blog riley

INFOGRAPHIC SWALLOWS ONLINE MUSIC

Wed, 21 Dec 2011 09:25:03 -0500

Click graphic for larger version, via grovo.com

Top 10 Untrue Facts About Robert Johnson: Greil Marcus

Tue, 13 Dec 2011 12:21:57 -0500

10. Like Huey Newton and Bobby Seale listening to Bob Dylan's "Mr. Tambourine Man" as they drew up the charter for the Black Panthers, Johnny Mercer and Harold Arlen were listening to "Hell Hound on My Trail" when in 1941 they wrote "Blues in the Night." "I want him on the session," Bing Crosby, a fan of "Terraplane Blues," said just before he recorded the song in 1942. But what he got was perfect anyway. (Greil Marcus in Oxford American)

PATRICK MEIGHAN: FAMILY GUY WRITER'S ARREST

Mon, 12 Dec 2011 10:02:04 -0500

Image by Getty Images via @daylife

REPRINTED FROM MARK CRISPIN MILLER'S News from Underground:

http://myoccupylaarrest.blogspot.com/2011/12/my-occupy-la-arrest-by-p...

*My Occupy LA Arrest, by Patrick Meighan*

My name is Patrick Meighan, and Iï¿½m a husband, a father, a writer on the
Fox animated sitcom "Family Guy" and a member of the Unitarian
Universalist Community Church of Santa Monica.

I was arrested at about 1 a.m. Wednesday morning with 291 other people
at Occupy LA. I was sitting in City Hall Park with a pillow, a blanket,
and a copy of Thich Nhat Hanh's "Being Peace" when 1,400 heavily-armed
LAPD officers in paramilitary SWAT gear streamed in. I was in a group of
about 50 peaceful protestors who sat Indian-style, arms interlocked,
around a tent (the symbolic image of the Occupy movement). The LAPD
officers encircled us, weapons drawn, while we chanted "We Are Peaceful"
and "We Are Nonviolent" and "Join Us."

As we sat there, encircled, a separate team of LAPD officers used knives
to slice open every personal tent in the park...

Image by Getty Images via @daylife

Thank you for letting me share that anger with you today.

Patrick Meighan

PROG SLUT

Fri, 18 Nov 2011 09:44:28 -0500

[photo: Jim Snyder, Summerfest, Milwaukee, 2011]
A friend writes: Was Rundgren good? Hadn't seen him since college, long, long ago....
TR: I didn't realize until I got down there that it was a total UTOPIA gig (tour details, reviews here). Great show if you love prog-rock. Todd dressed in HOWLINGLY GARISH PSYCHEDELIC LEATHER COWBOY CHAPS beneath UNIRONIC NIXONIAN JOWLS. I've never been fond of this "take me seriously" sideshow, the overly mannered, elaborate, complicated and garrulous third of his career. But not many in the audience seemed concerned they weren't getting "Cliche" or "Meaning of the Verb to Love" or "Hello, It's Me." Strictly the white man proving himself unworthy of George Clinton.

All of which struck me as extra-unnecessarily weird since Todd had just put out a rather steam-powered assault on Robert Johnson songs, which goes unmentioned on his site, and which at least boasts great material.

But I'll admit he played wondrous guitar and sang beautifully. Crowd ate it up. Finale was "Just One Victory," one of his almost-anthems. He thanked all the Berklee students, and told them their assignment was to transcribe everything they just heard. Half of them had already finished.

1.5B EMI/UNIVERSAL DEAL APPROACHES CLOSE

Fri, 11 Nov 2011 14:56:22 -0500

Universal Music is close to sealing a $1.5 bn-plus deal to buy EMI Music, home to acts including the Beatles and Coldplay, with owner Citigrouppushing for negotiations to be concluded by the weekend.

The company is the only bidder still in the running to buy EMI's recorded music division after Warner Music, widely considered the favourite, took its $1.5bn (£944m) offer off the table after talks broke down with Citigroup.

Meanwhile, there are believed to be two potential buyers for EMI's music publishing division, with reports that Sony/ATV has emerged as a rival bidder to BMG Rights Management, long seen as the frontrunner to pick up the $2bn business... ... (more)

HAMBURG LENNON LETTER TO HARRISON FAMILY

Tue, 11 Oct 2011 10:51:04 -0500

This letter appears on page 48 of the new Olivia Harrison book Living in the Material World, a better version of last week's HBO special (see Wyman's Slate review, from below). There are rumors about scads of letters in Lennon's hand from this period, which Hunter Davies will collect for publication next year. On the right, Astrid Kirchherr stands in front of a line at the Cavern, 1964 (p. 76).

ON POINT, TOM ASHBROOK, LENNON'S BIRTHDAY

Fri, 07 Oct 2011 10:20:29 -0500

Aired October 4, 2011, anticipating Lennon's October 9 birthday. Tim Riley discusses his new Lennon biography. See his author page for upcoming appearances in NYC, Massachusetts and New Hampshire.

BILL WYMAN ON SCHLOCKUMENTARIES: SCORCESE'S HARRISON

Thu, 06 Oct 2011 07:16:54 -0500

Image via Wikipedia

Finally, the film really never investigates the real mystery of Harrison: What was he so morose about? Now, Ringo Starr is one who appreciates the cosmic joke life played on him. He has a cheerful acceptance of life's whimsy, hiding what no doubt has been his daily prayers since circa 1963: "Please, God, I don't know what a goofball like me did to deserve this life, but thank you very much, and please let me know if I'm doing anything that would cause you to end it." Harrison, by contrast, has always had a sense of the aggrieved about him. I just don't know what the source of it was. In Harrison's mini-autobiography at the front of I Me Mine, the unasked-for collection of his song lyrics, he seems mostly unhappy about ... the travel indignities he suffered during the Beatles years. In the documentary, Scorsese plays the price-of-fame card heavily. "It's fun," Starr says, "early on. But then you want it to stop, and it never does." -- in SLATE

JULIA STANLEY LENNON, ALLERTON CEMETERY

Mon, 26 Sep 2011 08:22:56 -0500

When I last visited in 2008, this gravestone was still missing. My guess is that her daughter Julia Dykins Baird Lennon had it placed there after being unmarked for many years. Still a very moving place: imagine the young Lennon visiting his mother's ghost.

10 INDOMITABLE LENNON TRACKS

Thu, 22 Sep 2011 10:47:10 -0500

This first list ran in the Kirkus newsletter this week, the second list got dumped:

Riley's 10 Favorite Lennon Tracks

"Ten is way too hard, but it's a very illuminating exercise," Riley said when asked to list his favorites. "Once you do it, you realize Lennon remains among a handful of songwriters from whose catalog you can create several such lists and still feel like you're shorting much of his best work."

That said, here's his list, in chronological order:

"If I Fell"

"She Loves You"

"And Your Bird Can Sing"

"A Day in the Life"

"Strawberry Fields Forever"

"Don't Let Me Down"

"Dear Prudence"

"Cold Turkey"

"Happiness is a Warm Gun"

"Beautiful Boy"

10 FAVORITE LENNON VOCALS (covers)

To Know Her Is To Love Her
Keep Your Hands Off My Baby
Anna
Baby It's You
Money
You've Really Got a Hold On Me
Leave My Kitten Alone
Twist and Shout
Dizzy Miss Lizzie (live 1969)
Stand By Me

R.E.M., ROCK MECHANICS

Thu, 22 Sep 2011 09:39:14 -0500

Image via Wikipedia

[audio] My favorite memory of REM: driving around upstate New York in 1985 to catch encores, which could include everything from "I'll Be Your Mirror" to "Hang on Sloopy." In an interview for Rochester's City Newspaper, Buck turned me on to the Plimsouls. Favorite obscurity: "Superman" (The Clique, 1969).

SINEAD, ROCK PROPHET

Tue, 20 Sep 2011 10:04:23 -0500

I have often wondered how long it would take for people to stand up for Sinead O'Connor and proclaim how right she was on SNL in 1992, or how demoralizing it was to watch her get booed off Dylan's stage a few weeks later. Like how many years will it take for people to start using the dreaded Vietnam term "quagmire" for Afghanistan and Iraq wars?

Think the Hague will invite her to testify?

ASTRID KIRCHHERR'S LOST 1963 BEATLES PHOTOS

Mon, 19 Sep 2011 11:36:38 -0500

Kirchherr, who is 73, gave up photography in the late 1960s, frustrated by the unending requests for her Beatles images. Yet she remains an indelible presence in the mythology of pop. It can be a heavy legacy. "I had a great time sharing my memories, but I'm getting a bit tired of performing," Kirchherr said. So on Sept. 24 and 25, the New York auction house Guernsey's will lessen the burden by offering for sale Kirchherr's entire Beatles-related photographic archive, about 600 lots in all, including her original negatives (along with the rights to their use) and rarely seen images like the ones from Tenerife. (Kirchherr says she believes the image printed on this page might have been taken by Harrison with her camera.) "For me," Kirchherr said, "they are still my dear friends, not the Beatles."

Meanwhile, Lennon and Epstein flew to Spain.

I Me Mine: Personal Pronouns of the Beatles

Things We Said Today: A Linguistic Analysis of the Beatles

DETEROIRATA XI:3

Fri, 09 Sep 2011 09:13:06 -0500

BUT SCOUSERS DON'T READ THE SUN: Lennon's immigration form, c. 1980

FANTASY HITS: Eddie Floyd's "Big Bird," London, 2011

CHAIN OF FOOLS: Origins of Hip-Hop

Alison Krauss, Union Station, Rock Star Haircuts

Thu, 04 Aug 2011 10:33:56 -0500

Image via Wikipedia

Overflow Chautauqua Festival crowd last Friday night for these bluegrass giants, and they reverse booted a set that made grandmothers snicker and grown men giggle. Krauss has developed into the least cloying sentimental singer imaginable, and she presides over her whipsmart men like a bemused den mother. They have all the chops you could want, more, harmonize with her in ways both dreamy and dark, and then they get down to impressing one another. Jerry Douglas has a pretty-boy haircut that doesn't quite fit his rock star gait, and while he's dobro's Hendrix he can be distracting, loaming around stage left like he still has much to prove. And perhaps Richard Thomson's "Dimming of the Day" treaded a trifle slow -- they thrive on their virtuosity with downtempos -- but they pretty much have you at hello. Secret weapon: "angry farmer" Dan Tyminski, who sounds just like George Clooney. For the encore, a brief acoustic set at a single mic, featuring "Down to the River," from O BROTHER WHERE ART THOU. Warm-up act Dawes displayed a fervent commitment to slow, steady uplift, and when the material catches up to their ensemble, they'll have an act.