Can’t resist linking to a different type of percussion instrument: the typewriter. “The Typewriter” is a short piece (about 4 minutes) of what used to be called light concert music, written by Leroy Anderson in 1953. “The Typewriter” was performed by the Boston Pops, among other orchestras. Here’s the Brandenburger Symphoniker’s version; part of the humor of the piece is the elaborate ritual that the “typist” goes through (including asking the concertmaster to give him a pitch to “tune” the machine) before he actually starts to type.
True, it’s not “serious” music, but I think we can all use a little laughter these days. (In regard to Charlie Watts and other famous drummers, I am told that the “typist” in Leroy Anderson’s piece is almost always a drummer from the orchestra’s percussion section.)
That was great, thanks!
Stewart Copeland is a very interesting guy. My favorite part of the band, The Police*.” Neo, you’ll appreciate that he has composed a few ballets, along with a lot of movie soundtracks and other works. Here’s just a few sentences from his wikipedia entry:
…the youngest of four children of Scottish archaeologist Lorraine Adie and Alabama-born CIA officer Miles Copeland Jr. According to his 1989 biography and files released by the CIA in 2008, his father was a founding member of the OSS and the CIA. The family moved to Cairo a few months after Copeland’s birth. When he was five years old, the family moved to Beirut, where he attended the American Community School.
Glad you liked it! The Germans definitely have their own deadpan way of adding to the humor of Anderson’s piece.
I also wonder whether having a male typist added to the fun in the 1950s when Anderson wrote the piece– because it broke with the stereotype of the all-female typing pool.
There was a wild guy from Huston next door to my college freshman dorm room. He loved to blast his music loud, but the only music he would listen to was Jimi Hendrix and the Stones.
I think the Rolling Stones defines post Buddy Holly and Chuck Berry rock and roll. Curiously, I’ve never owned any of their albums maybe because their music was always around me. And my older siblings owned a couple albums when I was little.
Contrast the Stones and the Beatles who were of the same generation and both part of the British Invasion. I’m not aware that the Stones ever did a Buddy Holly style song, but Paul loved Holly and there were a few songs like Twist and Shout that are a homage to Holly.
The Beatles moved seamlessly from rock and roll to pure pop, so they weren’t tied to rock like the Stones. And Beatles rock was always a little more warm and friendly compared to the Stones. The Stones were always bad boys. The Who wanted to be bad boys, but it was never quite believable. That’s probably why Townsend resorted to smashing his guitar.
Back in the day, I was a big fan of Rod Stewart and Faces. Eventually, when Ron Wood joined up with the Stones I thought that might create some incredible super group. It was a nice addition, but nothing special. Probably, Charlie was a much more important member.
Tommy Jay: The Stones did “Not Fade Away.” And *really* well. I strongly recommend the first Stones greatest hits collection, a classic in its own right.
Jerry Lewis was also a great drummer. Then there is Mel Taylor of the Ventures. The long lasting bands always had a great drummer.
Hi there. @PA+Cat, interesting notion there about the typewriter. But one can have different typewriters, right? If we have, for example, a Concerto for Typewriter and Orchestra, is it going to be a manual or electric typewriter? And is the keyboard layout specified in the score as QWERTY or Dvorak? If the soloist is needing to play an allegro movement, the latter might be the better option.
I’ve just run across an interesting post on a blog called Points and Figures, which I’d never seen before. This is it. Let me see if I can remember how to do quotes on here….
A few years ago I attended a Chicago Economic Club dinner featuring ex-President Barack Obama. […]
One thing that he said struck me. I think it is true no matter who is President, and whether you are politically aligned with the President or not. It’s true if you like the President, identify with the President, or abhor the President.
The question presented was this, “What surprised you most about the job of being President?” […]
Obama paused. He didn’t jump right into the answer. I think that even though he was prepped and given many questions in advance, this one was random and it was truly innocent. If he knew the question was coming, he is a better actor than I gave him credit for. I think anyone could ask it of any living President and get a different answer since it is kind of personal given your background and what you did prior to being President.
Here is what Obama thoughtfully said in reply and I am paraphrasing since I don’t remember exactly word for word.
“I didn’t imagine or envision the sheer amount of decision-making that went on. I knew I would have to make decisions. However, it seemed like every 15 minutes, there was a crisis somewhere in the world that I had to make a definitive decision on. Those decisions often had ramifications and would affect people’s lives. Some decisions were more difficult and more intricate than others, but you had to think about what would happen after you made a choice, and what led to you having to make that choice.”
I thought that answer was fascinating.
(Oh, good, it worked.)
He goes on to set that anecdote in the context of the Marionette’s performance so far. I found the whole thing illuminating and plan to read more of this chap.
Gasp. Rod Stewart and The Faces.
Good catch Mac. I stand corrected.
TommyJay:
A key to understanding the Stones is that they started out as fanboys obsessed with R&B and never lost those roots. Their last studio album was “Blue & Lonesome” (2016) — all blues — and they cranked it out in three days. Won a bunch of awards too.
There’s a clip from the Rolling Stones/Scorcese concert film, “Shine a Light” where bluesman, Buddy Guy, shows up to do a guest appearance. It’s a good Muddy Waters song, but the performance is priceless. I can’t think of one better for the love, fun and respect being traded onstage. Which Scorcese nails in the film.
Buddy Guy comes out and plants himself like the Man from Blues Mountain, while the Stones revolve around him. It’s a lovely moment at the end when Keith Richards hands his guitar to Buddy and says, “It’s yours.”
The Stones did the most of any rockers to give back to the blues.
Mac, Maybe you know the really early Stones material better than I, but did they ever do an original song in the Holly style? I suppose that could be a tough call.
huxley and I had this discussion of The Cars some months back. I’m a fan of theirs, but I was shocked to notice how similar My Best Friend’s Girl was to Holly. The Cars had some big differences in sound and style compared Holly’s band, but once you correct your listening for those differences, there it is. Buddy Holly.
Philip Sells–
I did go over to the Points and Figures blog– which for some reason takes the back end of forever to load. I read the post on transparency, and I agree with the writer– that Biden is just not up to the job of decision making and should resign. From what I’ve seen over the past few days, he looks physically sick as well as mentally “off,” however you want to define that.
In regard to the choice of typewriter for the percussion section of a symphony orchestra, I’d nominate the 1930s-model Underwood that my mother used when she worked as an office manager for my stepfather’s small business. That thing sounded like a machine gun at full tilt, and it had a much heavier “touch” than newer typewriters. Whenever I used it, I felt like I had to punch every letter. Would be interesting to use one like it for the Anderson piece.
Mac:
“Big Hits (High Tide and Green Grass)” was the album where I got the Stones.
I was at a friend’s house and we were talking and he was playing the record. The first song was “Satisfaction” but that was on the radio all the time, so I paid no special attention. The next song was “The Last Time.” It’s not as well-known as many of their other songs, but I heard that twangy guitar figure at the beginning, then the pure Stones sound in the rest and I was a goner.
It’s still my favorite go-to Stones album, unless I want to strap in for one of their heavier later albums.
The typewriter performance is wonderful! And to think how many younger people there are today who’ve never used one!
I posted this the other day without explaining so it was probably overlooked.
It is a cover of Across the Universe by Fiona Apple. It is from the movie Pleasantville. I thought that Fiona singing the chorus “Nothing’s going to change my world” while the Pleasantville soda shop is sacked around her sums up Biden supporters.
TommyJay (11:37 am) said: “I’m not aware that the [Rolling] Stones ever did a Buddy Holly style song, but Paul [McCartney] loved Holly and there were a few songs like Twist and Shout that are a homage to Holly.”
I suppose my perceptions of popular music are quite different from TommyJay’s, but I just don’t perceive that “Twist and Shout” was/is a homage to Buddy Holly. It wasn’t a Hollyish song, (again) to my perceptions, and I’m not aware of any connection between Holly and “Twist and Shout”. Holly died early in 1959, and “Twist and Shout” was not ever recorded until the very early 1960s.
“Twist and Shout” was originally a little-known recording by The Top Notes. The Isley Brothers (who preceded “Twist and Shout” with “Shout”) took the song to Top-40 hitdom in 1962. The Beatles later covered “Twist and Shout” in the midst of The British Invasion early in 1964, taking it all the way to #1 or #2, depending on whether one’s Top-40 chart preference was Billboard or Cash Box.
Yesterday wesson put up this excellent link on Charlie from Mark Steyn’s site:
___________________________________
…you might never guess, listening to his recorded Rolling Stones drum performances, that Charlie was a precocious jazz drummer. With the Stones, he was a paragon of percussive minimalism. In fact, I’m not sure there’s a single drum fill on any Stones song a five year old couldn’t play.
But that’s no sleight. What matters is playing the right thing—not the complicated thing—and as it happened, Charlie always played the right thing. He played what he played because that’s what he should have played in the Rolling Stones song he was playing. That’s what good musicians do, after all.
Chases Eagles,
I like that movie and that’s my favorite scene largely because of the song. I had no idea it was a John Lennon composition. I was driving down the road and the Lennon version came on the radio, and I was shocked. A friend who’s a huge Beatles freak loaned me a copy of the album.
I know it’s sacrilegious, but I like the Fiona A. version best. I probably cannot disassociate it from the movie.
I selected the film for a movie night with my friend who’s kind of an iconoclast Democrat. I think those vandals are supposed to be white racist types and the culture an example of the MAGA greatness that never existed. My friend actually hated it. He said, “So this guy is supposed doodle with his paintings instead of being tied to a job. What if he doesn’t make any money? Who’ll support him?”
Fancy that. A brief moment of rational thinking.
I find the vast majority of socialist or communist tinged movies to be insufferable, but there are some that I like. Pleasantville is one, and almost everything that Jules Dassin did.
TommyJay: actually I don’t know the early Stones stuff very well. As a teenager I was not especially a fan, and when High Tides came out I really just bought it for the singles I knew. It was so good that it made me a fan. I’m pretty much of the same mind as huxley about it.
Re “Twist and Shout”–I actually sort of mildly resented the Beatles’ version, as I had heard the Isley’s a couple of years earlier and the Beatles’ seemed like theft.
To answer your question, no, I don’t know of anything in the Holly style that the Stones did. It’s kind of hard to imagine, really. I mean, compare the versions of “Not Fade Away”–very different feel. Probably both are on YouTube.
I had no idea that there was an Isley Bros. version. McCartney had made some comments about others reworking the song, as though he owned the only or best version, so I assumed he or the Beatles did own it.
TommyJay, Mac, M J R:
Beyond the cover of “Not Fade Away,” I can’t do much either with the Stones/Holly idea.
The Stones took a while to get beyond covers to writing their own music, and then a while longer to come out of the Beatles’ shadow, but they were working a different side of the street from Holly.
Now Chuck Berry, another story. They would never get over him, at least not while Keith is in the band.
Now I’m in my car
I got the radio on
And I’m yelling at the kids in the back
Cause they’re banging like Charlie Watts
John Hiatt
Slow Turning
RIP Charlie
Here’s a great story by Max Weinberg, Springsteen’s drummer, who was a friend of Watts and two top jazz drummers. Gives you an idea of Watts in relationship to rock and jazz plus what a generous man he was:
________________________________
Charlie called me in 1989, and said the Stones were playing New York City in October. He remembered me telling him I was friends with Joe Morello – the Dave Brubeck Quartet drummer who was responsible for the odd metres that Brubeck played in Take Five and Blue Rondo a la Turk – and Mel Lewis, an incredible bop-era drummer. Charlie was a huge fan and said: “I don’t know why they would, but I would be over the moon if they would agree to come to Shea Stadium so I could say hello to them – I wouldn’t expect them to stay.” I said, “Charlie, I will do my best.” Mel hated rock’n’roll – one of those jazz guys where rock’n’roll represented the decline of western civilisation.
But we end up driving to Shea Stadium, and we’re being treated like royalty. They take us up in an elevator, and with the Rolling Stones – similar to Paul McCartney – there’s about 10 guest levels, and each level is slightly more VIP than the next. We’re led into the inner sanctum. I said: “Charlie, it’s my honour to introduce you to Joe and Mel.” And he grabbed each of their hands, and said: “Gentlemen, it’s such an honour to meet you.” Charlie had a million questions: “When you played with Wynton Kelly and you did that little roll, how did you do that? Joe, could you show me exactly what you’re doing on Take Five?” He was a kid on Christmas, a smile from ear to ear. Me, I couldn’t believe I pulled this off.
They wanted to stay for the concert. Joe was blind, he couldn’t enjoy the spectacle, but he said to me: “Boy, Charlie Watts is a hell of a drummer, what a strong sense of time, he really anchors that band.” Mel, meanwhile – this is a guy who for 45 years had railed against rock’n’roll, and he completely loved it, every aspect of it. He got the musicality, the spectacle, and he was most impressed of all with Charlie’s drumming. What impresses drummers is: is what you’re doing appropriate to the music you’re playing? That’s what Mel Lewis was really impressed with: “Boy, he’s nailing it down!” On the drive home, Mel is saying, “I still don’t like rock’n’roll, but that was a hell of an experience. And your friend, I see why they’re called the greatest band – if you have to play rock drums, that’s the way rock drums should be played.”
He likes to do up tempo crowd pleasers like this one. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Skq5ckdShwE
I saw him do that song live with a terrific extended solo, but I didn’t care for the youtube live versions.
This is not a great place to post this, but there are several things that I, having worked in a number of different American embassies, can perhaps clear up. So here goes:
1.I have heard criticism of the fact that people being flown out of Kabul had to sign a refund agreement, and this is some kind of heartless act. Actually, the State Department has a budget item to cover the transportation cost of any indigent American that needs to be repatriated, but the requirement to sign a document promising to refund the cost has existed for many years. This becomes almost a no-brainer when you realize that there are Americans who take a foreign trip and travel until out of money, then come to their embassy to get a “free ride home”. It isn’t free, but I seriously doubt that everyone who is repatriated under this program actually ends up refunding the government. A “free trip home” is just one of the things people seem to take for granted. Similar to the probably apocryphal story of the American tourist who visits his embassy in Paris because he likes to taste “good ol’ American water” from the drinking fountain in the hall.
2. Marines are posted to U.S. Embassies to protect classified information, documents and equipment, not personnel. They often end up protecting the personnel, but their primary role is to safeguard classified documents and the equipment that produces those documents (code machines, etc.).
3. Destruction of classified documents was a major problem at all U.S. Embassies when I was in the service. We keep voluminous files (frequently over-classified, I will be the first to admit.) But we try to plan for destruction of those documents on a regular basis (the so-called burn bags in which we dispose of documents are actually brown bags imprinted with “BURN” in large red letters.). Leaving one of them out of a safe when we are not in the office is a security violation — don’t ask me how I know. But in addition to the documents we receive daily and don’t need to preserve, so end up putting in a burn bag, there are obviously reams and reams of files we want to preserve for future reference.
These are stored in four-drawer “safes” that are secured with combination locks. If these safes are not secured when we are out of the office, that is a security violation. These security violations (so-called “pink slips”) are issued by the Marines, who prowl our offices after hours looking for examples of lax security. They also look for examples of FS Officers trying to hide safe combinations in Rolodexes or on their desk calendar.
If an embassy receives warning that it will be overrun by hostiles, we need to destroy all the documents in those safes. This is sometimes done by dumping all the papers in cloth bags and carrying them to a secure area of the embassy, where they are burned or disintegrated. Burning is not fast — the documents in a four-drawer safe might take several hours to completely burn. A typical office might have a dozen such safes. A large embassy might have several hundred safes. Burning could take days. Disintegration is done in a large machine that literally turns paper into dust. It is even slower than burning. Shredding is not considered destruction — there have been experiments run by intelligence agencies to see if they can put shredded document back together, and they demonstrate that this is possible. Shredders are thus NOT considered a satisfactory way to destroy documents.
An embassy I worked in early in my career had burn drums on the roof. They were 55-gallon drums lined with a strong oxidizer. Documents were dumped into the drum and ignited, releasing a large volume of oxygen and speeding the process. They also, I have heard, created a huge fireball that could burn its way through a concrete slab. It was fast, but not safe for anyone in the building.
Finally, there are means of storing information so it can be retrieved on a daily basis, but can also be destroyed fairly rapidly (think microfiches), but this is not a capability that was available at smaller embassies when I was in the service. Anyone who has worked with microfiches knows that many pages can be stored on a single 4X5″ fiche, so a handful of fiches can hold the contents of an entire safe. Those fiches can be destroyed fairly quickly. I suppose there are ways of storing documents electronically now — something that was not possible 25 years ago — and those electronic files can presumably be rendered unreadable quite quickly. If this technology exists, it has been implemented since my retirement.
Thanks for sharing your expertise, F!
I was fortunate that the first band I played in for any length of time had a very good drummer and bass player and I quickly learned, first hand, how vital those two instruments are to blues, jazz and rock. They should be leading the band. Driving the band. However, it is not common that is the case.
I imagine it’s not only a difficult thing to do, musically. It’s a rare combination of talent and personality. One has to have the talent to play well, but the personality to be restrained, and not show off. Knowing you are doing incredible things (often incredible for their subtlety and lack of ostentation), and knowing you are truly leading the band while the idiot strutting on the stage like a rooster and the idiot smashing his guitar into his amp get all the attention from the audience.
And, as pointed out above, playing drums can be very physical; especially in rock.
TommyJay:
I had a jazz friend tell me about Chris Cain years ago.
He has some range! Unless told otherwise, I’d have thought that second link was Stevie Ray Vaughn.
“The Typewriter” was a staple of our High School Band concert in the sixties. The schtick was to call some local VIP up from the audience to “honor him with the next song” (it was always a man), and then his daughter, a band member of course, would sit on his lap to play the typewriter, which were standard office and home equipment of the day.
Everyone had a good laugh (somehow, the Dads were always surprised).
No one thought it was wildly sexist and should lead to cancellation and running him and the conductor out of town.
Simpler times.
I’ve heard it a million times, and still jump when the “whip” cracks.
My dad and brother and cousins were drummers, and percussion has to be the most fun job in the band.
@ F – “This is not a great place to post this, but there are several things that I, having worked in a number of different American embassies, can perhaps clear up. So here goes:”
Thanks so much. One would think a couple of reporters (there are still a few good ones) might give some background like this, but maybe I’ve just missed it.
Those Pesky Pritzkers spreading yet more Perversion:
Make the world a better place: Bring back Zoroastrianism.
And teach our rulers the difference between Billion and Trillion; they seem to have real trouble grasping Orders of Magnitude.
Looks like Carbon-spewing Trump is directing a Big Ass Cat 4 Hurricane right at NOLA. I’m already sensing a disturbance in the Ooga Booga. As we speak, brave women of color are marching out to man (err) the levees.
AesopFan–
Speaking of high school band concerts, “Sleigh Ride” was one of the standard four or five pieces we always played for the Christmas concert.
All the young kids in the audience were invited to come up and “conduct” for ten or fifteen seconds each, which meant that the band would just have to repeat the body over and over and over and over… I played clarinet, and by the end could barely hold my lips on the mouthpiece to be able to play.
Love the song, but always with a little shudder. 🙂
@Bryan Lovely:
Now that you mention it, one of the attractions of Band Camp was actually getting to play something new for a change.
A ‘72 album not widely known; Jammin With Edward. At 20 I enjoyed it a lot! This track showcases some Charlie Watts. A very bluesy jam session album with Ry Cooder and Nicky Hopkins. https://youtu.be/UVShrQyKG5c A gas gas gas
Wow, amazing to hear about Chris Cain here. He is a great guitarist and singer. He is from around here (SF Bay Area) and I know him. In fact a couple years ago I subbed on bass at one of his local gigs.
“I had heard the Isley’s [Twist and Shout] a couple of years earlier and the Beatles’ seemed like theft.”
No more than any other cover version of a song, e. g. much of the Beatles’ and Stones’ early work. Back in the 1960s I saw Muddy Waters play and actually got to talk to him. I asked him what he thought of groups like the Rolling Stones playing his music and he said “They made me a lot of money”.
FOAF:
Wow. You subbed into Chris Cain’s band and talked to Muddy Waters! Thems bragging rights.
I can’t find the quote, but as I recall James Brown was asked about blues players being exploited by “The Blues Brothers” film.
Brown replied to the effect, A whole lot of black musicians made money and got more work because of “The Blues Brothers.”
John Belushi genuinely loved the blues and shared it with Dan Ackroyd. There’s real joy in that film, though I could have gotten by with fewer car wrecks.
Yes huxley, it is ironic but the British “blues revival” of the 60s had the effect of giving tremendous publicity to blues musicians that a lot of American teenagers did not know until then were in their own backyard. It certainly inspired me to search out Muddy Waters when I heard he was a major influence on the Rolling Stones.
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Can’t resist linking to a different type of percussion instrument: the typewriter. “The Typewriter” is a short piece (about 4 minutes) of what used to be called light concert music, written by Leroy Anderson in 1953. “The Typewriter” was performed by the Boston Pops, among other orchestras. Here’s the Brandenburger Symphoniker’s version; part of the humor of the piece is the elaborate ritual that the “typist” goes through (including asking the concertmaster to give him a pitch to “tune” the machine) before he actually starts to type.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nW8dGwa2zRw&ab_channel=SabineSchneider
True, it’s not “serious” music, but I think we can all use a little laughter these days. (In regard to Charlie Watts and other famous drummers, I am told that the “typist” in Leroy Anderson’s piece is almost always a drummer from the orchestra’s percussion section.)
That was great, thanks!
Stewart Copeland is a very interesting guy. My favorite part of the band, The Police*.” Neo, you’ll appreciate that he has composed a few ballets, along with a lot of movie soundtracks and other works. Here’s just a few sentences from his wikipedia entry:
*Whom I like much more than “The Rolling Stones.”
That was funny, PA+Cat,
I’d only seen the Jerry Lewis version: https://youtu.be/hzB53YL78rE
Rufus T. Firefly–
Glad you liked it! The Germans definitely have their own deadpan way of adding to the humor of Anderson’s piece.
I also wonder whether having a male typist added to the fun in the 1950s when Anderson wrote the piece– because it broke with the stereotype of the all-female typing pool.
There was a wild guy from Huston next door to my college freshman dorm room. He loved to blast his music loud, but the only music he would listen to was Jimi Hendrix and the Stones.
I think the Rolling Stones defines post Buddy Holly and Chuck Berry rock and roll. Curiously, I’ve never owned any of their albums maybe because their music was always around me. And my older siblings owned a couple albums when I was little.
Contrast the Stones and the Beatles who were of the same generation and both part of the British Invasion. I’m not aware that the Stones ever did a Buddy Holly style song, but Paul loved Holly and there were a few songs like Twist and Shout that are a homage to Holly.
The Beatles moved seamlessly from rock and roll to pure pop, so they weren’t tied to rock like the Stones. And Beatles rock was always a little more warm and friendly compared to the Stones. The Stones were always bad boys. The Who wanted to be bad boys, but it was never quite believable. That’s probably why Townsend resorted to smashing his guitar.
Back in the day, I was a big fan of Rod Stewart and Faces. Eventually, when Ron Wood joined up with the Stones I thought that might create some incredible super group. It was a nice addition, but nothing special. Probably, Charlie was a much more important member.
Tommy Jay: The Stones did “Not Fade Away.” And *really* well. I strongly recommend the first Stones greatest hits collection, a classic in its own right.
https://www.allmusic.com/album/big-hits-high-tide-and-green-grass-mw0000650699
Jerry Lewis was also a great drummer. Then there is Mel Taylor of the Ventures. The long lasting bands always had a great drummer.
Hi there. @PA+Cat, interesting notion there about the typewriter. But one can have different typewriters, right? If we have, for example, a Concerto for Typewriter and Orchestra, is it going to be a manual or electric typewriter? And is the keyboard layout specified in the score as QWERTY or Dvorak? If the soloist is needing to play an allegro movement, the latter might be the better option.
I’ve just run across an interesting post on a blog called Points and Figures, which I’d never seen before. This is it. Let me see if I can remember how to do quotes on here….
(Oh, good, it worked.)
He goes on to set that anecdote in the context of the Marionette’s performance so far. I found the whole thing illuminating and plan to read more of this chap.
Gasp. Rod Stewart and The Faces.
Good catch Mac. I stand corrected.
TommyJay:
A key to understanding the Stones is that they started out as fanboys obsessed with R&B and never lost those roots. Their last studio album was “Blue & Lonesome” (2016) — all blues — and they cranked it out in three days. Won a bunch of awards too.
There’s a clip from the Rolling Stones/Scorcese concert film, “Shine a Light” where bluesman, Buddy Guy, shows up to do a guest appearance. It’s a good Muddy Waters song, but the performance is priceless. I can’t think of one better for the love, fun and respect being traded onstage. Which Scorcese nails in the film.
Buddy Guy comes out and plants himself like the Man from Blues Mountain, while the Stones revolve around him. It’s a lovely moment at the end when Keith Richards hands his guitar to Buddy and says, “It’s yours.”
The Stones did the most of any rockers to give back to the blues.
“Buddy Guy & Rolling Stones – Champagne & Reefer Live!”
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yVj8Sh4phzM
Mac, Maybe you know the really early Stones material better than I, but did they ever do an original song in the Holly style? I suppose that could be a tough call.
huxley and I had this discussion of The Cars some months back. I’m a fan of theirs, but I was shocked to notice how similar My Best Friend’s Girl was to Holly. The Cars had some big differences in sound and style compared Holly’s band, but once you correct your listening for those differences, there it is. Buddy Holly.
Philip Sells–
I did go over to the Points and Figures blog– which for some reason takes the back end of forever to load. I read the post on transparency, and I agree with the writer– that Biden is just not up to the job of decision making and should resign. From what I’ve seen over the past few days, he looks physically sick as well as mentally “off,” however you want to define that.
In regard to the choice of typewriter for the percussion section of a symphony orchestra, I’d nominate the 1930s-model Underwood that my mother used when she worked as an office manager for my stepfather’s small business. That thing sounded like a machine gun at full tilt, and it had a much heavier “touch” than newer typewriters. Whenever I used it, I felt like I had to punch every letter. Would be interesting to use one like it for the Anderson piece.
Mac:
“Big Hits (High Tide and Green Grass)” was the album where I got the Stones.
I was at a friend’s house and we were talking and he was playing the record. The first song was “Satisfaction” but that was on the radio all the time, so I paid no special attention. The next song was “The Last Time.” It’s not as well-known as many of their other songs, but I heard that twangy guitar figure at the beginning, then the pure Stones sound in the rest and I was a goner.
It’s still my favorite go-to Stones album, unless I want to strap in for one of their heavier later albums.
The typewriter performance is wonderful! And to think how many younger people there are today who’ve never used one!
I posted this the other day without explaining so it was probably overlooked.
It is a cover of Across the Universe by Fiona Apple. It is from the movie Pleasantville. I thought that Fiona singing the chorus “Nothing’s going to change my world” while the Pleasantville soda shop is sacked around her sums up Biden supporters.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RhMEKiIb86I
TommyJay (11:37 am) said: “I’m not aware that the [Rolling] Stones ever did a Buddy Holly style song, but Paul [McCartney] loved Holly and there were a few songs like Twist and Shout that are a homage to Holly.”
I suppose my perceptions of popular music are quite different from TommyJay’s, but I just don’t perceive that “Twist and Shout” was/is a homage to Buddy Holly. It wasn’t a Hollyish song, (again) to my perceptions, and I’m not aware of any connection between Holly and “Twist and Shout”. Holly died early in 1959, and “Twist and Shout” was not ever recorded until the very early 1960s.
“Twist and Shout” was originally a little-known recording by The Top Notes. The Isley Brothers (who preceded “Twist and Shout” with “Shout”) took the song to Top-40 hitdom in 1962. The Beatles later covered “Twist and Shout” in the midst of The British Invasion early in 1964, taking it all the way to #1 or #2, depending on whether one’s Top-40 chart preference was Billboard or Cash Box.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Twist_and_Shout
Yesterday wesson put up this excellent link on Charlie from Mark Steyn’s site:
___________________________________
…you might never guess, listening to his recorded Rolling Stones drum performances, that Charlie was a precocious jazz drummer. With the Stones, he was a paragon of percussive minimalism. In fact, I’m not sure there’s a single drum fill on any Stones song a five year old couldn’t play.
But that’s no sleight. What matters is playing the right thing—not the complicated thing—and as it happened, Charlie always played the right thing. He played what he played because that’s what he should have played in the Rolling Stones song he was playing. That’s what good musicians do, after all.
–Tal Bachman, “Tal Bachman: Charlie Watts Always Played the Right Thing”
https://www.steynonline.com/11641/tal-bachman-charlie-watts-always-played-the-right
Chases Eagles,
I like that movie and that’s my favorite scene largely because of the song. I had no idea it was a John Lennon composition. I was driving down the road and the Lennon version came on the radio, and I was shocked. A friend who’s a huge Beatles freak loaned me a copy of the album.
I know it’s sacrilegious, but I like the Fiona A. version best. I probably cannot disassociate it from the movie.
I selected the film for a movie night with my friend who’s kind of an iconoclast Democrat. I think those vandals are supposed to be white racist types and the culture an example of the MAGA greatness that never existed. My friend actually hated it. He said, “So this guy is supposed doodle with his paintings instead of being tied to a job. What if he doesn’t make any money? Who’ll support him?”
Fancy that. A brief moment of rational thinking.
I find the vast majority of socialist or communist tinged movies to be insufferable, but there are some that I like. Pleasantville is one, and almost everything that Jules Dassin did.
TommyJay: actually I don’t know the early Stones stuff very well. As a teenager I was not especially a fan, and when High Tides came out I really just bought it for the singles I knew. It was so good that it made me a fan. I’m pretty much of the same mind as huxley about it.
Re “Twist and Shout”–I actually sort of mildly resented the Beatles’ version, as I had heard the Isley’s a couple of years earlier and the Beatles’ seemed like theft.
To answer your question, no, I don’t know of anything in the Holly style that the Stones did. It’s kind of hard to imagine, really. I mean, compare the versions of “Not Fade Away”–very different feel. Probably both are on YouTube.
I had no idea that there was an Isley Bros. version. McCartney had made some comments about others reworking the song, as though he owned the only or best version, so I assumed he or the Beatles did own it.
TommyJay, Mac, M J R:
Beyond the cover of “Not Fade Away,” I can’t do much either with the Stones/Holly idea.
The Stones took a while to get beyond covers to writing their own music, and then a while longer to come out of the Beatles’ shadow, but they were working a different side of the street from Holly.
Now Chuck Berry, another story. They would never get over him, at least not while Keith is in the band.
–Rolling Stones, “Around and Around” (by Chuck Berry) (Ed Sullivan, 1964)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3hRMRmJDY3U
Now I’m in my car
I got the radio on
And I’m yelling at the kids in the back
Cause they’re banging like Charlie Watts
John Hiatt
Slow Turning
RIP Charlie
Here’s a great story by Max Weinberg, Springsteen’s drummer, who was a friend of Watts and two top jazz drummers. Gives you an idea of Watts in relationship to rock and jazz plus what a generous man he was:
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Charlie called me in 1989, and said the Stones were playing New York City in October. He remembered me telling him I was friends with Joe Morello – the Dave Brubeck Quartet drummer who was responsible for the odd metres that Brubeck played in Take Five and Blue Rondo a la Turk – and Mel Lewis, an incredible bop-era drummer. Charlie was a huge fan and said: “I don’t know why they would, but I would be over the moon if they would agree to come to Shea Stadium so I could say hello to them – I wouldn’t expect them to stay.” I said, “Charlie, I will do my best.” Mel hated rock’n’roll – one of those jazz guys where rock’n’roll represented the decline of western civilisation.
But we end up driving to Shea Stadium, and we’re being treated like royalty. They take us up in an elevator, and with the Rolling Stones – similar to Paul McCartney – there’s about 10 guest levels, and each level is slightly more VIP than the next. We’re led into the inner sanctum. I said: “Charlie, it’s my honour to introduce you to Joe and Mel.” And he grabbed each of their hands, and said: “Gentlemen, it’s such an honour to meet you.” Charlie had a million questions: “When you played with Wynton Kelly and you did that little roll, how did you do that? Joe, could you show me exactly what you’re doing on Take Five?” He was a kid on Christmas, a smile from ear to ear. Me, I couldn’t believe I pulled this off.
They wanted to stay for the concert. Joe was blind, he couldn’t enjoy the spectacle, but he said to me: “Boy, Charlie Watts is a hell of a drummer, what a strong sense of time, he really anchors that band.” Mel, meanwhile – this is a guy who for 45 years had railed against rock’n’roll, and he completely loved it, every aspect of it. He got the musicality, the spectacle, and he was most impressed of all with Charlie’s drumming. What impresses drummers is: is what you’re doing appropriate to the music you’re playing? That’s what Mel Lewis was really impressed with: “Boy, he’s nailing it down!” On the drive home, Mel is saying, “I still don’t like rock’n’roll, but that was a hell of an experience. And your friend, I see why they’re called the greatest band – if you have to play rock drums, that’s the way rock drums should be played.”
https://www.theguardian.com/music/2021/aug/26/stewart-copeland-max-weinberg-on-charlie-watts-rolling-stones
I got around to listening to,
“Buddy Guy & Rolling Stones – Champagne & Reefer Live!”
Loved it. Keith spitting out his cigarette like a tiny missile was fabulous. Bad boys.
I’m planning on seeing this blues guy, Chris Cain, this weekend at a free festival.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=w4crNxPz3o4
He likes to do up tempo crowd pleasers like this one.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Skq5ckdShwE
I saw him do that song live with a terrific extended solo, but I didn’t care for the youtube live versions.
This is not a great place to post this, but there are several things that I, having worked in a number of different American embassies, can perhaps clear up. So here goes:
1.I have heard criticism of the fact that people being flown out of Kabul had to sign a refund agreement, and this is some kind of heartless act. Actually, the State Department has a budget item to cover the transportation cost of any indigent American that needs to be repatriated, but the requirement to sign a document promising to refund the cost has existed for many years. This becomes almost a no-brainer when you realize that there are Americans who take a foreign trip and travel until out of money, then come to their embassy to get a “free ride home”. It isn’t free, but I seriously doubt that everyone who is repatriated under this program actually ends up refunding the government. A “free trip home” is just one of the things people seem to take for granted. Similar to the probably apocryphal story of the American tourist who visits his embassy in Paris because he likes to taste “good ol’ American water” from the drinking fountain in the hall.
2. Marines are posted to U.S. Embassies to protect classified information, documents and equipment, not personnel. They often end up protecting the personnel, but their primary role is to safeguard classified documents and the equipment that produces those documents (code machines, etc.).
3. Destruction of classified documents was a major problem at all U.S. Embassies when I was in the service. We keep voluminous files (frequently over-classified, I will be the first to admit.) But we try to plan for destruction of those documents on a regular basis (the so-called burn bags in which we dispose of documents are actually brown bags imprinted with “BURN” in large red letters.). Leaving one of them out of a safe when we are not in the office is a security violation — don’t ask me how I know. But in addition to the documents we receive daily and don’t need to preserve, so end up putting in a burn bag, there are obviously reams and reams of files we want to preserve for future reference.
These are stored in four-drawer “safes” that are secured with combination locks. If these safes are not secured when we are out of the office, that is a security violation. These security violations (so-called “pink slips”) are issued by the Marines, who prowl our offices after hours looking for examples of lax security. They also look for examples of FS Officers trying to hide safe combinations in Rolodexes or on their desk calendar.
If an embassy receives warning that it will be overrun by hostiles, we need to destroy all the documents in those safes. This is sometimes done by dumping all the papers in cloth bags and carrying them to a secure area of the embassy, where they are burned or disintegrated. Burning is not fast — the documents in a four-drawer safe might take several hours to completely burn. A typical office might have a dozen such safes. A large embassy might have several hundred safes. Burning could take days. Disintegration is done in a large machine that literally turns paper into dust. It is even slower than burning. Shredding is not considered destruction — there have been experiments run by intelligence agencies to see if they can put shredded document back together, and they demonstrate that this is possible. Shredders are thus NOT considered a satisfactory way to destroy documents.
An embassy I worked in early in my career had burn drums on the roof. They were 55-gallon drums lined with a strong oxidizer. Documents were dumped into the drum and ignited, releasing a large volume of oxygen and speeding the process. They also, I have heard, created a huge fireball that could burn its way through a concrete slab. It was fast, but not safe for anyone in the building.
Finally, there are means of storing information so it can be retrieved on a daily basis, but can also be destroyed fairly rapidly (think microfiches), but this is not a capability that was available at smaller embassies when I was in the service. Anyone who has worked with microfiches knows that many pages can be stored on a single 4X5″ fiche, so a handful of fiches can hold the contents of an entire safe. Those fiches can be destroyed fairly quickly. I suppose there are ways of storing documents electronically now — something that was not possible 25 years ago — and those electronic files can presumably be rendered unreadable quite quickly. If this technology exists, it has been implemented since my retirement.
Thanks for sharing your expertise, F!
I was fortunate that the first band I played in for any length of time had a very good drummer and bass player and I quickly learned, first hand, how vital those two instruments are to blues, jazz and rock. They should be leading the band. Driving the band. However, it is not common that is the case.
I imagine it’s not only a difficult thing to do, musically. It’s a rare combination of talent and personality. One has to have the talent to play well, but the personality to be restrained, and not show off. Knowing you are doing incredible things (often incredible for their subtlety and lack of ostentation), and knowing you are truly leading the band while the idiot strutting on the stage like a rooster and the idiot smashing his guitar into his amp get all the attention from the audience.
And, as pointed out above, playing drums can be very physical; especially in rock.
TommyJay:
I had a jazz friend tell me about Chris Cain years ago.
He has some range! Unless told otherwise, I’d have thought that second link was Stevie Ray Vaughn.
“The Typewriter” was a staple of our High School Band concert in the sixties. The schtick was to call some local VIP up from the audience to “honor him with the next song” (it was always a man), and then his daughter, a band member of course, would sit on his lap to play the typewriter, which were standard office and home equipment of the day.
Everyone had a good laugh (somehow, the Dads were always surprised).
No one thought it was wildly sexist and should lead to cancellation and running him and the conductor out of town.
Simpler times.
A perennial Christmas favorite, also composed by Leroy Anderson, in July 1948: “Sleigh Ride.”
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EDRFmn_KqfA
I’ve heard it a million times, and still jump when the “whip” cracks.
My dad and brother and cousins were drummers, and percussion has to be the most fun job in the band.
@ F – “This is not a great place to post this, but there are several things that I, having worked in a number of different American embassies, can perhaps clear up. So here goes:”
Thanks so much. One would think a couple of reporters (there are still a few good ones) might give some background like this, but maybe I’ve just missed it.
Those Pesky Pritzkers spreading yet more Perversion:
https://www.breitbart.com/education/2021/08/27/illinois-gov-j-b-pritzker-signs-sex-ed-bill-requiring-kindergartners-to-define-gender-identity/
Do they ever sleep?
From the No Shit Sherlock I also Went to Engineering School and got taught to think critically and do back of the envelope calculations:
https://humanevents.com/2021/08/26/study-finds-sun-may-be-leading-cause-of-global-warming/
Make the world a better place: Bring back Zoroastrianism.
And teach our rulers the difference between Billion and Trillion; they seem to have real trouble grasping Orders of Magnitude.
Looks like Carbon-spewing Trump is directing a Big Ass Cat 4 Hurricane right at NOLA. I’m already sensing a disturbance in the Ooga Booga. As we speak, brave women of color are marching out to man (err) the levees.
AesopFan–
Speaking of high school band concerts, “Sleigh Ride” was one of the standard four or five pieces we always played for the Christmas concert.
All the young kids in the audience were invited to come up and “conduct” for ten or fifteen seconds each, which meant that the band would just have to repeat the body over and over and over and over… I played clarinet, and by the end could barely hold my lips on the mouthpiece to be able to play.
Love the song, but always with a little shudder. 🙂
@Bryan Lovely:
Now that you mention it, one of the attractions of Band Camp was actually getting to play something new for a change.
A ‘72 album not widely known; Jammin With Edward. At 20 I enjoyed it a lot! This track showcases some Charlie Watts. A very bluesy jam session album with Ry Cooder and Nicky Hopkins. https://youtu.be/UVShrQyKG5c A gas gas gas
Wow, amazing to hear about Chris Cain here. He is a great guitarist and singer. He is from around here (SF Bay Area) and I know him. In fact a couple years ago I subbed on bass at one of his local gigs.
“I had heard the Isley’s [Twist and Shout] a couple of years earlier and the Beatles’ seemed like theft.”
No more than any other cover version of a song, e. g. much of the Beatles’ and Stones’ early work. Back in the 1960s I saw Muddy Waters play and actually got to talk to him. I asked him what he thought of groups like the Rolling Stones playing his music and he said “They made me a lot of money”.
FOAF:
Wow. You subbed into Chris Cain’s band and talked to Muddy Waters! Thems bragging rights.
I can’t find the quote, but as I recall James Brown was asked about blues players being exploited by “The Blues Brothers” film.
Brown replied to the effect, A whole lot of black musicians made money and got more work because of “The Blues Brothers.”
John Belushi genuinely loved the blues and shared it with Dan Ackroyd. There’s real joy in that film, though I could have gotten by with fewer car wrecks.
–“James Brown – The Old Landmark (feat. The Blues Brothers)”
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mCF_xzxhxME
Weirdly, though perhaps not too weirdly, the Vatican declared “The Bllues Brothers” to be a “Catholic classic.”
https://www.cinemablend.com/news/289839/Blues-Brothers-Deemed-Catholic-Classic-By-Vatican
Yes huxley, it is ironic but the British “blues revival” of the 60s had the effect of giving tremendous publicity to blues musicians that a lot of American teenagers did not know until then were in their own backyard. It certainly inspired me to search out Muddy Waters when I heard he was a major influence on the Rolling Stones.