MarcO

you know, when you have NO BAD SONGS, every setlist is a winner!

Looking forward to tonight. Nels Cline makes me feel like a 13 year old girl at a Beatles concert, circa Summer '64.

Stax 50th Anniversary Celebration

well that looks just ridiculous.

Me, I'm groovin' on this on a Saturday afternoon:

Rolling Stones, Sticky Fingers

#249. Songs that mention movie stars

1. Drive-By Truckers - Steve McQueen (Steve McQueen)

2. Elton John - Candle In The Wind (Marilyn Monroe)

3. Rolling Stones - Star fuÇker (Ali Mcgraw, Steve McQueen)

4. Madness - Michael Cain (Michael Cain)

5. Wilco and Billy Bragg (lyrics by Woody Guthrie) - Ingrid Bergman (Ingrid Bergman)

6. America - Right Before Your Eyes (Rudolph Valentino, Greta Garbo)

7. Pony Up! - Matthew Modine (Matthew Modine)

8. David Essex - Rock On (James Dean)

9. Tom Petty - Zombie Zoo (Boris Karloff)

10. Luke Doucet - Judy Garland (Judy Garland)

11. Neil Young - Pocahontas (Marlon Brando)

12.

#247 "Songs that mention other famous musician(s)"

1. Niel Young- Downtown (Jimmy Page/Led Zeppelin mentioned)

2. Lynyrd Skynyrd - Sweet Home Alabama (Neil Young mentioned)

3. Drive-By Truckers - Let There Be Rock (Johnny Van Zant, Ozzy Osbourne, Randy Rhoads & Bon Scott all mentioned)

4. Frank Zappa - Teen-age Wind (mentions Jerry Garcia: I could tighten my headband for an extra rush / During Jerry's guitar solo)

5. Drive-By Truckers - Ronnie & Neil (Ronnie Van Zant, Neil Young, Wilson Pickett, Aretha Franklin)

6. Van Morrison - Cleaning Windows (Leadbelly, Blind Lemon, Sonny Terry, Brownie McGhee, Muddy Waters)

7. Deep Purple - Smoke On The Water (Frank Zappa & the Mothers)

8. Steely Dan - Hey 19 (Aretha Franklin)

9.

10.

11.

12.

awesome, way to go Nellie!

awesome.

Grateful Dead

Cape Cod Coliseum, South Yarmouth, MA (10/27/79)

Set 2

Dancin' in the Streets

Franklin's Tower

He's Gone

Caution Jam

The Other One

drums

Not Fade Away

Black Peter

Around and Around

One More Saturday Night

Grateful Dead

Sam Boyd Silver Bowl, Las Vegas, NV (4/27/91)

Comments: Carlos Santana and his band opened

Touch of Grey

Walkin' Blues

Friend of the Devil

Mexicali Blues

Maggie's Farm

Loose Lucy

Cassidy

Might as Well

Sugar Magnolia

Scarlet Begonias

Fire on the Mountain

Playin' in the Band

Uncle John's Band

drums

space

I Need a Miracle

Black Peter

One More Saturday Night

The Weight

I love the White Stripes.

I am really sorry to hear of your friends' loss, and yours as well.

I wish Kevin and Lila all the strength they can muster to help them cope. Friends will help immeasurably. peace.

Grateful Dead

The Spectrum, Philadelphia, PA (4/6/82)

Cold Rain and Snow

Promised Land

Candyman

C.C. Rider

Brown Eyed Women

Mama Tried

Mexicali Blues

Big Railroad Blues

Looks Like Rain

Jack-a-Roe

It's All Over Now

Might As Well

Shakedown Street

Lost Sailor

Saint of Circumstance

Terrapin Station

drums

Truckin'

The Other One

Morning Dew

Sugar Magnolia

Baby Blue

oh man, have a great time! MMW is a funny band for me - I do listen to them but not very often. But boy have they ever put on a stellar performance in front of my very eyes and ears before! So good. And Scofield I've seen several times - dude is insane. This can't fail.

Having said that, don't necessarily expect groove-jazz-jam all night; these guys can get up to some high-brow, avant-garde good shit!

White Stripes, Elephant

Toronto Star: Iqaluit abuzz over White Stripes

June 27, 2007

Ben Rayner

Pop Music Critic

IQALUIT, NUNAVUT–If there are no roads leading to your hometown, you're generally not going to see its name popping up on many concert-tour itineraries.

There is, thus, a healthy buzz around this town about the arrival today of American rock 'n' rollers the White Stripes in Nunavut's capital city, a windswept community of 7,200 located on the southeastern flank of Baffin Island.

The scant 600 tickets that went up for sale at $45 apiece last month for the Detroit-born duo's concert at Iqaluit's Arctic Winter Games Arena tonight were snapped up within hours, and even a visitor with zero knowledge of the Inuktitut language can't help noticing how often the words "White Stripes" creep into overheard conversations at neighbouring tables in local bars and restaurants.

True, some residents speak privately about concerns among some quarters of Iqaluit's Inuit population that this is another incident where white people drop in for a quick, exploitative photo op and then take off for good.

But generally, the folks in this friendly burg appreciate the effort the White Stripes are putting into playing above the treeline. And they're definitely putting in effort.

"I think we took for granted everything we do at home," said Daniel Glick, the young Montreal concert promoter overseeing tonight's Iqaluit gig on behalf of Gillette Entertainment Group.

"We didn't realize the intricacies involved."

Those intricacies included flying an entire road crew in from Vancouver over the weekend to begin assembling a stage and erecting a PA system in the venue, a former hockey rink that has fallen into disuse since the southern end of its floor sank a metre or so into the ground a few years ago.

More than 3,000 kilograms of sound and lighting gear separate from the White Stripes' usual touring arsenal also had to be flown into Iqaluit from Vancouver for tonight's show.

The Stripes have chartered a plane to flit between their recent dates in Burnaby, Whitehorse and Yellowknife to Iqaluit and then back to Calgary later this week.

The Detroit-based alt-rock duo – Meg and Jack White – are hot, with their new album Icky Thump hitting No. 1 on iTunes this week.

They embarked on an 18-concert cross-Canada tour last weekend in British Columbia that will take them to every province and territory. Jack White admits it doesn't make sense and won't make much money, but says it's a dream trip rooted in childhood fantasies about the Great White North.

They will play in large and small communities across the country before wrapping up with a 10th anniversary concert in Glace Bay, N.S., July 14, where he has family roots, with distant relative Ashley MacIsaac as guest fiddler, and a show in St. John's July 16. Their Toronto stop is July 5 at Molson Amphitheatre.

Before they could even land on the ground in Iqaluit, myriad local laws and liability demands had to be negotiated to make sure the concert could go ahead. For several weeks, it's been the job of Iqaluit's economic development officer, Mike Bozzer, to help facilitate the band's arrival in this unlikely spot.

Gillette Entertainment contacted him a couple of months ago, he says, with the news that a "major" touring act wanted to play here. A name was not forthcoming, but he diligently scoped out a venue and assured the promoter that Iqaluit – which has doubled in size since 1991, having grown in leaps and bounds since it was officially declared Nunavut's capital in 1999 – could handle such an event.

"It kind of got me a bit giddy when they said it was the White Stripes," Bozzer conceded yesterday, while the sounds of frantic sawing and hammering filled the arena.

"This does a lot of good that you can't really count by dollars. It's a lot of free publicity, for one thing. But if we put on a good show and the artists enjoy themselves, maybe this could be a thing that happens every year with different bands. It puts us on the map.

"People might think this is the cold Arctic, but it has all the amenities of any other city."

Media exposure for Iqaluit and Nunavut in southern Canada is one thing, observed Nunavut Tourism's Jillian Dickens, but the Stripes' arrival on the fringes of the Arctic Circle means a lot to a region that doesn't enjoy nearly as many benefits as the rest of the country.

"I think that one of the most important things about the White Stripes coming here, or a big show coming to a community like this, is it brings the community together a little bit more," she said.

"What's important about this is not bringing people here to see the White Stripes or something like this, it's about giving the North something. But the spinoff of that, of course, is great exposure for the territory and for the city in big publications in the south.

"The easiest and most cost-effective and just effective way of marketing is word-of-mouth. The only way to do word-of-mouth is to give people words to come out of their mouths. And the only way to do that is to bring them up here."

Iqaluit is already a quiet stop-off point for more celebrities than one might imagine, having played host in recent weeks to globetrotting billionnaire Richard Branson and singer Jewel, who were in town to learn about environmental issues.

Jake Gyllenhaal and Salma Hayek were in town last year for similar reasons, while Bozzer jokes that even Madonna has passed through Iqaluit's airstrip – one of the longest in Canada – because it's such a common stopover for intercontinental air travel.

If the White Stripes show can be pulled off without a hitch, there are quiet hopes in the community that it might attract a few more.

Such out-of-the-way locales as St. John's and Dawson City, for instance, have started attracting a trickle of touring bands in recent years, based mainly on the fact the acts that have bothered to play there had such good experiences.

"If we only had more hotel rooms in town, it could be the new Las Vegas north," quips deputy mayor Allen Hayward.

I see The White Stripes as an art project first and a prototypical rock band second. Everything about them, their presentation, their albums, their indulgences (like playing Iqaluit tonight!), the ambiguity in their relationship to each other, just kind of set them apart from, say, Wilco. And believe me, I LOVE Wilco!

But it's not like they would be *better* if they had a better drummer. They would be less cool if they didn't have the theatricality to pull of what is - in the end - an art-rock show at least as much as a blues revue.

And if all you take from it is an appreciation for the now traditional down-and-dirty Southern blues ooze that is their musical aim, than that's just fine too.

oh my god!

I love the White Stripes.

you're a good man Aaron - have a great day buddy!

then why'd yer hand go up so quickly?

cow, elephant, booche, whatever the scenario - that job has GOTTA suck!

what about the job where the zoo worker/care giver has to insert his or her arm into a elephant's giant anus and massage it's prostate, for some necessary yet horrifying reason that escapes me. One quick move from the elephant and the person's arm is likely to be broken into bits.

Ryan really knows how to relax.

June 17, 2007 - New York Times

Ryan Adams Didn’t Die. Now the Work Begins.

By ANTHONY DeCURTIS

Correction Appended

ONE afternoon, as Ryan Adams was recording his new album, “Easy Tiger†(Lost Highway), at Electric Lady Studios in Greenwich Village, the singer-songwriter Steve Earle dropped by to visit. Jimi Hendrix had built Electric Lady in the late 1960s, and Mr. Earle pointed out that “there are some good ghosts here.â€

“Yeah,†Mr. Adams blithely responded. “There are the ghosts of about 45 speedballs from when I was recording here a year or two ago,†referring to a mixture of heroin and cocaine.

At once self-deprecating and self-mythologizing, the remark is characteristic of Mr. Adams, who is in the process of shoring up a career — and a life — that he had done his best to blow up. “There was intense loneliness, end-of-the-world stuff going on in my mind, bottomless depression,†he said, describing an extended period of substance abuse that ended a little over a year ago. “Without exaggerating, it is a miracle I did not die.

“I snorted heroin a lot — with coke. I did speedballs every day for years. And took pills. And then drank. And I don’t mean a little bit. I always outdid everybody.â€

Among Mr. Adams’s friends, colleagues and fans the hope is that “Easy Tiger,†a title that speaks wryly for itself, will complete his restoration. It is focused — read: not insanely self-indulgent — in a way that recalls albums of his like “Heartbreaker†and “Gold,†high points in a catalog that defines the term checkered. In one among many orchestrated signs of Mr. Adams’s stature, Stephen King wrote the record company bio that will accompany the album’s release on June 26. Mr. King calls it “maybe the best Ryan Adams CD ever.â€

The plan is for it to be his biggest seller as well. Mr. Adams is touring to promote it, and “Two,†which features a harmony vocal by Sheryl Crow, has been released as a single. Starbucks will carry “Easy Tiger,†and pre-order campaigns have been set up with iTunes, Amazon and other outlets. For an artist whose notoriety has far exceeded his sales to date, it’s a full-on marketing push.

Mr. Adams has also reunited with his former manager, John Silva, a veteran who has worked with the independent-minded likes of Nirvana, Sonic Youth and the Beastie Boys. â€I just crawled back and said, ‘Look, I made a mistake, many mistakes — I don’t know what to do,’ †Mr. Adams said.

“I got good advice on what tunes seemed to be working, and how to pace myself,†he said about Mr. Silva’s help in putting together “Easy Tiger†from the dozens of songs he was considering. “He led me to view that process as a type of discipline — like going to the gym or something. Focus. Work on one thing. Make the one thing really good.â€

Meanwhile Mr. Adams’s contract with Lost Highway is coming to an end, and his erratic and willful ways, while enhancing his status as a cult figure, haven’t exactly made him an industry darling. Nor, for that matter, have his public denunciations of his label, which is generally known for being sympathetic to artists. In that context “Easy Tiger†is a virtual case study of Mr. Adams’s ability to make the sort of record that people once routinely expected of him: smart, accessible, fun, poignant and potentially commercial. It’s an advertisement for the once-unthinkable possibility that, at 32 and sober, Mr. Adams might finally have matured.

Luke Lewis, the chairman of the Nashville division of the Universal Music Group, of which Lost Highway is a part, seemed wistful as he pondered the departure of his old nemesis. “He’s like a kid to me,†Mr. Lewis said. “I’ve always loved him. We’ve had a couple of fights, and we’ve actually contrived a few fights, to be honest. It wasn’t lost on either of us that it’s not a bad thing for him to be the petulant child of a record label.â€

So will he try to convince Mr. Adams to stay with Lost Highway? “If you love him, set him free,†Mr. Lewis said with a laugh that suggested a former partner who recalled the bad times as well as the good. “Do I want to stop being friendly with him? Never. Is he a valuable asset to a label? Yes, no question. Did we make money? Yes, both of us. I have no sour grapes about it at all.â€

A native of Jacksonville, N.C., where he played in punk-rock bands as a teenager, Mr. Adams became an alt-country sensation with the group Whiskeytown in the mid-’90s. After going solo in 1999, he briefly flirted with “next big thing†status with the release of “Gold†in 2001 — on Sept. 11, to be exact. “Gold†coincidentally featured Mr. Adams posing in front of an American flag (albeit an upside-down one) as well as a rousing anthem to his adopted hometown, “New York, New York.†His irresistible optimism, energy and sheer talent provided a bracing tonic.

Then things began to get weird. He started making records at a blazing clip, at least by the rules of an industry that at the time preferred releases every two or three years. He put out at least an album a year — three in 2005 — and vilified Lost Highway for not releasing even more. Mr. Adams posted dozens of songs on his Web site, some ridiculous and some drawing comparisons to his best work. Whether he could tell the difference began to emerge as a question.

His official albums drew similarly polarized responses. “Heartbreaker†(2000), “Gold†(2001), “Cold Roses†(2005) and “Jacksonville City Nights†(2005) live up to his promise. His other four albums — “Demolition†(2002), “Rock N Roll†(2003), “Love Is Hell Pt. 1†(2003) and â€Pt. 2†(2004) and “29†(2005) — are mixed bags at best. “Gold,†his most commercially successful album, has sold fewer than 400,000 copies; “29,†his most recent, sold about 81,000.

More disturbing was Mr. Adams’s strange behavior. A heckler’s sarcastic request for the Canadian rocker Bryan Adams’s “Summer of ’69†at a New York show in 2002 incited an onstage meltdown. A negative concert review prompted Mr. Adams to leave a caustic message on a critic’s answering machine, which widely circulated on the Web. Mr. Adams’s shows took on a shambling quality that left many fans befuddled or angry. By the time he fell off a stage in Britain in 2004 and shattered his left wrist, both supporters and detractors began to worry about him. With good reason, as it turned out.

MR. ADAMS sat on a chair on the tar roof of Electric Lady, as traffic sounds blared from the street below. Wearing a red MTV T-shirt and torn jeans, he squinted in the sunshine as he struggled to recount his descent.

“My behavior was getting extreme,†he said, smoking an American Spirit. “I was running the risk of becoming one of those people who talks to himself all the time. I was about to walk over this line that there was no coming back from, and I could feel it. I was seeing ghosts and hearing stuff. Having horrible nightmares. I was creating as much distance from people as possible so that, in the event that something terrible happened, it wouldn’t hurt them.â€

Mr. Lewis of Lost Highway worried that he was going to die. “I think anybody who knew him well and cared for him went there,†he said.

Mr. Adams said that people were imploring him to clean up. “I got a call one day from two people who have looked out for me for a long time,†he said. “They said, ‘We think you need to go away.’ I said: ‘Look, I can do this myself. And if I don’t succeed, I’ll agree to that.’ â€

So he did not enter a rehab program; instead he did a modified cold-turkey cure with the help of his girlfriend, Jessica Joffe, a writer who has also modeled, most notably in a prominent Banana Republic campaign. “I could have done it alone, but it would have been harder,†Mr. Adams said. “I got some valium, which sounds like cheating, but it really wasn’t.â€

As the agony of withdrawal kicked in after a few days, he went out, got drunk and then called Ms. Joffe. She fetched him from the bar and brought him back to the apartment they share. “That was it,†Mr. Adams said. “That was the last time.†He now occasionally attends Alcoholics Anonymous meetings.

With more than a year’s sobriety under his belt, a new album and an open road ahead of him in terms of how he chooses to release his music, Mr. Adams nonetheless continues to dream of a world better able to accommodate his particular brand of unfiltered creativity. It’s evident that a conventional record contract will never satisfy him. It’s even possible that he could end up epitomizing the recording artist of the future: making music available online at will, performing theater-size shows for a devoted core of fans and leaving it up to his audience to decide which of his songs they care to own.

“It’s not, like, ‘He’s over-prolific because he’s wasted,’ †he explained. “No, man, you haven’t heard anything. You think that’s prolific? That’s just what trickled through. But that’s the whole thing. It’s a marketplace. I wish it was more like a museum of wack ideas.â€

Those wack ideas were prominently on display at Electric Lady as Mr. Adams grew distracted while working on “Easy Tiger.â€

“Obviously keeping up with him is a big part of the job,†said Jamie Candiloro, who produced the album. Mr. Adams was preparing to record his guitar part for “Locust Pocus,†a song he’d written minutes earlier for “Numb Chunks†(or maybe it’s “Gnome Chunks�), a fake-metal album he’d conceived a few minutes before that.

Mr. Adams, Mr. Candiloro and the drummer Brad Pemberton had been listening to the background vocal Sheryl Crow had recorded for the ballad “Two.†Mr. Adams had first been enthusiastic and obsessive during the playback (“God, she can sing. Take my vocal down, and bring hers upâ€), then restless, then bored. As he listened over and over, he drew a caricature of himself holding an acoustic guitar and singing lyrics that parody the song’s aching chorus. The caption read, “Blah, blah, blah, whine, whine, whine/It takes two when it used to take one.â€

It was midafternoon, at least two hours before rehearsals at another studio. By Mr. Adams’s standards, that’s easily enough time to get a couple of new songs written and recorded.

As Mr. Candiloro adjusted settings at the console, Mr. Adams stood at the microphone, played a blistering riff and screeched a placeholder vocal: “This is where the verse is gonna go/And it’s gonna be emo.†He came back into the control booth, wrote the song’s actual lyrics (“I am the wizard ... . The world is at your commandâ€), recorded the vocal and the song was done. On to the next one: “Cobra Kadabra.â€

A week after the conversation on the roof of Electric Lady, Mr. Adams vanished from a rehearsal minutes before a reporter was set to arrive for an interview. No one could locate him, and he never reappeared.

While par for the course a couple of years ago, this is precisely the sort of thing the new, improved Mr. Adams is supposed to have grown out of. A few days later at his apartment in a Greenwich Village brownstone, he is, if not apologetic, at least at pains to manufacture some sort of comprehensible excuse, an effort at which he pathetically fails. Yawning between manic bursts of words, he was clearly uncomfortable. “All these different lines of communication got messed up,†he said sheepishly.

When Ms. Joffe entered the room, he brightened. “I met someone who has become my closest friend,†he had said of her earlier. “She’s nothing like me — two different worlds. She’s a person rooted in reason. Imagine that. She’s very kind.†She said she had gotten sober a short time before Mr. Adams did. “It sounds so cheesy, but we have these miniature A.A. meetings with each other,†said Ms. Joffe, who agreed to discuss their relationship at his request.

In jeans and a black top that she fiddled with constantly, Ms. Joffe struggled in a perfectly enunciated British accent to find the terms in which to encapsulate their relationship. Mr. Adams, meanwhile, repeatedly left and re-entered the room, flattered and teased her and succeeded in derailing her train of thought.

“We went from being Sid and Nancy ...,†Ms. Joffe began at one point, alluding to one of punk’s most famous doomed couples.

“Not that cool,†Mr. Adams insisted.

“No, darling, not that cool,†Ms. Joffe agreed, laughing. “More like, a low-rent, mall version of Sid and Nancy. Or, like, romanticizing that sort of debauchery and excess. At least for me there was a weird aesthetic enjoyment of it. Then we flipped it over 180 degrees.â€

Mr. Adams said: “We were holding each other together. Or should I say you got me through it? It was sweet, even though it was messed up. But we had skills.â€

Ms. Joffe acknowledged, “Toward the end it was getting a little worrying.â€

“Everybody says that!†Mr. Adams declared in cheerful frustration, the prospect of his own demise having become, at least for the moment, merely a punch line.

Correction: June 24, 2007

An article last Sunday about the singer Ryan Adams misstated the sales figures for his most recent album, “29.†It sold 81,000 copies, not 31,000. The article also misstated the location of the concert at which a heckler’s request for a Bryan Adams song prompted Ryan Adams to have a meltdown onstage. It occurred in Nashville, not New York.

(link to online article)

I know he hasn't been on here too much lately but I also know he's been a busy bee lately.

Cheers to you Tim, thanks for being a great friend and good guy all these years. Safe travels on your trip to Europe!

Laurie took the great photo. Sara made a most beautiful bride!