A Hard Reign’s A-Gonna Fall: Guest Blogger Fidel Castro Salutes Bob Dylan

Guest Blogger Fidel Castro wraps up his weeklong musical tribute to Cuba with a toast to Bob Dylan

“Say what you will about Fidel Castro — I am a communist, a fascistic leader, an oppressor of millions, a pigheaded ideologue — but without me, Bob Dylan would never have written one of his greatest songs. So take that, capitalist pigs!

Dylan himself has said that he wrote “A Hard Rain’s A-Gonna Fall” over the weekend of the Cuban Missile Crisis in October, 1962. The 21 year-old vagabond didn’t mention the war specifically, but channeled society's fear of Armageddon and nuclear war into seven minutes of visionary poetry over a melody lifted from the Scottish highlands.

“A Hard Rain’s A-Gonna Fall” was his first truly epic composition and to this day is one of his greatest songs. While I love the folkie version from Freewheelin,’ I also have a soft spot for the sped-up version he played on the Rolling Thunder Revue tour of 1975 (see below).

Few people know this, but Fidel played congas with Rolling Thunder when they swung through Miami in ‘76. I figure, there are so many commies on stage — Joan Baez, Sam Shepard, Bob Neuwirth — what’s one more?

I guess the three-way nuclear chess game that was the Cuban Missile Crisis must have really freaked Zimmy out, because he wrote two other songs that allude to it: the unreleased obscurity “Cuban Missile Crisis,” very much in the spirit of his early protest material, and the Guthrie-esque “Talkin’ World War III Blues.”

But I have to take my army cap off to Bob. We started our revolutions at about the same time. Yet while I stepped down from power last month, he’s still on the road in Mexico, headin’ for another joint. I guess we always did feel the same, we just saw it from a different point of view.”

mp3: Bob Dylan, “Cuban Missile Crisis,” 1962 (from Broadside bootleg)
mp3: Bob Dylan, “A Hard Rain’s A-Gonna Fall,” Live 1964, No Direction Home Soundtrack
mp3: Bob Dylan, “A Hard Rain’s A-Gonna Fall,” Concert for Bangladesh, 1971
mp3: Bob Dylan, “A Hard Rain’s A-Gonna Fall,” Live 1975: The Rolling Thunder Revue
mp3: Bob Dylan, "Talkin' World War III Blues," Live 1964: Philharmonic Hall Concert


YouTube: Bob Dylan, “A Hard Rain’s A-Gonna Fall,” 1962


YouTube: Bob Dylan, “A Hard Rain’s A-Gonna Fall,” Rolling Thunder Revue, 1975

Gettin' Dizzy Wit' It: Guest Blogger Castro Salutes Dizzy Gillespie

Rock Turtleneck is honored to present the third of four tributes to Cuba-related music by Guest Blogger Fidel Castro

"One of the perks of dictatorship is you get to meet anyone you want, or they face punishment of death. And Dizzy Gillespie was just about the coolest cat I ever met.

"During the early days of my triumphant rule, Dizzy and his bandmates would come down to Cuba on a bogus artist visa. We would sit on my veranda under the hot Cuban sun and throw back a couple dozen mojitos, smoke some Macanudos and maybe a "jazz cigarette" or two. Then he'd pull out that funny looking trumpet of his and start blowing away – his cheeks would expand faster than a captialist pig free-market economy!

"Dizzy was a sponge & he soaked up the music and people of Cuba and regurgitated it into a new type of Fidel-flavored bebop called Afro-Cuban Jazz or Cubop. Even in my old age, it still gets my good hip shaking. Here are a few clips from Talkin’ Verve, a fantastic CD that collects many of Dizzy's most funkiest moments."

mp3: Dizzy Gillespie, "Bang Bang"
mp3: Dizzy Gillespie, "Jambo"
mp3: Dizzy Gillespie, "Swing Low, Sweet Cadillac"

YouTube: Dizzy Gillespie, "Manteca" (Finland, 1982)

Havana Helluva Time: Fidel Castro Pays Musical Tribute to His Capitol City

#2 in this week's tribute to Cuba by Guest Blogger Fidel Castro

"Today's two tracks pay homage to my capital city of Havana. What a town! The plaintains are fresh, the rum is sweet, the music is lovely, the women are beautiful – all it needs is an Applebee's! Just kidding! Don’t pack your filthy capitalist bags yet, Americans! Anyway, here's what I spin on my 1957 Wurlitzer jukebox when I feel like “Havana” helluva good time.

Chuck Berry, “Havana Moon”
"“Johnny B. Goode,” “Sweet Little Sixteen,” “Roll Over Beethoven,” “Reelin’ and a Rockin’,” “Carol,”"Maybelline" … Mr. Berry wrote the same song about 200 different ways – but what a song it is! “Havana Moon” however, is completely different. It is slow and evocative… and takes me back to the early nights of my dictatorship… just me, the ocean, the endless sky and a freshly rolled Sancho Panza...Oh, and some bodyguards. And maybe a prostitute or two.
mp3: Chuck Berry, “Havana Moon,” The Definitive Collection

Urge Overkill, “Sister Havana”
"This hard rocking lead track from is from 1993’s Saturation, one of the most underrated albums of my tyrannical rule.
Judging by the lyrics, Sister Havana is either in love with me or wants to assassinate me – with women sometimes it’s hard to tell the difference! Am I right, gentlemen? No matter – the important thing is they have the decency to mention Fidel by name! Nash, Blackie and King Eddie: anytime you three boys want to get back together, you call me - Fidel will take care of the rest."
mp3: Urge Overkill, “Sister Havana,” Saturation

YouTube: Urge Overkill, “Sister Havana,”

Hi Fidel-ity: Rock Turtleneck Welcomes Guest Blogger FIdel Castro

Rock Turtleneck is honored to welcome its first-ever Guest Blogger: recently retired Cuban Dictator Fidel Castro
"40+ years of iron-fisted dictatorship has been great for my ego, but lousy for my record collection. After devoting all of my energy to stubbornly enforcing an outdated Marxist philosophy, I have only recently, since ceding power to my brother Raul, reconnected with my long-playing vinyl platters. All week I'll be sharing some of my all-time Cuba-themed favorites.

Pretenders, "Cuban Slide"
"Many a night was spent in my Havana palace doing the Cuban Slide on my freshly waxed floor with nothing more than a pair of white tube socks and a vintage Cohiba. The Bo Diddley beat and Chrissie Hynde's seductive voice is the best combination since the pork & pickles on a Cuban sandwich. Though "Cuban Slide" originally appeared on their 1980 Extended Play EP, it is now available on Rhino's expanded & remastered edition of their eponymous debut. Turn it up - or face solitary confinement!
mp3: Pretenders, "Cuban Slide" Pretenders (Reissue bonus track)

XTC, "Living Through Another Cuba"
"This ska-tinged deep-album cut is from Black Sea, which also contained the hit "Generals & Majors." No shout-out to dictators? Off with their heads! Many think that XTC quit touring because Andy Partridge had stage fright, but truth be told, they feared for their life after dissing yours truly - and rightly so! Here's an mp3 from the BBC plus a clip of them doing both of these blasphemous tunes."
mp3: XTC, "Living Through Another Cuba," Transistor Blast: The Best of the BBC Sessions

YouTube: XTC, "Living Through Another Cuba"/"Generals & Majors" (live, 1982)

R.I.P. Teo Macero, the George Martin of Jazz

Teo Macero, who passed away this week at the age of 82, was the George Martin of jazz, a man who stood at the nexus of accessibility and experimentation. As in-house producer at Columbia, he was behind the board for some of the top-selling, most highly regarded "classic" jazz records of all time: Miles Davis’s Kind of Blue, Thelonius Monk's Straight, No Chaser and Dave Brubeck’s Time Out.
Macero's greatest impact as producer however was working with Miles during his bold, daring, super-groovy foray into jazz-rock.

In act of heresy to old-guard jazz fans, Davis and Macero abandoned two of the most closely held tenets of jazz: classical instruments and live improvisation. Inspired by funk soul brothers Jimi Hendrix and Sly Stone, Miles & Teo created a new form of jazz using so-called “rock” instruments like the electric guitar & bass, the Fender Rhodes electric piano and a wah-wah pedal for his trumpet. Macero would record hours and hours of Davis and his brilliant bandmates jamming around various themes and splice them together later with a razor blade.

This music, at times chaotic and dense, other times hauntingly peaceful, channeled the late 60s experience - Vietnam, civil rights, flower power - while still keeping its blues roots firmly intact. These records - In A Silent Way, Bitches Brew, On the Corner to name a few - still sound avant-garde today. And their influence is clearly heard in the work of Radiohead, Brian Eno's work with Talking Heads and U2, Public Enemy and all that trance-techno house bullshit you hear in lounges.

Perhaps the greatest Miles/Macero cut-and-paste masterpiece is “Right Off,” the 26-minute Side A from his album A Tribute to Jack Johnson.

This 1971 soundtrack to a film about the white-women-loving depression-era boxer Jack Johnson, (not the super-mellow, Curious George-loving Hawaiian singer-surfer) is a bluesy swinging cinemascape of black pride & power. Unlike much of the so-called jazz-rock fusion, "Right Off" is very much jazz and rock. There is no better music to listen to on a long car drive or iPod-accompanied stroll through the city. Best of all, you can get it on iTunes for a mere 99 cents. RIP and TCB, Teo.

mp3: Miles Davis, "John McLaughlin," Bitches Brew

YouTube: Miles Davis & John Coltrane, "So What," 1958


YouTube: Dave Brubeck, "Time Out," 1961


YouTube: Miles Davis, "Bitches Brew," (Part 1 of 6), 1970


YouTube: Teo Macero Talks About Working With Miles Davis

T-Neck Award #4: The Liz Phair Memorial “Alterna-Kitten” Award

Jenny Lewis

Back in 1993, Liz Phair’s debut Exile in Guyville was hailed as a breakthrough in feminist rock. Here was a well-heeled woman from the tony suburbs of Chicago, rocking hard as a man while lusting after, hooking up with and discarding her prey as callously as any frat boy.

Her impact on male music geeks was just as strong. For Liz Phair was the woman of their High Fidelity dreams: cute, funny, into the Stones, potty-mouthed and super-horny.

After three wonderful, offbeat albums, Ms. Phair went as the (Sheryl) Crow flies to quixotically chase mainstream commercial success and financial freedom. Her music grew irrelevant in the process, and she lost her perch as the rock snob's alterna-kitten of choice.

Fortunately, a redheaded, extremely talented young lass named Jenny Lewis has stepped in to fill her role. Like Ms. Phair. Ms. Lewis’s voice is full of longing, she plays a nice guitar and writes lyrics full of insight and innuendo.

After years as a successful teen actress, Ms. Lewis and her band Rilo Kiley broke through with the 2004 album More Adventurous. On Rabbit Fur Coat, her 2006 side project with the Watson Twins, she displayed an impressive talent for Loretta Lynn-ish classic country, as seen here in this Hee Haw parody hosted by Sarah Silverman.

YouTube: Jenny Lewis & The Watson Twins, “Rise Up with Fists”


Ms. Lewis most recently worked her male fan base into a lather by shooting a porn-themed video for the Pat Benatarian “The Moneymaker,” lead single from Rilo Kiley's 2007 release Under the Blacklight.

Her newfound taste for the ribald led sexagenarian critic Robert Christgau (“X-gau” to the rock cognoscenti) to speculate with Woody Allen-ish inappropriateness that “Jenny Lewis slips four songs about dangerous sex in which she herself might be indulging -- right now, in her pretty prosperity -- into music that's defined rather than just decorated by its stylistic flirtations.” Eek.

And in an article about talented non-jazz musicians on the site All About Jazz, writer Jeff Fitzgerald notes that Lewis “is hotter than Bix Beiderbecke's solo on ‘Singin' the Blues’”. What red-blooded woman could resist a line like that?

Jenny Lewis seems poised for big-time rock stardom, or at least a Lucinda Williams-like level of commerical and critical respectability. Word has it that Lewis is working on a new solo project with her growing list of high-profile admirers, including Elvis Costello (who normally shies away from collaborations). The still-kittenish (and MILF-ish) Ms. Phair, in the meantime, is supposedly label-less, and we eagerly await her return to the one-of-a-kind rock she does best.

Congratulations to Jenny Lewis on winning the Liz Phair “Alterna-Kitten” T-Neck Award.

As befits an award for talented eye candy, some video highlights from the Lewis and Phair canons.

YouTube: Rilo Kiley, “Silver Lining,” Under the Blacklight (note the Harrison-esque guitar figure)


YouTube: Jenny Lewis & the Watson Twins, "The Big Guns," Late Show with David Letterman, 2006


YouTube: Liz Phair, "Never Said," Exile in Guyville



YouTube: Liz Phair & Material Issue, "The Tra-La-La Song" (Theme from the Banana Splits), 1995

How to Beat the Workin'-for-the-Man Blues

If you, like me, have to work on President's Day, you may find it easy to get the "Workin' for the Man" blues. But as someone who was recently unemployed, I can tell you from experience it's a helluva lot better than not working.

Another remedy for "Workin' for the Man" is "Walkin' Down The Line," the 1963 Bob Dylan toe-tappin' ode to hard travelin' that was a hit for several other artists in the 60s and 70s but was never released by Dylan himself until the first Bootleg Series in 1991.

Dylan didn't seem to have much use for the song (he probably wrote it in about 15 seconds), but it became pure gold in the hands of many others, particularly the little-known gospel-soul-folk duo Joe & Eddie. The following clip from 1966 is one of the most exuberant performances ever caught on tape. So excited are Joe & Eddie about walking down the line that even when they walk off the line, they can't stop walkin'. Nor should they.

YouTube: Joe & Eddie, "Walkin' Down the Line," 1966 TV Special


If that doesn't chase the punch-the-clock blues away, check out this version by a young and fetching Linda Ronstadt. This clip succeeds on its own country-rock merits, but what throws it into the stratosphere is the sight of Rob "Meathead" Reiner on bass, looking like he just walked off the All in the Family set.

YouTube: Linda Ronstadt, "Walkin' Down the Line," 1969 TV Special


For your toe-tappin', blues-beatin' President's Day pleasure, the original Bob Dylan version plus a spirited 1987 rehearsal take with the Grateful Dead:

Bob Dylan, "Walkin' Down the Line," The Bootleg Series Vol. 1-3
Bob Dylan & the Grateful Dead, "Walkin' Down the Line," 1987 San Rafael tour rehearsals

I Love You. What Did You Get Me?

Like the DeBeers Diamond Right Hand Ring or Moby, Valentine’s Day is a completely invented, shrewdly marketed scheme to print money.

Rock Turtleneck believes in year-round romance, so to celebrate the randomness of February 14 as the national day o’ luv, the word “valentine” was fed into the Rock Turtleneck steam-powered music search engine. It generated an eclectic melange that runs the gamut from genuinely lovey-dovey to completely irrelevant to potentially relationship-ending. And if that ain't romance, what is?

Herewith, for your randomly generated downloading pleasure:

Elvis Costello, “My Funny Valentine,” Armed Forces (bonus track)
Spoon, “The Two Sides of Monseiur Valentine,” Gimme Fiction
The Valentines, “Blam Blam Fever,” Trojan Ska Box Set, Vol I
The Valentines (different band), "Gotta Get Yourself Together," Night Train to Nashville
The Go-Go’s (bassist: Kathy Valentine), “Head Over Heels,” Talk Show
Johnny Cash, “He Stopped Loving Her Today,” (composed by Robert Valentine Braddock & Charlie Putnam, Jr.) Unearthed

And because every day is Valentine’s Day for Rock Turtleneck's founding fathers & mothers, here is our vote for most genuinely romantic song ever:

YouTube: Roberta Flack, “The First Time Ever I Saw Your Face,” 1972

R.I.P. Mahareshi Mahesh Yogi: He Came Along to Turn On Everyone

R.I.P. Mahareshi Mahesh Yogi

Maharishi Mahesh Yogi came to the world's attention as a cartoonish, high pitched, slightly greasy soothsayer who introduced the Beatles, and thus the world, to the mind-expanding, Beatlemania-relieving powers of Transcendental Meditation. (In Hindi, “maha” means great, and “rishi” means seer.) He passed away this week at the age of 91 or so.

The Fab Four first heard about him via George Harrison's shagalicious wife Pattie Boyd. After attending a couple of lectures and getting their own customized mantras, they signed up for an extended holiday at the Yogi's compound at the foothills of the Himilayas.

For several months in early 1968, our Liverpudlian heroes, with their birds and other beautiful people (including Donovan and Mia Farrow) in tow, ate veggie, tapped into their higher consciousness and of course, wrote songs. "Across the Universe," "Blackbird," "I Will," "Mother Nature's Son," "While My Guitar Gently Weeps," "Dear Prudence," to name a few. Not bad.

Many of these songs, which became the White Album, are based on the Maharishi's teachings. For example, he would say things like "the higher you fly, the deeper you go" and "Your inside is out and your outside is in," which John Lennon converted into the great rocker "Everybody's Got Something to Hide Except for Me and My Monkey."

As legend has it, the Beatles soured on their spiritual guide when they learned he had put the moves on "Dear" Prudence Farrow, sister of Mia. But there are also rumors that it was the Maharishi who dumped the Beatles, due to their fondness for recreational drugs.

Feeling burned by the experience, Lennon, bitter and acerbic as always, paid a thinly veiled tribute to the Maharishi by changing his name to "Sexy Sadie." But whether you think the Maharishi is a visionary or a Nowhere Man, there is no denying his impact on the grooviest aspects of Western music and culture. Peace out and TCB, MMY.

For your meditative contemplation, a history of the Maharishi experience as told by the Beatles themselves in the must-own Beatles Anthology. Plus mp3s of demos of key Maharishi tracks recorded at George Harrison's Sussex estate and the super-rare Harrison track "Dehra Dun." To get the complete set of demos, pay a house call to the great music site Dr. Mooney's 115th Dream.

YouTube: The Beatles in Rishikesh from The Beatles Anthology


mp3: The Beatles, "Sexy Sadie," 1968 Esher Demos, George Harrison's House
mp3: The Beatles, "Dear Prudence," 1968 Esher Demos, George Harrison's House
mp3: The Beatles, "Everybody's Got Something to Hide Except for Me and My Monkey," 1968 Esher Demos, George Harrison's House
mp3: The Beatles, "Blackbird," 1968 Esher Demos, George Harrison's House
mp3: The Beatles, "Dehra Dun," White Album rehearsal