Charlie Hunter — Just Closer Walk With Thee
Check out Charlie’s playing and his beautiful 8 string guitar.
Jerry Garcia — Happy 66th Birthday
As stated before, we are celebrating the life of Mr. Jerome John Garcia this week. Ole ‘Jer would’ve been 66 on Friday. Here’s The Grateful Dead playing “Ripple” acoustically from 1980.
String Cheese Incident — Black Or White
Performed at Austin City Limits.
Mick Jagger — Officially a senior citizen
Mick Jagger turned 65 this weekend (July 26) and under British law, that means he’s now considered a senior citizen! The two-time Grammy winner is now entitled to a free bus pass, discounted movie tickets and £87 a week from the state.
But he shows no signs of fading away any time soon. Here is he singing that classic, Not Fade Away, in 1964.
And for something a little more recent…
David Harris & Hugh McCrystal — Terrapin Station
Enjoy more of David and Hugh’s videos here: Myspace and Youtube.
Widespread Panic — Halloween in New Orleans
From Jambands.com:
After wrapping up its summer tour in North Carolina Saturday, Widespread Panic has finalized its fall tour. The group will kick things off at Austin, TX’s The Backyard from October 10-11, before hitting markets throughout the South and Midwest through its three-night stand at Milwaukee, WI’s Riverside Theater from November 7-9. Along the way, the group will celebrate Halloween with a two-night run at New Orleans’ UNO Lakefront Arena from October 31-November 1. These shows mark the group’s return to New Orleans for Halloween after a six-year absence. Widespread Panic performed in the Big Easy on or around Halloween each fall from 1997-2002.
Other notable stops on Widespread Panic’s tour include appearances at Atlanta’s Lakewood Amphitheatre (10/17-18), Charleston, SC’s North Charleston Coliseum (10/24-25) and Miami, FL’s The Fillmore Miami Beach at Jackie Gleason Theater (10/29-30). The group will also appear at San Francisco’s Outside Lands Music Festival on August 24 and headline Snowmass, CO’s Jazz Aspen Snowmass Labor Day Festival from August 28-29.
Frank Sinatra — Healing Powers?
We all know that Sinatra possessed seductive powers in the 40′s and 50′s, but is that all he is limited to? The Daily Express claims otherwise:
THE silky smooth voice of the legendary Frank Sinatra is recognised the world over.
Listening to the iconic crooner’s voice has helped the ill pups to relax and stay calm while being treated at the Hunstanton Sea Life Sanctuary.
But now the soulful sound that changed the face of American pop forever has been revealed as having the ability to do more than set a romantic mood – it also has secret healing powers.
Animal care workers at a sea life sanctuary in Norfolk have discovered that playing Frank Sinatra’s tunes to sick seal pups has helped them get better.
ALO — Lady Loop
Very, very catchy tune from ALO.
Jerry Garcia — Birthday Week
Continuing our celebration of Jerry’s life, Musical Stew Daily is posting the following clip, Tangled Up In Blue, performed by the Jerry Garcia Band, taken from Shoreline, September 1, 1990.
Goodbye, cassette tape
I’m sure some day our (future) children will laugh at us because we still have cassette tapes (heck, we still have records and eight-tracks, as we love music in all formats). But this past week’s funeral marked a sad day in music history – the passing of the cassette tape. NY Times wrote about the event and the lifetime of the tape in this article.
Here are a few facts of interest (from the article):
- Sales of portable tape players, which peaked at 18 million in 1994, sank to 480,000 in 2007, according to the Consumer Electronics Association. The group predicts that sales will taper to 86,000 in 2012.
- The tapes started to really take off in 1979, the year that a radical new cassette player — the Sony Walkman – was introduced.
- Last year, only 400,000 music tapes were sold, representing one-tenth of 1 percent of all physical and digital music sales, according to the Recording Industry Association of America. In 1997, the figure was 173 million, and that was when cassettes were already getting a drubbing by CDs. (The iPod wasn’t introduced until 2001.)
- Cassette players are still for sale; Sony alone offers 23 tape players, from the Walkman to boomboxes.
- Only 4 percent of vehicles sold in the United States during the 2007 model year had factory-installed cassette players, according to Ward’s Automotive Yearbook. As recently as the 2005 model year, 23 percent of vehicles had them.
- Given that the median age of a car in the United States is nine years old, said Alan K. Binder, the editor of Ward’s yearbook, it is most likely that the majority of the 200 million cars and light trucks on America’s roads have cassette players.
- Cassettes accounted for 7 percent of all sales in the $923 million audio-book industry in 2006.
- Blackstone Audio, which produces cassette versions of its roughly 340 annual book titles, said they would only produce cassettes through 2009, roughly.
Zeppelin Reunion — Your Time Is (Not) Gonna Come?
Apparently all is not well between Plant and Page. Gigwise.com reports: A reported rift between Robert Plant and Jimmy Page is thought to be the reason why Led Zeppelin have failed to announce further reunion shows.
It’s claimed that Plant was angered when his guitarist failed to acknowledge him when he collected the band’s Best Live Act honour at the Mojo Awards last month.
Page delivered a lengthy speech at the ceremony but didn’t once refer to Plant, who was touring with singer Alison Krauss at the time.
“Robert was really disappointed that he didn’t merit a mention,” a source told the Sun newspaper.
“The award was for the band’s performance, so he thought he should have at least been thanked.”
Led Zeppelin’s reunion show in London last December was one of the most widely anticipated concerts in history.
As previously reported, Plant and Krauss were among the 12 acts who have been nominated for this year’s Mercury Music Prize.
They will join the likes of Radiohead and Last Shadow Puppets when the award is handed out in September.
Rick Rubin — More albums in the works
We mentioned recently that Rick Rubin is working with CS&N on a new album of covers. But that’s not all he’s up to.
He’s helping ZZ Top to “reinvent themselves.”
He’s working on a rap “tune” with Clipse. (Bloggers’ confession: We’ve never heard of this group.)
He just signed Avett Brothers.
He just finished Jakob Dylan’s latest album.
Geez. And I thought we were working a lot managing this blog on top of our demanding full-time jobs.
Jerry Garcia — Birthday Week
Jerry would have turned 66 on Friday, so we are going to celebrate his birthday by posting archival videos of him all week. Enjoy!
A particularly spirited version of US Blues from April 12, 1978.
Funny Monday — Norm MacDonald
We figure, who couldn’t use a little laughter on a Monday morning, so we’ve posted the following clips. They are all from Norm MacDonald’s appearance on the Conan O’Brien show in 1998.
