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Pink Floyd’s Roger Waters talked candidly to Joe Rogan last week about bandmate Syd Barrett’s mental decline and downward spiral into drugs and reclusion.



And here’s the band’s David Gilmour playing his Wish You Were Here - a song that not just laments Barrett’s sad loss to the world of music, but to human loss everywhere.

 
Sting singing and playing Message In A Bottle - literally as a one man band.

Superb live rendition of this great song, all the way from '81.

 
And came across this rare old gem from Darwin in the 1980s. A local band called XL playing one of their own songs Don't You Break My Heart for a charity telethon on Channel 8 TV. The video and sound aren’t great, but it’s not a bad song and well sung by the sultry girl singer. Wonder how many local blokes romanced chicks to this song over a few Darwin stubbies and a feed of prawns.

The video also just reeks of the eighties - there’s copycat visual hints of Chisel, the Oils and Blondie and other stuff all going on here.

Anybody know what happened to the band? Did it ever head south? And what happened to the girl singer?



(TV came late to Darwin with the ABC (station ABN) being the first to go to air in 1971. This news report at the time said that Darwin might lose its status as the highest beer consumption city in the world if locals stop going to the pub and stayed home to watch TV. And the closing few seconds give a glimpse of life in a Darwin beer garden with jugs doing the rounds just a few years before cyclone Tracy changed it all).
 
David Clayton-Thomas of Blood, Sweat & Tears singing four of their hits at the Montreux Jazz Festival in 2006.

This band fused rock and jazz and the songs are more than 50 years old now. But to me they still sound as fresh as when I bought their Greatest Hits album back in 1972 (the second album I’d ever bought at the time). Love the sound of the horn section and his matching powerful voice.

 
Gotta hand it to The Chats.
None of that cryptic bullshit of needing to read between the lines to understand the song meaning.

 
Even old iron built by Caterpillar in the 1930s doesn’t last forever. Worn out a lifetime ago this crippled grader has been stripped of salvageable parts and now put to the wrecker’s torch for scrap.

All set to the earthy lament Bring My Flowers Now sung by a soulful Tanya Tucker.

 
Just a few days ago, and it’s the end of the opening night of ‘A Beautiful Noise’ - a new Broadway musical inspired by the works of Neil Diamond. And the man himself, 81 years old and a bit frail, stands and gives this impromptu rendition of Sweet Caroline from the balcony.
Onya Neil.

 
Just a few days ago, and it’s the end of the opening night of ‘A Beautiful Noise’ - a new Broadway musical inspired by the works of Neil Diamond. And the man himself, 81 years old and a bit frail, stands and gives this impromptu rendition of Sweet Caroline from the balcony.
Onya Neil.



Christ...
Look at those assholes will you. The man himself is right there in front of them and there they are, staring at him through their fcuking phones..
Worse still, filming in portrait..

Concertgoers: please just cherish the moment and let it live in your memory - nobody wants to see a replay of your POV shaky, shit audio Neil Diamond on a palm sized screen - or any other artist for that matter. I'm sure you can buy the DVD for nanna or download the 4K digital version on Amazon.

Take that device and - shove it.
 
A new short form documentary about the Beatles’ best album ever (IMO) and one of the very best albums of the past 50 years - the wonderful Abbey Road.
It’s the story about the birth of an album and the death of a band. The narrative glides through the complexity of the album’s genesis, it's songs and it’s legacy (and even covers the background to that iconic photograph of the band walking on the pedestrian crossing). Twenty minutes well spent if you like the album too (but after looking at the news today - why do John & Yoko remind me of Harry & Meagan?).



And in the side-bar while I was watching the above was this link to a really good cover medley of songs from the B side of the Abbey Road album. It’s by the Beatles tribute band The Fab Faux, not to be confused with another tribute band called The Fab Four. Unlike the latter, the former don’t try to look like the Beatles (if they even could), but their instrumental and vocal work is very faithful to the sound of original tracks. The drumming is great. And it’s nice to hear quality cover versions of this music that is so clean when freshly recorded on modern audio gear, rather than the more limited equipment that was available when the Beatles made their original recordings (especially compared to my old crackling vinyl album that I’ve played a bazillion times over the years). Don’t forget to wait the long pause before the short and whimsical final track.

 
A new Christmas song for 2022 that has a real vintage sound to it.

When I'm With You (Christmas Every Day), sung by Allison Young with Josh Turner and other top musicians backing her.

Sounds like something that was (but wasn’t) sung by the Andrews Sisters in one of those classic 1940s-50s Hollywood musicals filmed in black&white.

 
Earlier this year Ralph McTell turned up at the Glastonbury Festival in Somerset and played the song he released in 1974, Streets of London. The BBC have videos out on many of the acts that played Glastonbury, but not this one. An audience member shot this clip.

There are not many old songs that have their lyrics burned in the hearts of the young people attending. But you can hear them. It’s like a prayer - they know every word.

Merry Christmas everybody.



(I spent five months knocking around Europe and the UK when I was 18, and left London to fly home to Oz on Christmas Eve 1974 (flew over the edge of Cyclone Tracy on the Singapore-Sydney leg). And ever since I first heard this song play on the radio in early ’75 I am taken back to those wide-eyed days almost half a century ago. And while a lot has happened since, the message in the song endures, as relevant today as it was then.)
 
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Probably the first piece of modern music I remember ever really liking - the jazzy story told in the cartoon The Three Little Bops. The music was written specifically for this Warner Bros cartoon by Milton Rogers and recorded by him and his band, Shorty Rogers and His Giants, in late 1956. The lyrics were spoken by Stan Freberg.

Very catchy, funny, with hand-drawn animation cells brilliantly synced with the music, and with a trumpet solo at the end (or is it a flugelhorn?) that is just so fluid, smooth and cool. The tune also gives a glimpse of popular music in the early pre-dawn days just before the sun rose on the rock and roll era. Could loop this track for hours. Makes me smile.

Couldn't find the original cartoon on YouTube, but this remastered soundtrack is clean and the picture stills give credit to the late, great jazzmen who gave this tune life.



(It was recorded the year I was born. But I wouldn’t have heard it until my parents bought our first TV set, which I remember mum saying they plugged in on the day that Princess Margaret (the late Queen’s sister) got married in 1960. Later in the 60s, Channel 9 in Adelaide used to run nightly episodes of the Warner Brothers Bugs Bunny Show after the evening news. So I guess I first heard it there.)


Is this the one you’re talking about?

 
Is this the one you’re talking about?


Thanks Frankarooney, but I get this error message saying that the clip is not available in Australia (maybe you are using a VPN to get around it?, or maybe it's my browser).

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Just about out of 2022 and I’m “running on, running blind” on a hot new year’s arvo, binge listening some old Jackson Browne favorites. Great music and lyrics.

The title track to the Running on Empty album, set to a montage of still pictures taken during his 1977 tour.


Looking out at the road rushing under my wheels,
Looking back at the years gone by like so many summer fields.
In ‘65 I was 17 and running up 101,
I don't know where I'm running now, I'm just running on.


And fast forward 17 years to 18 June 1994 and he’s playing The Load Out/Stay from the same album while his crew packs up the gear in an Amsterdam TV studio.


Now the seats are all empty,
Let the roadies take the stage.


Seeya 2022.

Happy New Year.
 
In this clip he provides some of the original high pitched vocals from The Load Out/Stay



about the 7:30 mark

Thanks for the reminder Feldon
 
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