Doom & Gloom From The Tomb: A Blog

Talking Heads 1979 Fear of Music tour up now!

shit, i see i have some catching up to do

hey willem, you're partly responsible for this eno kick I'm on currently ....

just chiming in w/a big T H A N K Y O U ! great blog.

yr welcome!

which eno kick? did you upload anything enoesque. i am reading geeta dayal's book on another green world right now, i didn't know about the anecdote about the origin of the title. it is kind of intriguing especially in view of the current state of planet earth.

i didn't read the thread properly, sorry. i don't think i have ever consciously listened to that paris concert.

it's good!

something a little different: some friends and I have started putting together a handful of "best of the 2000s" single artist mixes. Up so far: Dylan, Robyn Hitchcock, Elvis Costello, Yo La Tengo, David Byrne, Go-Betweens. Several more in the works! http://doomandgloomfromthetomb.tumblr.com/

hey tyler

your dylan post of the alt infidels inspired me to go out and pick that album up on used vinyl...

it's pretty good but DAAAAAMN...this version is clearly better in every respect...obv he left off what might be the two best songs on the album (though jokerman and i and i are amazing).... but yeah this one feels so much better sequenced.

glad you dig it, matt -- yeah, i really prefer it to the released version. but it is a great "only Dylan would do that" moment -- leaving off "Blind Willie McTell"! but i love infidels. such a weird sound, dire straits meets sly & robbie ... he should make another record with those guys.

yeah it's got a cool sound...and it's weird because it sounds EXACTLY like what you'd expect a reggae rhythm section would sound like with a real button-downed FM rock band around them...the bass line on jokerman is awesome

yeah, if you hear the 1984 tour recordings, the songs really suffer for not having that sly/robbie lope ... he just hired a pretty boring rhythm section for that tour ... if only he'd played with that band from the Letterman appearance!

Friend of mine put together an audio mix of Jonathan Richman/Modern Lovers tv appearances! Very very good! http://doomandgloomfromthetomb.tumblr.com/

been trying to keep up with everything i want from your blog, but just now listening to the alt. Infidels trax. "Sweetheart Like you" is such a frickin' beautiful song, i'm about to weep openly...

yeah, i love that song ... i kinda think of it as Dylan doing Knopfler and blowing him away.
more jonathan richman up now -- very early modern lovers demo/live recordings ...

i actually don't like blind willie mctell (the song) very much. strikes me as bombastic. doesn't have the virtues i most treasure in dylan. sort of his version of "elephant art"--a big, self-consciously important statement without irony or playfulness. i prefer his modest stuff like nashville skyline, new morning....

that j. richman comp is great, thanks tyler. you have a fantastic blog.

though blind willie is probably better than anything on infidels. but even if the alternative album is better than the released one, this strikes me as one of dylan's lowest periods.

hey when it comes to Dylan, I've learned to each his/her own ...

hey when it comes to Dylan, I've learned to each his/her own ...

i think Abraham Lincoln said that

iirc Lincoln was a big Street Legal fan ...

since it's been so long ... more Feelies! A live version of Crazy Rhythms w/ the original band pieced together from various 1979-80 shows ....

tyler, is it cool if I ask you to re-up (or just to send me privately) these Feelies boots you're posting? I don't have the time + disk space right now for them, but I will in 9 months or so.

yeah, just let me know when you want 'em! is that what you meant?

Yeah, that's all I mean. O/w I'd hoard them now but time+space are at a premium for the time being.

there is nothing more important for your hard drive space than hissy audience tapes of the feelies imo

haha well I already have a few from your blog from before! the Eno demos set and a live set from 79. I don't really know the band after the first album but I'll remedy that soon. And then it'll be boot time.

and good grief my brother tried to give me like 30 gigs of Dead bootlegs recently. I'll never have the time...

Thanks for more Feelies! I probably have several of the performances, but a good comp is always nice.

Yeah, several of the songs are from that 1979 show I posted a few months back -- the others are from 1980 shows at CBGB and the Whiskey A Go Go in LA ...

backing up a bit - thanks for the pre-vu thing! some pimple-faced dreck for sure, but also some gold... "why don't you smile now" is especially great. I've known the Delmonas cover for years, never knew it was a Reed song.

and can't wait to get home and hear the richman stuff - thanks a million!

yeah, "why don't you smile now" is a great tune - i've hoped that someday a VU version of that song will surface. Probably not, but who knows! The Pickwick saga is pretty interesting -- according to the Unterberger book, there are demos of "Heroin" and some Cale stuff in the vaults.

Downliners Sect did a great version too:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4uyepraHu6U

Spiritualized do a decent cover of it, too.

Love Pre-VU. "Why Don't You Smile" is a stone classic - who knew it was written by Reed? That alone must have funded some serious binges. I've just added "Tiger in My Tank" to the non-Beach Boys Beach Boys songs thread. And is "It's Hard For a Girl in a World Full of Men" a pisstake on Peggy Seeger's engineer song? Who knew it had been popular enough to require one?

In all the overviews of this material people hold up "The Ostrich" as an example of Reed's hackwork - "Oh, he was writing this Dance Craze stuff" - but it's a truly freaky track, with hints of the drone/noise side of the VU. Very cutting-edge in comparison to Paul Simon's (truly dreadful) hackwork of roughly the same era.

Wicked comp, Tyler. Thanks again.

on a blog called perhaps "ice clothes" there are like 300 CDs of the same type of material as the pre-vu stuff. it's insane.

and yeah some of that early lou reed stuff is interesting. no way was he a credible brill building-type songwriter though.

it's a truly freaky track, with hints of the drone/noise side of the VU
Yeah, I think so too -- like the Sonics but even more unhinged, and that bizarre ostrich guitar sound. and Reed's vocal definitely predicts "White Light/White Heat" ...

modern lovers stuff is great. never liked that "fly into the mystery song" much before - the early version is nice.

whole comp is pretty stellar imo ... made me think that Jonathan Richman is in need of a career-spanning box set or something ...

Hm. Not all that stuff might be Reed-related. Can anyone cast any light on the accuracy of this Allmusic entry for the Pickwick album from which a lot of this was taken?
http://www.allmusic.com/cg/amg.dll?p=amg&sql=10:jnfoxqu0ld6e

what a weird review. the album cover is definitely wrong, and what's up with that tracklisting? Anyway, I think there is a bit of confusion as to what Pickwick stuff Reed actually had a hand in (other than the stuff where he's obviously present). A lot of the songs have like four or five writers ...

Jonathan Richman is in need of a career-spanning box set or something ...

yes but too many parties involved, small labels who haven't even bothered to keep his albums in print mixed with big labels (warner etc.) that aren't likely to cooperate on such a thing.

tyler what is your interest in a boatload of GNR rarities/demos/unreleased/guest appearances/etc?

hmm, i don't know, i don't have any GnR rarities ... are they good? I'm looking to friends to put together more comp type things for the blog ... you want to give me the cream of the crop?

A definitive Richman box would be so tough to pull off not just for the logistical reasons - but also because he's just so prolific. Even just for the first album-era songs there are at least 3-4 completely different studio versions floating around + live stuff. It is pretty cool to be able to see all the fine-tuning and revising he does to his songs, especially as keeping things direct, unmediated and spontaneous-sounding seems to be his goal.

I wonder if making and remaking and remaking that one record may have been part of what turned him away from the initial Modern Lovers sound. But then again I think that recording multiple versions of his songs might just be his M.O., as the "Lost Album" on Doom & Gllom shows - or even his revisting of "Old World" on his last record.

tyler i will go through it...my friend bought it at this mom and pop record story in south dakota, it's called "Attitude For Destruction" and its one of those old early 90s type bootleg double CDS that were made to look like legit releases

haha actually i'm looking now and it's on Deadline "A Division of Cleopatra Records" so who knows what it's like

there appears to be a fair amount of Hollywood Rose stuff (axl's pre-GNR band)....

also some apparent "gems" like "Kevin Dubrow, Tracii Guns & Gilby Clarke - Welcome to the Jungle"

if Kevin Dubrow is involved, I'm there!

and re: a Richman box, I think it could be done, aside from label issues
one disc of original modern lovers stuff
one disc of late 70s/early 80s
one disc covering the rest of the career
one disc of live material?
i mean, you'd have to leave plenty out, but as far as an overview, i think it'd work ...

But you'd never please everybody - you got yer Hippy Ernie and the Hippie Johnny factions, yer I'm A Little Airplane guys and yer I'm A Little Dinosaur people. Could get ugly.