Here’s a baker’s dozen of recent favorites from YouTube. I’ll start weird. It’s all uphill from here, I promise.
This just popped up on YouTube this morning. I thought it was some genius doing a take-off on disco but no, apparently this was a real group, active in Germany from 1979 to 1985. Once you remember that this is the land where David Hasselhoff was king, well, actually, no, it still doesn’t make a lot of sense. Ladies and germs, I give you Dschinghis Khan. One of their songs went to number one in Australia.
Okay, let’s get a bit more serious.
Elbow is a band that was formed in Manchester in 1990. Their first album was released in 2001, their most recent album just a couple of weeks ago. Wikipedia lists them as alternative rock, I thought they might be considered an extension of BritPop, and then I saw some place list them as prog. I always kind of liked them, especially their 2008 album The Seldom Seen Kid and their 2011 album Let’s Build a Rocket Boys! My admiration of them developed into full-blown obsession with the release of a double-CD compilation on 2017.
This video of them doing one of their best-known songs, Grounds for Divorce, live at Abbey Road with the BBC Concert Orchestra, only has around 25,000 views, and it’s possible that several thousand of those views came from me. I’ve become obsessed with this version of the song. That moment at 1:15 when the whole orchestra just slams their way in, and then that bit of quiet at 2:54 until everything smashes in bigger and better at 3:12.
The new album is called Audio Vertigo and has way more great songs than one might expect from a band that’s now been recording for more than 20 years. This song, Balu, is my favorite track so far. At some point I’ll pay attention to the lyrics so I can figure out what the fuck it’s actually about, but maybe I won’t because sometimes it’s better not to know.
Speaking of bands working live with orchestras, here’s my favorite song from Divine Comedy, done live with an orchestra.
Here’s The Who doing Won’t Get Fooled Again live in the studio in front of a (probably invited) audience in 1978. If memory serves, this brilliantly photographed and edited piece was done for the The Kids Are Alright “rockumentary.” Where to even start with this? Maybe it’s the fact that they gaffer taped the headphones onto Keith Moon’s head because otherwise there’s no way they would have stayed on for the whole nine minutes of this intense performance. Pete Townshend is positively manic, getting tangled up in the guitar cable at 0:45 or the way he’s shaking his head at 1:39 and then snarling into the mike, or 7:50 that slo-mo jump in the air, sliding across the stage on his knees. And then there’s Moon exploding on the drums at 7:37, or how all through the video there’s John Entwistle, off to the side, refusing to accept that the bass guitar isn’t the lead instrument in the song.
Now let’s go even further back, to 1958. Here’s The Collins Kids on Tex Ritter’s Dance Party. Sister Lorrie is 16 here, brother Larry is 14, and he’s shredding a double-necked electric guitar - in 1958.
Here’s a clip of Larry Collins duetting with “The King of the Strings,” the amazing (and almost-forgotten) Joe Maphis. Video quality is not the best here but stick around to 2:00 when they’re trading solos - on the same guitar.
These days Louis Prima is mostly remembered for doing the original version of Just a Gigolo/I Ain’t Got Nobody or singing I Wanna Be Like You in the animated Disney version of Jungle Book. He started with New Orleans jazz in the 1920s and was one of the key figures in the jump blues scene of the late 1940s. In the 1950s he and 4th wife Keely Smith were big in Vegas, and here they are on Ed Sullivan doing some of their fabulous schtick.
(Playing saxophone behind Prima is the great Sam Butera - I got to see him performing in a Vegas lounge in the 1980s.)
And now for something completely different … here’s Taylor Swift hosting SNL when she was just 19. She reportedly wrote her “musical monologue” herself and it’s pretty damned perfect. “I like writing songs about douchebags who cheat on me …”
She’s been on SNL several times, and I particularly liked her appearance in this Please Don’t Destroy video.
Swift mentions Kanye West in her musical monologue, and here’s Bo Burnham eight years ago being inspired by Kanye to do a piece that I think approaches brilliance at times.
Back to music, here is the brilliant gospel and blues singer and guitarist Sister Rosetta Tharpe. This is from a BBC special shot in an unused train station in Manchester in 1964. Reportedly the audience included Keith Richards and Eric Clapton. And why now? She’s all but forgotten these days and yet her influence can not be over-stated.
When I discovered there was an actual video clip of Gram Parsons with the Flying Burrito Brothers (and that it was this song in particular), it made me very happy indeed.
Okay, a baker’s dozen plus one. You might hate me for this one but I’ll take my chances.
That’s all for this time. Stay tuned kids.