Music/Film: Elvis In Vegas on CMT
I got hitched in Vegas. I got hitched in Vegas by the King. I'm pretty sure it was him. He was real tall though, like 6'8.
I asked him if he ever played any ball. "No man, I always been the king".
Good enough for me.
Elvis and Vegas is real close to maybe the best match for performer and venue ever. The ironic thing is that Elvis was so obviously not a dapper Vegas cat - he was a hillbilly badass who could split your lip with a Karate chop and got buried in the backyard. Anyone wonderin' about the King's countrified-ness would do well to watch Elvis '56 which, just through photos and interviews - no videos - tells the story of the King's breakout year in 1956. It's him stealin' a kiss with a high school sweetheart, roughhousin in a half full swimming pool with his buddies, buying his first ring (the horseshoe, for good luck). Narrated by another great Southern wildcat - Levon Helm of The Band - it's a portrait of a real sweet country boy about to go poof like those fireworks Kerouac wrote about.
Frank Sinatra seemed at home in Vegas, swingin' with a deck of songs about heartache, booze and the good life but New York was really his town. The King, on the other hand, was just trying to find a place big enough to contain him. He was bigger than that ol' out-of-luck cowboy hitchin' a ride in all those postcards. Now Elvis in Vegas is like Santa at the North Pole. But there was a time when it wasn't so. Those jump suits everybody finds so damn funny were a brand new thang. He looked kinda like a crazy hillbilly super hero, like he'd just piloted a home-made spaceship that carried him and David Bowie back to earth. That suit was so fly that Evel Kenievel even co-opted it, jumping sharks and school buses in (a version of) it. And after all, if yer gonna do athletics, a high collar white polyester jumpsuit covered in rhinestones is just what you wanna wear. Remember Kurt Russell in the John Carpenter-directed Elvis TV Movie, telling his costume guy - I'm playin' Vegas man, can you make me somethin' you know.. .like a karate Gi?"
Now CMT will air a special all about Elvis in Vegas on Monday Aug 11th at 8pm (and the Blue Ray DVD will go on sale at Walmart for $10 bucks the same day). The take on it is how Elvis Presley reinvented Vegas and how it reinvented him. This thing oughta be pretty interestin' with everyone from 50 cent to The Rock to Tom Jones and Nancy Sinatra - you even got 'ol crazy-ass but very artful David Lynch - waxin' poetic on the king. I wonder if they're gonna have those flyin' Elvis's there? They got performers too. Everyone from rappers Three 6 Mafia doin' In the Ghetto to Toby Keith and Joe Perry doin' Mystery Train. And you got Chris Isaak and Brandi Carlile doin' love me tender, and you even got 'ol Celine Dion doin' Can't Help Falling In Love, which is when I'll be takin a peanut butter and banana break. But hey man, you can't have it all. I might even watch Celine, I just won't tell no one. What happens in Viva Las Vegas, stays in Viva Las Vegas. Check out the trailers for the show here.
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Music/Film: The Black Keys - Live From Abbey Road
Check out the Sundance Channel's series "Live From Abbey Road" Thursdays at 10 PM. Above is a clip of The Black Keys' episode. The show is described on the Sundance Channel site as follows: "The world's most famous recording studio is the setting for this intimate music series featuring new and established performers. Created to suggest the visual quality of a movie and the carefully engineered sound of a commercial recording, LIVE FROM ABBEY ROAD captures artists without an audience as they rehearse, discuss and perform in the closed environment of a recording studio."
They've got another series that looks good as well. "Architecture School. Focusing on an innovative studio program at Tulane University, this six-part documentary series follows a group of fourth- and fifth-year architecture students as they design and build a single-family house in a low-income neighborhood of New Orleans devastated by Hurricane Katrina." Episode 1 is airing on August 20th at 9 PM.
The Black Keys are also featured on MTV2's "The Drop" today. Now go outside, and tell the world! I'm envious of all you lucky folks who are goin' to see 'em in Toledo tonight!
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Music/Film: The Weight - The Band
From The Last Waltz, The Band doin' The Weight with The Staple Singers. The lead-in's a hoot with Richard Manuel and Robbie Robertson talkin' about The Band's name.
Check this out:
The Best of the Staple Singers [ CD - Amazon ]
The Last Waltz (1978) [ DVD - Amazon ]
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Music/Film: The Shape I’m In - The Band
From the best concert film of all time, Martin Scorsese's The Last Waltz. The Band doin' "The Shape I'm In." In the lead-in they talk about playing in Jack Ruby's club in Dallas. Caught a great doc the other night on VH1 called "Classic Albums: The Band - The Band." Check out the New York Times review. Enjoy.
Check this out:
The Last Waltz (Remastered / Expanded) (4CD) [BOX SET]
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Music/Film: Gram Parsons - Fallen Angel
This is the trailer for the documentary Gram Parsons: Fallen Angel. The film provides a revealing account of Gram Parsons' life and retraces Parsons' early days as a musician and his rise as a country-rock icon to his tragic death at the age of 26. The documentary features music and performances from Parsons and interviews with family, friends and fellow musicians like Emmylou Harris, Keith Richards, Sid Griffin, and Chris Hillman among others.
(From Wikipedia:)
Gram Parsons (November 5, 1946 – September 19, 1973) was an American singer, songwriter, guitarist and pianist. A solo artist as well as a member of the International Submarine Band, The Byrds and The Flying Burrito Brothers, he is best known for a series of recordings that anticipated the so-called country rock of the 1970s and the alt-country movement that began around 1990. Parsons described his records as "Cosmic American Music". He died of a drug overdose at the age of 26. In 2004, Rolling Stone Magazine ranked him #87 on their list of the 100 Greatest Artists of All Time.
1946–1968
Parsons was born Ingram Cecil Connor III in Winter Haven, Florida, the grandson of citrus fruit magnate John A. Snively, with extensive properties both there and in Waycross, Georgia, where Parsons was raised. A sister, "Little" Avis, soon followed. His father, "Coon Dog" Connor, suffered mood swings and abruptly committed suicide two days before Christmas Day 1958. Parsons' mother, Avis, subsequently married Bob Parsons, whose surname was adopted by young Ingram, the elder Parsons going as far to have new birth certificates drawn up for his stepson and stepdaughter. Henceforth he would be known as Gram Parsons. Parsons attended the prestigious Bolles School in Jacksonville, Florida. For a time, the family found a stability of sorts until Avis rapidly descended into alcoholism, leading to her death from cirrhosis. As his family disintegrated around him, Parsons developed strong musical interests, particularly after seeing Elvis Presley perform in concert in 1957. Five years later, while barely in his teens, he played in rock and roll cover bands such as the Pacers and the Legends, headlining in clubs owned by his stepfather in the Winter Haven/Polk County area. By the age of 16 he graduated to folk music, and in 1963 he teamed with his first professional outfit, the Shilos. Heavily influenced by the Kingston Trio and the Journeymen, the band played hootenannies, coffee houses and high school auditoriums. Forays into New York City's Greenwich Village included appearances at The Bitter End.
After the band folded he attended Harvard University, studying theology but departing after a semester. Despite being from the South, he became serious about country music during his time in Boston, Massachusetts after hearing Merle Haggard for the first time. In 1966, he and others from the Boston folk scene formed the International Submarine Band. The band relocated to Los Angeles the following year, and in 1968 released the album Safe at Home, which contains one of his best-known songs, "Luxury Liner", as well as an early version of "Do You Know How It Feels", which he would reprise on the first Flying Burrito Brothers album. But Parsons had already moved on to bigger things by the time of the album's release. Continue Reading...
Check this out:
Gram Parsons - Fallen Angel (DVD-2006)
Gram Parsons - Grievous Angel (itunes)
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Music/Film: “The Hardcore Troubadour” And The Last Episode of The Wire. Ever.
Tonight's the last episode of the fifth and final season of HBO's The Wire. Best show on TV. Period. In case ya haven't seen it, Steve Earle has had a reoccurring roll as "Walon", a recovering addict who befriends "Bubbles" and becomes his sponsor. Check out this article in the New Yorker on Earle from June '07 when he was workin' on his latest album "Washington Square Serenade." Earle also did an ass-kickin' version of Tom Waits' "Way Down In A Hole" for this season. (The Song That Never Ends.) You can hear the song on Steve Earle's MySpace page. And here's a link for his upcoming shows. He also has a great show on Sirius Satellite radio on Outlaw Country (channel 63) on Saturdays at 8 p.m. Here's this week's playlist:
As Tears Go By -Marianne Faithful
Wild Horses -The Flying Burrito Bros
Satisfaction -Otis Redding
Dead Flowers -Steve Earle and the Dukes
Tumblin' Dice -Linda Ronstadt
Beast of Burden -Bette Midler
Ruby Tuesday -Melanie
Sympathy for the Devil -Bryan Ferry
Bittersweet Symphony -The Verve
19th Nervous Breakdown -Jason & The Scorchers
Street Fightin' Man -Rod Stewart
Honky Tonk Woman -Tina Turer
Sister Morphine -Marianne Faithful
Check this out:
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Music/Film: Stax Records - Memphis, Tennessee
I just got turned on to somethin' special. It's a doc called "Respect Yourself: The Stax Records Story." It's tells of the rise and fall of Memphis-based Stax Records. Founded in 1957 as Satellite Records and renamed Stax in '61 - a mix of the names Jim Stewart and Estelle Axton, the brother and sister who co-founded it. This studio, started in a garage and later moved to an old movie theatre, released some of the most important and influential American music of all time including Otis Redding, Booker T and the MGs, Albert King, Sam & Dave, Isaac Hayes, Rufus & Carla Thomas, Eddie Floyd, and the Bar-Kays. The doc tells of the amazing musical and social ground that was broken by this little studio in the deep south. Forged in a black neighborhood by two white country music fans during a time when most of Memphis was still segregated, Stax was revolutionary. The doc covers the highs as well as the lows such as the unexamined fine print in Stax's distribution agreement with Atlantic Records which turned over the rights to classic Stax masters. It goes on to tell of the label's resurgence with the success of Isaac Hayes, blaxploitation film production and soundtracks (Shaft, Sweet Sweetback's Badass Song) and the historical WattStax show and ultimately the label's downfall behind the exorbitant spending, corrupt business associates and shady dealings. An epic American story. And the footage is amazing. I'd been to the Stax Museum a couple of times (a jewel in the crown of American culture - make the pilgrimage before you kick the bucket!), but this documentary does a superb job of telling the story through the eyes and voices of those who lived it.
Check this out:
Respect Yourself: The Stax Records Story (2007) DVD
The Complete Stax-Volt Singles 1959-1968 [BOX SET]
Wattstax (30th Anniversary Special Edition) (1972) DVD
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Film: Born for Hard Luck: Peg Leg Sam Jackson
This clip is from a film by Tom Davenport. It's a portrait of Arthur "Peg Leg Sam" Jackson - a harmonica player, singer, and comedian who made his living "busking" on the street and touring southern towns. Between the Civil War and World War II, many such gifted and restless young black musicians found careers in the traveling patent-medicine shows, a favorite entertainment in the rural and small-town South. They sang and recited comic routines and danced to attract a crowd for the pitchman and his sales of wonder-cure "snake oil." Born for Hard Luck includes highlights from Peg Leg Sam's performance at a North Carolina county fair in 1972, the only film record of a live medicine show and material filmed near his home in South Carolina in 1975. It gives excerpts from his comic routines, a mock chanted sermon, "toasts," folktales, three "buck dances," and his brilliant harmonica playing and singing of "Reuben Train," "Greasy Greens," "Hand Me Down," "Who Left My Backdoor Running," and "Froggie Went A-Courting." You can stream the entire film at www.folkstreams.net or the DVD's available from Davenport Films. Check out the Folkstreams.net site for some great stuff on making the film and about Peg Leg Sam.
"You look at me, you look at a man that was born for hard luck. I was born on the thirteenth day, odd day, on Friday, on a bad luck day. To show you that I is in hard luck, if I go up the street walking fast, I run over something. I'm in such hard luck, if I go up there walking slow, something run over me. I'm in such hard luck, if I'm sitting down I'm in everybody's way. I'm in such hard luck, if it's raining down soup at this very minute, everybody'd be standing there with a spoon--why, I'd have a fork. Yes sir, I was born for hard luck!" - Peg Leg Sam
Here's a bit from folkstreams.net about Peg Leg Sam:
Arthur Jackson was born on a farm near Jonesville, S.C., in 1911, and grew up sharing a one-room log cabin with his parents and 5 brothers and sisters. His father worked him so hard as a child that he was glad when a rainy day came. "I went to a school when it rained, " he says. "Outside of that I always had something to do on the farm....If I'd a-stayed at home I wouldn't have known a thing, wouldn't have been able to do anything but plow a mule. Nothing from nothing leaves nothing. I did a lot of work in vain--sixteen hours in June, July, August, working from sun to sun. If you plow a mule all day and into the night, you feel just as tired when you get up as when you lay down. Plow all night too, dreaming."
At the age of 10 Jackson started running away from home. "Arthur would be out in the field plowing a mule, working in the hot sun," a neighbor recalls. "All of a sudden that mule's ears would prick up in the air, " and Arthur would stop to listen. Soon you would hear a freight train several miles away, coming in our direction. That'd be the end of his plowing. He'd leave the mule standing in the row and run off to catch that train. You might not see him again for months."
He hoboed into Canada and New England in the summers and toward California and Florida when the weather turned cold, doing odd jobs--digging potatoes in Maine, cutting cane in Florida, preaching in Maryland, working on a boat in the Caribbean, serving time in a reform school and on a Georgia prison farm, and intermittently settling down for brief flings at marriage. In 1930, hungry and half asleep from days of hoboing, he lost a leg when he fell from a freight train near Raleigh, N.C. "That's when I started playing the harp good, "he says,"--making something of it."
Continue Reading...
Check this out:
Peg Leg Sam & Louisiana Red - Early in the Morning
Posted in Film
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