I didn't think that check would ever get here, but it did and I spent a day proving it.
This morning, I spent too much on iTunes:
* "It's Tricky," Run-DMC
* "Fair Play," Van Morrison
* "Hello It's Me," Todd Rundgren
* "It Wouldn't Have Made Any Difference," Todd Rundgren
* "I Saw the Light," Todd Rundgren
* "It's Raining Men," The Weather Girls
* "Lady Marmalade," Patti LaBelle
* "Magic Man," Heart
* "Barracuda," Heart
* "Pictures of Lily," The Who
* "Longer Boats," Cat Stevens
* "Mother and Child Reunion
* "Streets of Bakersfield," Dwight Yoakam
About that Cat Stevens -- I figured it was time to call off my moratorium on listening to the man who wanted to kill Salman Rushdie. To me, the radical Muslim extremist known as Yusef Islam is another guy altogether. The Cat Stevens I know is a harmless figure who recalls my junior high past, back when he was the Kahlil Gibran of Top 40 and wrote some sweet and endearing love songs before he finally ran out of steam.
As if this wasn't enough, I bought CDs of T. Rex Electric Warrior and The Minutemen's Double Nickels on the Dime. No idea why I've gotten by so long with only one, count' em, one T. Rex disc, The Slider. I played that damn thing ceaselessly when it came out. I remember a girl my age told me at the time that Electric Warrior was good, too; it's taken 30 years to take her up on it.
And a couple of hours, I splurged yet again by downloading Television's Live at the Old Waldorf, which is really, really fine.
Television was one of the great punk bands, and one that always reminds me in a lot of ways of Velvet Underground: they're New York, urban, moody, dark, with poetic off-kilter lyrics that always worked against the music somewhat and created friction. Also, Tom Verlaine's guitar has that same kind of emotional, personal reach to it as Lou Reed or Sterling Morrison's did.
This particular disc -- drawn mostly from their two studio albums, Marquee Moon and Adventure -- is much more cleanly recorded than their rough and raw live set The Blow Up, and the small intimate setting shows what a great live band they were, because they mesh together as perfectly as they do on record.
3 comments:
Yusuf Islam did not ever want to kill Salman Rushdie and he is no radical Muslim extremist. He is just an older version of the beautiful young Cat.
Did you know he is singing his old songs as well as new ones again? He performed at Live Earth Germany (closed the show) and was greeted with wild enthusiasm by the audience. He even performed "Saturn" by Stevie Wonder.
He has a son who is now performing music. He goes by the name "Yoriyos". Check out his "my space" page. He has quite a few of his songs up. He has great song writing abilities and a lovely voice. You will see when you visit Yoriyos myspace page that this is not someone who was raised by a radical Muslim. Yoriyos is all about peace and love.
Like the Todd Rundgren stuff.The very first CD I bought was Something/Anything to replace the LP i had had since highschool.Always liked the Healing Album also.So many good songs scattered about his albums.I recall Whiskey once saying that he lived in the same bldg in Phil as Todd did back some time ago.It was when Todd was dating the playboy bunny.Whiskey said after he moved out he went to look around right after and the place was full of Porn Mags which Whiskey's girlfriend would not let him take .
The Playboy bunny being, I suspect, Bebe Buell, all-time rock star trophy groupie, who went from Todd Rundgren to Steve Tyler to Iggy Pop to David Bowie to Mick Jagger to Jimmy Page to Elvis Costello to Stiv Bators, although I'm not real sure of the chronology. No question, Something/Anything? remains a great disc.
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