on the West coast. I don't make it out there that often, so I took them up on it. What helped me say yes was the opportunity to hang with my buddy Nat Myers, who was playing with them for a couple nights. Nat is an interesting dude, and this was my first time seeing him since his cancer diagnosis almost took him out the game. Now he is touring the country hooked up to IVs and playing shows in between treatments. There is no one tougher walking the Earth, and the old blues tunes he loves have very much become his real life.
Nat knows a lot of very interesting people, and on this particular day we went to his buddy Mike's store, called Shipjohn in Portland, to look at some real American craftsmanship. As I walked around their workshop, I noticed a pair of pants with "Marc Maron" written on a sticky note. How about that. I slipped my number in them. I got in his pants. Also, shout out to Johnny for playing spoons and foot tambourine on this song. Edit: Next day Anthony here. Jonny doesn't spell his name with an H, i've come to find.
This one is a tune by Blind Willie Johnson tune called "God Don't Like It", against the evils of alcohol. At least that's the version Nat is taking inspiration from here.
• God Don't Like It
Finishing a George Harrison song!! Posthumously!? Now Paul at ATSE mentioned this track yesterday and I wasn’t sure . . . . . but on repeated listening it deserves our attention I reckon . . . . . . . . . .
You know what?
I like it!
In case you're curious, here's the portion of the lyrics written by Harrison:
In the interests of Cross Postings! (it’s what we do here!) here is this interesting article from our Ray [Padgett that is - Flagging Down The Double Es]
In the midst of all the Rolling Thunder 1976 madness, I wrote this Bob's-birthday piece for the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame's new newsletter. Check it out if you're all caught up on RTR.
Bob Dylan turns 85 today. He was inducted into the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame’s third class ever, in 1988, but his greatest Rock Hall performance didn’t come until a few years later.
For the first decade of its existence, the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame was not an actual place you could visit. But in September 1995, the museum opened in Cleveland, Ohio. Naturally, there was an all-star concert to mark the occasion. The announced lineup included The Allman Brothers, Sheryl Crow, Jerry Lee Lewis, James Brown, and most notably, Bruce Springsteen reuniting with the E Street Band for their first public concert in eight years.
Surprise guests were promised too and, given the occasion of today’s newsletter, no prizes for guessing who one of them was.
Rumors about Bob Dylan appearing had circulated for weeks. Robbie Robertson told one newspaper that efforts were being made to reunite Dylan and The Band (minus pianist Richard Manuel, who died in 1986). Little Richard, who’d donned a hard hat and shovel for the museum’s groundbreaking in 1993, told The Hollywood Reporter he might play with Dylan himself. Then again — in other interviews promoting the event Little Richard said he hoped to perform with Springsteen, Prince, James Brown and Bon Jovi.
Dylan did not reunite with The Band, nor did he play dueling pianos with Little Richard. But he did show up, which was hardly a guarantee. His appearance was not only a surprise to the audience — it was a surprise to the organizers! The show’s producer Joel Gallen told me they’d been trying to get Dylan since day one, but he’d remained non-committal until the last minute. He played five songs, and, unusually for someone who has a tendency to throw curveballs at these all-star events, they were mostly greatest hits (the one exception was his 1985 rocker “Seeing the Real You At Last”).
Dylan apparently enjoyed his Rock Hall experience. There are photos of him grinning with Chuck Berry and James Brown backstage and signing autographs for a kid in an R.E.M. T-shirt. My favorite is a picture of him with the loquacious Allman Brother Dickey Betts, whoI interviewed about working with Dylan shortly before his passing. Betts is leaning over, hands gesticulating, while Dylan seems to be listening intently. Dylan, however, does not like the photo as much as I do. The photographer who took it, Sidney Smith, wrote that upon taking it, “You’d have thought I had poured muriatic acid onto Dylan. Little did I realize his complete disdain for photographers shooting him without permission.”
Bob Dylan and Dickey Betts at the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame concert in Cleveland, Ohio, 1995, photo by Sidney Smith
Dylan and Springsteen have only sung together once since the Rock Hall opening, a shambolic “Highway 61 Revisited” at Shea Stadium in 2003. But the mutual appreciation remains. Dylan reportedly rehearsed a mystery Springsteen cover with his band last year (alas, it remains unplayed…for now). And Springsteen is ending every show on his current tour with Dylan’s “Chimes of Freedom.” Tonight, he’ll play it in Boston on its writer’s 85th birthday. Three decades on from their Cleveland collab, they’re both still going strong. May they stay forever young.
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Luaka Bop is releasing an album by the radical and wonderful Korean act Leenalchi. It might have been Brian Eno who sent me a video of one of their Korean performances- I loved it. Young-gyu Jang from the band has created a playlist of exciting Korean music and he has written the informative introduction below. Enjoy!
- David Byrne
Korean band music began after the Korean War in 1950, taking root as U.S. forces stationed in Korea from 1953 brought their culture with them. In the early years, bands were largely under the direct influence of the American military, performing mainly U.S. pop songs and Korean-language cover versions of Western hits.
From the 1960s, a distinctly Korean sound began to emerge. Genres like psychedelic and soul blended with traditional Korean melodies, giving rise to a wide spectrum of music ranging from experimental to mainstream. Shin Joong-hyun — composer, guitarist, and vocalist — was the defining figure of this era, with bands such as ADD4, Key Boys, HE6, and Donkies representing the scene.
In the 1970s, the momentum carried over from the previous decade until a major marijuana scandal in 1975 brought the scene to a sharp halt. From the latter half of the decade, bands influenced by disco and funk began to appear, while campus bands started forming across universities. Groups such as Sanullim, Love and Peace, Sand Pebbles, Runaway, Black Tetra, Devils, Wild Cats, Magma, Shin Joong-hyun and Yeupjeon-deul, and Beosnimduel defined this period.
In the 1980s, campus bands made the leap into the professional music industry, while heavy metal and underground bands emerged and gained widespread popularity. Acts like Songgolmae, Deulgukhwa, Sinchon Blues, Sinawe, Baekdoosan, Jageun Geoin, Boohwal, Zoo, Five Fingers, and Spring Summer Fall Winter were among the most active of the era.
From the mid-1990s, an unprecedented number of indie bands formed, centered around the Hongik University area, giving birth to a thriving independent music scene. Crying Nut, Deli Spice, Jaurim, Bbibbi Band, No Brain, Unni's Barbershop, Uhuhboo Project, Hwang Shin-hye Band, Wonderbird, and N.EX.T led this wave.
Since the 2000s, the boundaries between genres have broken down, and bands with strong individual identities have come to the fore. Many have expanded their reach beyond Korea to international stages. Acts such as Nell, The Black Skirts, Jang Kiha and the Faces, Sultan of the Disco, SsingSsing, Goonam and Yeo Riding Stella, Hyukoh, Leenalchi, Silica Gel, ADOY, Se Sonyon, Haepari, and Jambinai continue to make their mark, each with a sound entirely their own
I'm Waiting for the Man - The Velvet Underground Live 1969 (4K)
Audio taken from October 19, 1969, End of Cole Ave. club, Dallas.
Picture taken from October 15, 1969, Dallas Peace Moratorium.
For such a groundbreaking band, the Velvet Underground has little footage of them performing live. That was why in 2019 is was extremely exciting to see Texas film archives uncover three films of the Velvet Underground performing at the Dallas Peace Moratorium on October 15th, 1969. These films where: a short 16mm documentary of the event with some audio and picture of the Velvets performing (and Sterling Morrison being interviewed), a silent 16mm B-roll of outtakes from this doc, and a silent 8mm home movie shot from the audience.
I was curious, would it be possible to take all of this footage and try to sync it to a live recording for an approximation of what it would've been like to see the Velvet Underground perform live?
Luckily only a few days after the event on October 19th, a fan would make one of the best live recordings of the Velvet Underground at the End of Cole Ave. club in Dallas.
So now the hard part was, which song has the most footage them playing? From the doc there were sync sound snippets of "I'm Waiting for the Man", "Beginning to See the Light", and "I'm Set Free". To figure out the silent footage, I had to do a lot of lip reading. And as luck would have it, most of the other silent footage was also of "Waiting for the Man".
With another stroke of luck, it appears like they performed "Waiting for the Man" almost identically across the two shows. So with a little bit of fudging, I tried to get "Beginning to See the Light", "I'm Set Free", and all the other footage synced up to the best of my ability. It's not perfect, but I'm very happy with the results.
A big thanks to the Texas Archive of the Moving Image, and the G. William Jones Film & Video Collection at SMU for posting such incredible footage!
• God Don't Like It
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