Waiting

Leica M9, 35mm Summilux, ISO 160, Wide Open

 

The Pixies’ “Doolittle” Tour Begins

To commemorate this blessed event (Pixies’ Dolittle Tour Begins), and in anticipation of their upcoming shows in D.C., we offer the below victual from our friends, those geniuses at SnagFilms.com.

Cubism At The Swedish Embassy

There was a decent exhibit at the Swedish Embassy in conjunction with DC Foto Week. Entitled “What Lies Beneath: Nature and Landscape in EU Photography,” entrants from 14 EU countries exhibited one photo each.

Afterward, I stepped out onto the portico that looks out at the Potomac, but on the side of the Embassy where the C&O canal draws its water, what lay beneath was nature and landscape in the District of Columbia, and it all seemed to come together in my eye like a Cezanne.

Leica M9, 21mm Summilux, ISO 80 (for maximum bokeh.)  Focus is on the rivet in the glass wall/railing.

Devendra Banhart’s Cool Wit

Fun interview with Devendra Banhart in today’s NYT.  Best exchange:

Q. Tell me about when you first learned to sing.

A.  I can’t predict the future, my friend.

Devendra In the NY Times

On The Lookout

Leica M9, 35mm Summilux

How To Sequence “Satisfaction” and “Under My Thumb” in “Get Yer Ya-Ya’s Out”

We went back to maybe the best book ever written about the Stones — Stanley Booth’s Dance With The Devil: The Rolling Stones & Their Times — to get a clue about where exactly in the set list “Under My Thumb,” “I’m Free” and “Satisfaction” flowed during the Stones’ set at MSG in ‘69.  After all, now that we have more songs, we want to create our Ya-Ya’s playlist as the set unfolded, right?

One problem is that the orignal Get Yer Ya-Ya’s Out seems to have “Midnight Rambler” and “Sympathy For the Devil” out of sequence.  Near as I can tell from Booth’s descriptions of the shows, you should put “Sympathy” after “Carol” and before “Stray Cat Blues.”  Then, after “Love In Vain,” put in four of the new entrants in sequence: “Prodigal Son,” “You Gotta Move,” and the “Under My Thumb/I’m Free” medley. “Midnight Rambler” now goes straight into “Live With Me,” followed by “Little Queenie” and  ”Satisfaction.”  ”Honky Tonk Women” sets up “Street Fighting Man” as the traditional closer.

Makes sense: so much more powerful to go from “Midnight Rambler” into the blitzkreig bop of that finale crescendo.  By ‘72, following Altamont, they’d stopped doing “Sympathy,” and I do recall then that after “Midnight Rambler” the whole show speeded up…

Of course, going back to Booth’s book brings to the scene later that Thanksgiving night when in the Plaza Hotel, Keith turns Booth on to heroin for the first time.  Keith went onto being… Keith.  Booth went on to a lost decade.  Dance with the Devil, indeed.

Economy’s Up, But This Foreclosure Thing…

Leica M9, 50mm Summilux, just off Embassy Row…  Maybe the country couldn’t pay its debt?

Get Yer Ya-Ya’s Out! The Rolling Stones In Concert: 40th Anniversary

The only time we’d ever heard “Under My Thumb” played by the Stones on the ‘69 tour, of course, was that scene in Gimme Shelter just before Meredith Hunter was murdered about 30 rows back from the Altamont stage.  To now hear it liver than we will ever be from the MSG stage that Thanksgiving weekend, aw man, it sounds alright.  As Mick would say, Can you dig it?

In ‘69, the Stones came back from studio exile and a bad psychedelic album, followed by maybe their greatest album, Beggars Banquet, and certainly in “Jumpin’ Jack Flash,” their greatest single.  They hadn’t even released Let It Bleed the week they played Madison Square Garden, if I have my dates right.  They played two sets a night, like they were a bar band back in Richmond! Strutting back on stage with all the rules changed — no more girls screaming, the band able to actually hear themselves — they were, sure, the greatest rock’n'roll band in the world, and certainly the tightest.

Being able now to hear not only “Under My Thumb” — the beat languorous, the riff sweetly filagreed by Keith — but also the way it swept into a medley with “I’m Free,” is not something I’ll get out of my head anytime soon.  I mean after all, having heard it in Gimme Shelter, as brief as it was, as crappy as they were playing on that cold night in Sears Point, California as mayhem was unleashed, I’ve never forgotten it.  And now we’re free to hear that riff any old time.

Getting to hear “Prodigal Son” live — I don’t care about “You Gotta Move,” never have — brings onstage that cottage party, mushrooms and acoustic guitars sensibility that Beggar Banquet was steeped in.

The revelation here, if there is one, is “Satisfaction.”  By the ‘72 tour — when I finally got to see them — they performed it as a medley with “Uptight/Outtasite”, with Stevie Wonder’s horns and singers integrated into the band.  It was a novelty, and so “Satisfaction” has been for all those tours since.  But Heavens, the version here is stinging, with the twin guitar assaults by Keith and Mick Taylor.

I have always thought  that Get Yer Ya-Ya’s Out was the greatest live album of its era, with Live at Leeds the only competition.  In my platonic dreams, the Stones would release Ladies and Gentlemen, The Rolling Stones from the vaults, and we’d see how in ‘72, they were even better — Nicky Hopkins on piano, Jim Price and Bobby Keys on horns, and Mick Taylor’s guitar arrangements reaching a unique lyricism, with Keith not yet showing he couldn’t hit a curve.

But if you’re thinking of perfection, adding these five songs to what we’ve always known as Get Yer Ya-Ya’s Out is pretty damn fine.  Plus, the packaging and remastering’s pretty nice, too.

****

Update: So the DVD, with Maysle Brothers footage, is worth the price of the box set.  Did I forget that Jimi Hendrix was backstage talking with Keith, playing Keith’s Gibson with Mick Taylor?  It’s been a while since we’ve seen Gimme Shelter. For historical purposes, we also see Jo Berg telling Mick (as he strips off his shirt) that a certain someone is coming “up from the country” the next day to see the show.  Has to have been Bob Dylan, upstate in Woodstock… And of course there’s Janis Joplin as they show the band’s incredible version of “Satisfaction.”

Halloween Gives Way To All Saints Day

Leica M9, 35mm Summilux

Stones ‘69 Tour Archival Dump Arrives Tomorrow

First new cuts from the Thanksgiving ‘69 MSG concerts to arrive tomorrow… nearly 40 years after the shows… 39 years after Get Yer Ya-Yas Out.

Just a little bit overdue, wouldn’t you say?  But at least we’ll get to hear “I’m Free” at high fidelity, not like Liver Than You’ll Ever Be…