In what may be our shortest Last Man Standing contest ever, I present the following: Songs that reference real-life newspapers OTHER THAN The New York Times.
I’ve got “Letter to the New York Post” by Public Enemy, and that’s it. Oh, I thought of one more, but that’s for you to list.
Of course, I imagine days of discussion over whether it’s “I read the news today oh boy” or “I read the News today oh boy.”
As always, for those of you playing along from home, please limit yourself to one entry per post.
I saw Tom Waits on Letterman last night. I know he doesn’t play live that often. Beside that concert film he did coming out of the Frank’s Wild Years period, I don’t recall seeing him play live on a screen since his early hobo piano balladeer days. He was pretty good last night, but I much preferred his sit down on Dave’s couch. I’ll take Waits the raconteur or actor any day over Waits the musician.
You can have your early Beatles concerts. I love the Beatles above all other bands. I know they made girls wet their pants and were probably the first band best known for not playing live, but I think their brief performance on the rooftop in Let It Be so far surpasses any live clips I’ve seen from their early days that the band is only the second-greatest live band best known for not playing live.
Give me XTC from their live days over any other audience-fearing band I can think of. It’s the weekend. I know Andy usually looks like a smacked ass. I know E. Pluribus Gergely‘s “Man or Machine” criticisms of the band. I’m down with their music and the band’s overall Man or Machine conflicts. Their music has a high degree of difficulty without being prog. They can play. Original drummer Terry Chambers IS a machine, and I mean that as a compliment.
Pop the following full XTC concert up on your Google or Apple TV and watch along with me.
(Am I missing a better live artist best known for not playing live?)
Here’s an old topic I would have thought, when it was first posted, would have stoked the fires of the Hall’s collective fashion sense. But it did not. Perhaps we were distracted by John Lennon’s birthday. Or John Entwistle’s. Or Jackson Browne’s. Or Chickenfrank’s. Today is Distraction-Free Friday. Let’s give it another try, shall we? (And whatever happened to Townsman eh?)
This post initially appeared 10/9/08.
Here’s a question that’s probably too encompassing and open to discussion to fit in a poll:
Which uniform/costume of a non-rock group has been most successfully co-opted by a band as their Look?
Cowboys (The Band/The Charlatans)
18th Century fops (The Upper Crust)
Pirates! (Adam and the Ants)
Soldiers/Paramilitary guys (the Clash, circa Combat Rock)
Other (please specify)
Looks that don’t count:
Angus Young- the Look was not incorporated by the entire band
The inclusion of the original web source of this Philly.com article that recently appeared in the print edition of The Philadelphia Inquirer does not do this piece justice. Imagine, if you will, coming home from a long day at the office, being the Elvis Costello fanatic that I am, and seeing Elvis’ face peeking out above the Entertainment section that was loosely buried in the middle of the pile of the day’s newspaper.
“Hmm,” I said to my wife, as she put the finishing touches on dinner, “this looks cool.”
“Yeah, I meant to show you that,” she said, somehow knowing which article I was turning to as she stirred the zucchini and tomatoes from her garden in the saucepan.
The title of the piece was something like, Everyday I Write the Book: Elvis Costello’s Memoirs Are Among the Best by Any Rock Star. There was nothing specifically in the headline about this piece being picked up from Slate. That detail was only listed after the author’s byline, which I did not notice until I had read two thirds through the article and was, regrettably, fairly annoyed.
But good luck finding them. After the Rhino reissue series, Universal Music bought the rights to Costello’s first decade of recordings and reissued them yet again, essay-free, under their Hip-O Select label. Rhino has since stopped releasing even the other ’80s and ’90s records that included Costello’s writings; if you want to own them now, you’ll have to find used copies or pay anywhere from $30 to $80 for new ones on Amazon.
I read the first column of the piece, which ran through the “Books by Eric Clapton, Gil Scott-Heron, Jay-Z and Bob Mould …” paragraph that appears online.
“This thing’s taking a while to develop,” I mumbled across the kitchen as I waited for the piece’s surely buried lead to emerge.
Halfway through the second column I asked, “What is the purpose of this article? What’s the newsworthiness? What’s the commercial angle?”
“I thought it was pretty good,” my wife said, still not realizing the antisocial zone I was entering. “You can buy it now on Amazon.”
“No,” I said as nicely as possible, knowing exactly what antisocial zone I had entered, “the article says you can buy the out-of-print reissues with the liner notes on Amazon.”
I had entered the Rock Nerd Zone, that place where not even sane lovers of music like my wife want to enter.
To my horror this week, I discovered I taught my 5-year-old son a Bread song. Lately, when I release him from his car seat, I sing the lyrics to “Mother Freedom”: Freedom! Keep walkin’ etc. I honestly did not know it was a Bread song! He wanted to hear the whole thing, so we YouTubed it and …there we were.
Checking the YouTube comments on this song are kind of funny:
Bread could rock when they wanted to.
Really — in between “If,” “Diary,” and “Lost Without Your Love” they could really kill it I’m sure.
One of my guilty pleasures, ABC, put out what at the time was considered a rock album called Beauty Stab that stalled them out for about 5 years in the ’80s.
Power of Persuasion
So do you have any favorite Soft Rocker Rock Songs?
When it was this one…
