One of My Favorite Albums - The Trinity Session by The Cowboy Junkies

The Trinity Session was released in 1988, it was then and is now unlike anything I have ever heard. It was recorded into a single microphone in a church in Toronto.Due to the recording technique used, listening to the album is like being in the room during the recording session. It's about as real as it can get, you can hear every squeak of the guitar strings, every breath of singer Margo Timmins. At the same time, the sound of the recording is otherworldly. The best word I can think of to describe it is "magical."
The most well known song on the album is the ethereal cover of The Velvet Underground's Sweet Jane which was later used in the film Natural Born Killers.

The traditional Working On A Building, and the American classics, I'm So Lonesome I Could Cry and Walkin' After Midnight as well as the medley Blue Moon Revisited (Song for Elvis) are all highlights.  Junkies original, Misguided Angel is as good as anything on Springsteen's Nebraska, it's like a beautiful and sad black and white film.   Really, the whole album could be described that way.

There is actually a new version of the album recorded to coincide with the album's 20th anniversary. It has some guest stars like Ryan Adams, Natalie Merchant and the late Vic Chestnutt but I love the original album so much, I'm kind of hesitant to check out the new version, it just can't be an improvement.

New R.E.M. Video - Mine Smell Like Honey

R.E.M.'s new album, Collapse Into Now comes out March 8th but starting a month or two ago they started leaking songs from the album onto the internet. By my count, they've put out five songs ahead of the album's release, that is almost half of the album. Until today, I haven't listened to any of them. My thought process was that if I start listening to all the songs now, by the time the album comes out I will be tired of them or at least that the release won't be a big deal. I guess it doesn't matter. I don't want to go off about how "In my day, bands released one, maybe two 'singles' before the album came out and they played them on 'the radio' and 'MTV.'" All of those things seem so irrelevant these days. Is a single even a thing anymore? I'm not complaining, even though it might sound like I am, I like that any music I want is at my fingertips pretty much whenever I want it. I like that bands can just release something on the internet cause they feel like it. I'm still gonna wait for Collapse Into Now to come out so I can listen to it as a whole. I'm ok with how the internet has changed the music business but I am still an album guy. That being said, I am also a member of the MTV generation (they used to play music videos on MTV) so just now I watched the new R.E.M. video, Mine Smell Like Honey.

Here's the other R.E.M. honey song:

Be Your Own Man - John Lydon is 55

John Lydon was instrumental in the development of both punk rock and post punk music. He didn't invent punk but as the vocalist of the Sex Pistols was/is the most famous punk rocker. After the Pistols disintegrated on stage in San Francisco in 1978 and bassist Sid Vicious died of a heroin overdose a year later, Lydon formed Public Image Ltd., one of the most important and influential post-punk bands. Lydon has always been outspoken (an understatement if there ever was one) and because of this and the highly original, interesting music he creates, he is one of my favorite people in the world, at least among musicians/philosophers.
Here's part of a recent interview:

The butter commercial referred to in the previous interview:

Two parts of the rather contentious interview with Tom Snyder:


Same interviewer 17 years later, Lydon has mellowed, at least a bit:


This really humanizes him:

The first television performance by the Pistols:

PiL on American Bandstand. Awesome.

And, the video for PiL's Rise:

Happy Birthday Mr. Lydon.

The Old Grey Whistle Test

The Old Grey Whistle Test was a TV program that ran on the BBC for 17 years starting in 1971.  It featured live performances, both in studio and in concert from rock and pop music acts of the day.  While shows like Top of the Pops were centered around bands and artists that were currently on the pop charts, OGWT  was geared toward performers with a more artistic bent.  Since I grew up in the States, I didn't watch this show growing up but I wish it had been available here.  The closest thing available here was Sunday Night with saxophonist David Sanborn and Squeeze's Jools Holland.  Holland currently hosts Later...With Jools Holland on the BBC which carries on the tradition of live musical performances on TV that was perfected by OGWT.  Recently, I Netflixed the three disc DVD set of OGWT.  Some of these performances appear on the DVDs but not all of them. I tried to narrow it down to ten performances but I couldn't.  If you are a fan of music from the seventies and eighties you will enjoy these.
First up are a couple by David Bowie, two of my favorite songs by him in fact:


Some classic Tom Waits:

Some proto-punk from The New York Dolls:

A short interview and two performances by The Cure:

Two from The Ramones:

An in concert performance by The Smiths followed by a studio performance with them accompanying Sandie Shaw:

Jools Holland introduces a clip from Squeeze:

Billy Bragg:

From just plain sublime to ridiculous AND sublime Edgar Winter Group:

Paul Weller interview, Style Council performance:

John Prine:

And The Pogues:

That's is just a small fraction of the performances available on You Tube but you can see what a wide variety of bands and artists appeared on the show. It's a treasure trove for music fans.

Why Man Creates -The Edifice

I loved this when I was a kid. I know, kind of nerdy. Whatever, it won an Oscar!