B12 Solipsism

“Barry Goldberg” (Barry Goldberg)

Michael Simmons reports on a bit of Bob Dylan related obscurity, namely that Barry Goldberg (songwriter of such hits as Devil With A Blue Dress and I’ve Got To Use My Imagination as well as being half of

Two Jew’s Blues

along with Michael Bloomfield) has reissued his mid-70s album with the original vocals restored.

Anyway, this rock ‘n’ roll Zelig also pounded the ivories behind Bob at Newport ‘65 when Zimmy stuck his middle finger in an electric socket and his hair frizzed out, after which every one else began letting their hair frizz out (or something like that). When you’ve shared a stage with someone in front of a hostile audience, it’s like sharing a trench. They stayed in touch and jammed together with the Band and Sir Doug Sahm and, of course, Bloomfield. In ‘73, Goldberg had a heap of good songs and was gonna record a single at RCA Records. His pal Bob sez “No no Barry, let me take ‘em to Jerry Wexler,” the legendary R&B producer at Atlantic Records. Wex agrees to sign him and take Goldberg into the studio but says Bob’s gotta co-produce the sessions with him.

When Bob Dylan is handed to you on a silver platter as producer (co or udderwise), you say yes. With relish. Especially when you’re the only artist he’s ever offered his services to in this role (and ever will).

So everybody descends on Muscle Shoals, Alabama — Barry and wife/co-writer Gail and Dylan and Wex. Waiting for them are the hotshot Southern studio cats with whom one Duane Allman had paid his dues before the Brothers and who’d grooved on Two Jew’s Blues. Eddie Hinton, Jimmy Johnson, Pete Carr, David Hood, Roger Hawkins and friends. If you’ve ever dug an Aretha Franklin tune from the late ’60s, you’ve heard these aces of soulfulness. They tracked Barry’s Gladys Knight tune and one Rod Stewart covered called “It’s Not the Spotlight” and a bunch of others. “…Spotlight” and “Minstrel Show” were damn good songs about being a working musician. “Orange County Bus” is about the kind of legal trouble hippie musicians experienced all too frequently in them days. It’s a song of its time, as is “Dusty Country,” a paean to the earthy rural ideal sporting a lovely dobro. Even the strings on “She Was Such A Lady” and “…Spotlight” sound natural — no cold synthesizers that were beginning to be popular in that period. A solid album. Comfortable. Real. What they now call Americana.

[Click to continue reading Michael Simmons: The Only Album "Bob Dylan" Ever Produced ]

Sounds like perfect Rock snob fodder…

posting this photo led to a Flickr pal leaving a YouTube link for the infamous Freedom Rock late-night television commercial (ran in the late 80s, has been a punch line for hipster jokes since then)

I assume there is a bittorrent for these songs; at the least, they are floating around in MP3 form. Kind of a funny list actually, Deep Purple and Jethro Tull don’t really mix well with Seals & Crofts or Dion, at least when I am manning the DJ controls. Also somewhat surprisingly, there is no Wikipedia entry for Freedom Rock, at least that I could find.

Because I’m waiting for a file to download and have some time to waste, I marked an asterisk next to the songs that currently exist in my iTunes library. I really need to burnish up my Freedom Rock credentials, don’t I?

Disc One:
*The Byrds -- Turn, Turn, Turn
Ten Years After -- I’d Love To Change The World
*Jethro Tull -- Locomotive Breath
Joan Baez -- The Night They Drove Old Dixie Down
Edwin Starr -- War
*Santana -- Black Magic Woman
Harry Nilsson -Jump Into The Fire
*Deep Purple - Smoke On The Water
Brotherhood of Man -- United We Stand
Coven -- One Tin Soldier (The Legend Of Billy Jack )
*Jefferson Airplane -- Somebody To Love
*Canned Heat -- Going Up The Country
Friend and Lover -- Reach Out Of The Darkness
*America -- A Horse With No Name
*Lynyrd Skynyrd -- Free Bird
Allman Brothers Band -- Ramblin’ Man
The Guess Who -- Share The Land
Elton John -- Friends
Ocean -- Put Your Hand In The Hand
Three Dog Night -- Black & White

Disc 2:
*Derek & The Dominos -- Layla
Moody Blues -- The Story In Your Eyes
Five Man Electrical Band -- Signs
Jonathan Edwards -- Sunshine
The O’Jays -- Love Train
*Cream -- White Room
*Jefferson Airplane -- White Rabbit
Judy Collins -- Both Sides Now
Seals & Crofts -- We May Never Pass This Way Again
Zager & Evans -- In The Year 2525
*Alice Cooper -- Eighteen
*Deep Purple -- Hush
The Youngbloods -- Get Together
Sonny & Cher -- The Beat Goes On
Dion -- Abraham, Martin & John
Melanie -- Lay Down
*Spirit -- I Got A Line On You
*James Taylor -- Fire And Rain
Lobo -- Me And You And A Dog Named Boo
*Otis Redding -- (Sittin’ On) The Dock Of The Bay

and of these, probably the only song I wouldn’t skip past would be Locomotive Breath, and maybe The Byrds doing Bob Dylan’s, Turn Turn Turn. The rest are either horribly over-played, or just exist to be played in ironic context, i.e., not often.

Some additional reading July 2nd from 13:49 to 19:05:

• Travel With Your Mind: Sky Saxon Remembered – Sky Saxon, lead singer with 60s garage punk legends the Seeds, died on the morning of June 25, 2009 (or as his official web site put it, he “passed over to be with YaHoWha”); as it happened, he died the same day as both Michael Jackson and Farrah Fawcett, ensuring that the entertainment press, who might have been expected to treat his passing like a one-line filler item, didn’t even give it that much attention. But Saxon hadn’t been a celebrity in the traditional sense for a very long time. Sky may have been a rock star for about two years on the strength of the singles “Pushin’ Too Hard” and “Can’t Seem To Make You Mine,” but after those twenty-four months as a bargain-basement Mick Jagger, he evolved into Flower Power’s Last Man Standing, a guy who let his freak flag fly with a wild-eyed sincerity that made most of his peers from the Sunset Strip scene look like weekenders, and transformed his story into something far more interesting than the typical two-hit wonder and cult hero.
• The Perfect Burger and All Its Parts – NYTimes.com – While some chefs have groused quietly about the insatiable demand for burgers, most are philosophical. “All chefs can be frustrated by the buying public sometimes,” said Clark Frasier, a chef with restaurants in Massachusetts and Maine. “In this economy I’m happy to sell anything they want to eat.”

  All this high-powered attention has produced some new ways of thinking about and cooking burgers. Interviews with 30 chefs provided dozens of lessons for the home cook that aren’t terribly difficult and don’t cost much money. And it all yielded the ideal burger.

• Daily Kos: How a Kos diarist helped spark McCain-Palin infighting – Schmidt put the matter to rest with an breathtaking reply to Palin:

  "Secession," he wrote. "It is their entire reason for existence. A cursory examination of the website shows that the party exists for the purpose of seceding from the union. That is the stated goal on the front page of the web site. Our records indicate that todd was a member for seven years. If this is incorrect then we need to understand the discrepancy. The statement you are suggesting be released would be innaccurate. The innaccuracy would bring greater media attention to this matter and be a distraction. According to your staff there have been no media inquiries into this and you received no questions about it during your interviews. If you are asked about it you should smile and say many alaskans who love their country join the party because it speeks to a tradition of political independence. Todd loves his country

Had a lot of fun yesterday consuming the

Rock Snob Dictionary

in one sitting. Well, I did jump up a few times and add tunes to my new iTunes playlist, Rock Snobs. I guess I am bonafide, as the playlist has several days worth of material already, and I’m not done adding yet.

A few excerpts from the book at posted at snobsite.com. Fun stuff.

At last! An A-to-Z reference guide for readers who want to learn the cryptic language of Rock Snobs, those arcana-obsessed people who speak of “Rickenbacker guitars” and “Gram Parsons.”

We’ve all been there–trapped in a conversation with smarty-pants music fiends who natter on about “the MC5″ or “Eno” or “the Hammond B3,” not wanting to let on that we haven’t the slightest idea what they’re talking about. Well, fret no more! The Rock Snob’s Dictionary is here to define every single sacred totem of rock fandom’s know-it-all fraternity, from Alt.country to Zimmy. (That’s what Rock Snobs call Bob Dylan, by the way.)

Haven’t managed to see Cocksucker Blues nor Eat the Document, yet. Though apparently, some of the footage from Eat the Document made its way into

No Direction Home