SONG TO BOBBY

Cat Power--Chan Marshall. Cette chanson est extraite de son dernier album Jukebox. Seul morceau original de l'album, "Song to Bobby", raconte l'histoire vraie de sa rencontre avec son idole de toujours, oserais-je dire l'homme de sa vie, Bob Dylan : "Giving you my heart was my plan".


And after Chan Marshall's "Song to Bobby," here's a rare clip of the man himself playing with some old friends. Back in 1966, an unwitting Playboy reporter asked Dylan what made him choose the rock and roll life.

Carelessness. I lost my one true love. I started drinking. The first thing I know, I'm in a card game. Then I'm in a crap game. I wake up in a pool hall. Then this big Mexican lady drags me off the table, takes me to Philadelphia. She leaves me alone in her house, and it burns down. I wind up in Phoenix. I get a job as a Chinaman. I start working in a dime store, and move in with a 13-year-old girl. Then this big Mexican lady from Philadelphia comes in and burns the house down. I go down to Dallas. I get a job as a "before" in a Charles Atlas "before and after" ad. I move in with a delivery boy who can cook fantastic chili and hot dogs. Then this 13-year-old girl from Phoenix comes and burns the house down. The delivery boy - he ain't so mild: He gives her the knife, and the next thing I know I'm in Omaha. It's so cold there, by this time I'm robbing my own bicycles and frying my own fish. I stumble onto some luck and get a job as a carburetor out at the hot-rod races every Thursday night. I move in with a high school teacher who also does a little plumbing on the side, who ain't much to look at, but who's built a special kind of refrigerator that can turn newspaper into lettuce. Everything's going good until that delivery boy shows up and tries to knife me. Needless to say, he burned the house down, and I hit the road. The first guy that picked me up asked me if I wanted to be a star. What could I say?

KINGSTON TRIO FOUNDER REYNOLDS DIES

Nick Reynolds, a founding member of the Kingston Trio, died Wednesday in San Diego, California. His smooth tenor voice helped the trio popularize folk music back in the 1950s and 60s. The Kingston Trio had huge hits with traditional ballads like "Tom Dooley," as well as comical tunes like "MTA" shown in the clip above, in which Reynolds sings lead.


“Nobody could nail a harmony part like Nick,” said Bob Shane, another founding member of the group. “He could hit it immediately, exactly where it needed to be, absolutely note perfect, all on the natch.”

The trio was wildly popular, but folk purists considered them commercial, and put them down for avoiding the political music of other folkies such as The Weavers, who were tarred as un-American traitors during the McCarthy Era witch hunts of the 1950s. (Students of history, take note: the right-wing Republican cultural wars are nothing new)


Later, as if in response to the folk purists, the Kingston Trio produced a wonderful album of political folk called "Time to Think," which was a favorite around our house when we were growing up. There has always been a-- dare I say it?--"liberal" tradition in America, and these songs reflected the struggles of the common man, the working family, the downtrodden, the screwed-over, the people working in fields and mines who wouldn't have any rights at all if they didn't organize and stand up for themselves.

Don't believe these hardshell Republicans who want to revise history and claim the flag as theirs alone; the American eagle has always had a left wing, too. The only difference is, in the past people knew the difference between miners and mineowners, and they voted accordingly. They weren't so easily bamboozled by "folksy" phonies like Palin who act like the average Joe but shill for the corporate status quo. Joe six-pack? Closer to Joe McCarthy, if you ask me.

Republican Senator Joseph McCarthy, who played on people's fears and appealed to their patriotism while leading the witch hunts in the 1950s

TWO OLD ROVERS

Van and Bob removed by request

The three day weekend is here, and in Seattle that means the Bumbershoot Music & Arts Festival. To celebrate, here is a clip of a couple old rovers strumming guitars on a hillside in Greece. Just a loose jam between friends. These talented troubadours were probably sipping Ouzo and enjoying the classical view before slipping into the mystic. We're lucky to join them for an old favorite.

Here, a video exclusive, two masters at play, Van Morrison and Bob Dylan.

GOGOL BORDELLO

Gogol Bordello is a fiery stew of gypsy music, punk rock, bawdy cabaret, Slavic dirges, and three-penny Brechtian opera for the common man. Rough and tumble and surreal, these artful dodgers are debauched yet somehow innocent as ragamuffin pickpockets. Take their leader, Eugene Hütz. A mystical outsider, a far-flung scatterling from the post-Soviet diaspora, Hütz is originally from the Ukraine and has lived as a refugee in Poland, Hungary, Austria and Italy. He is a patchwork effigy of all these places, a crazy quilt flag of many flags, and he leads the band with the ragged determination of a survivor. Gogol Bordello would be great for a party or a revolution, but you probably wouldn't want them moving in upstairs.

Eugene Hütz of Gogol Bordello

HAPPY SAINT PATRICK'S DAY!

Here are the Clancy Brothers and Tommy Makem singing "The Wild Rover." It doesn't get more Irish than this. Dedicated to old friend Shane Riley. 'Beannachtam na Feile Padraig! Happy St. Patrick's Day!



A great Guinness advert.