Rock Turtleneck: The Bootleg Series, Vol. 2008

Rock Turtleneck does its darndest to keep its loyal readers abreast of all relevant rock-related news throughout the year. Unfortunately this is merely a sideline not-for-profit venture and the realities of my real, paying job often prevent the RT from filing every story it contemplates. Herewith, snippets from three unreleased 2008 Rock Turtleneck posts, that doggoneit, we never got around to finishing. Happy New Year.

AC/DC: Let There Be Rock

I always admired AC/DC's pure strain of hard rock, but never loved them, until I had an epiphany watching the DVD of No Bull, their concert recorded at a bullfighting ring in Spain. About 4 1/2 minutes into "Let There Be Rock," Angus Young rips one of his trademark solos, bobbing his head like his own biggest fan. And then he disappears. But as the backstage camera shows us, he's not gone for good - he hops on a golf cart, and as the band holds the backbeat, the driver brings him out to the center of the ring where he re-emerges on a roadie's shoulders and continues soloing without missing a note. The place, understandably, goes wild. Ole! It was an important lesson: Not all of rock's greatest moments need involve artist-audience confrontation, like the Dylan/Band "Judas" concerts of 1966, or the Hell's Angels or smashed guitars. Sometimes merely working your audience into a lather is enough.

AC/DC: "Let There Be Rock" No Bull DVD


Wilco via Chicago
(8/21/08)

One of the things about getting older is that you run out of time. Conflicts unfold on top of commitments and plans fall wayside to obligations.

Last week I had to miss a much-anticipated Wilco show at the McCarren Pool in Brooklyn because it conflicted with a family trip to Chicago. Several friends who attended the show raved about it and the venue.

So my ticket remained a ticket and not a stub and my family and I had a fabulous trip to the Windy City. Only hours after the Wilco show, I found myself atop the Sears Tower looking northward. Looking down I noticed the Marina Apartment towers, which are well known in architectural circles but positively iconic to Wilco fans as they are the Twin-Towerish cover of their masterpiece Yankee Hotel Foxtrot.

Suddenly missing the show didn’t seem like such a big deal. I knew that their music and all music for that matter, is everywhere and that’s one of the great things about it.

My good friend and hardcore Wilco fan Alex Bachrach has informed me that Wilco will be on the road this fall with Neil Young. Now there’s a show I’m not going to miss.

Wilco, "Via Chicago" 2007 Bonnaroo festival



R.E.M.ea Culpa
R.E.M., Accelerate

The opening triumvirate of “Living Well is the Best Revenge,” “Man-Sized Wreath” and “Supernatural Superserious” are the rocking equivalent of the Powell Doctrine: persuasion through the use of overwhelming force. Lyrically, they may deal with the media, the Bush administration and downtown poseurs but the subtext of the music says “We are sorry for Around the Sun. Mea Culpa. As penance, we are rocking not once, or even twice, but thrice.”

Fortunately the rocking is fresh and convincing – it’s their first post-Bill Berry album that sounds like it was made by a band, the same band who made Document, Reckoning and New Adventures in Hi-Fi. Older and not quite as original but like an actual band.

“Until the Day is Done” belongs on the top shelf in R.E.M.'s neo-Appalachia section next to “Sweetness Follows” “Perfect Circle” “Swan Swan H” and “King of Birds.” It’s one of those songs that somehow, despite cryptic lines like “Providence blinked facing the sun/And where are we left to carry on?” manages to capture the spirit of these uncertain times.

The only false note is the title track, which should have been called “Accelerate (Theme from R.E.M.’s Comeback.)” “No time to question the choices I’ve made. I’ve got to find another direction: Accelerate.” You can almost picture a Starsky & Hutch-like video of the band pulling up in the REMobile and urgently ducking into a basement studio holding their guitar cases (Stipe a stack of Patti Smith LPs).

R.E.M. "Sing for the Submarine" Takeaway Shows Version recorded in Michael Stipe's silo in Athens GA (wish they'd used this verision on the record)

U2: Crumbs From Their Table

U2 announced this week they will be releasing a new studio album on March 3 called No Line On The Horizon. (U2 has gotten increasingly verbose with their album titles lately. Remember the simpler days of Boy, War and Pop?)

No Line on the Horizon will be U2's first studio release since 2004's How to Dismantle an Atomic Bomb, which came four years after their "comeback" CD All You Can't Leave Behind. And that was 3 1/2 years after Pop, which was four years after Zooropa.

U2 has consistently delivered a quality product over the years, and they clearly take great pains to get their songs and sound to a place where they are happy with them. But they work at a truly glacial pace. (Maybe their new record should be called Mollasses.)

U2, "Crumbs From Your Table" How to Dismantle an Atomic Bomb


By contrast, in the four years from 1968 to 1972, the Rolling Stones released four of the greatest alubms of all time: Beggar's Banquet, Let it Bleed, Sticky Fingers and Exile on Main St., plus the live Get Yer Ya-Ya's Out! and the classic single "Honky Tonk Women."

In the amount of time since U2 released Atomic Bomb, The Beatles released A Hard Day's Night, Beatles for Sale, Help!, Rubber Soul, Revolver, Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band, Magical Mystery Tour, Yellow Submarine and The White Album. They also released a half-dozen or so free-standing singles that put together would make another album at least as good as any of those mentioned above. (I guess that's why they're the Beatles.)

It would be tempting to blame the music business, but there are plenty of artists who are still prolific. Bruce Springsteen for example, is getting set to release his fifth studio album of the decade, Workin' on a Dream. And Prince, Willie Nelson and Ryan Adams, to name a few, release records faster than one can keep up with them.

U2 wasn't always this way: their first four albums, from Boy to The Unforgettable Fire, came out more or less a year apart. And the multimedia American travelogue Rattle and Hum came out only 17 months after their breakthrough The Joshua Tree.

Since then however, Bono has split his time between rock-starring and saving the world, and while 'tis a noble cause indeed, it's clearly affected the band's output. One wonders what The Edge, Adam and Larry, all musician's musicians to the core, say amongst themselves when Bono is hanging in Davos with Bill & Melinda Gates the way Bowie used to hang with Lou Reed & Iggy Pop.

No Line on the Horizon was recorded in Fez, Morocco, among other places, and produced by Brian Eno and Daniel Lanois, who have been behind the boards on all the band's most interesting records (Unforgettable Fire, Joshua Tree, Achtung Baby, Zooropa and Behind). Rumors abound that like Achtung Baby, it's a departure from the "classic U2 sound" of Behind and Atomic Bomb. Who knows - it might even be worth the wait. Cheers, boys.

Herewith, a rare example of what we get when U2 rushes things: a half-finished, half-baked Johnny Cash pastiche called "Woman Fish" from a 1986 show called TV Gaga.


And here's a brilliant snapshot of later-day U2: their appearance on David Letterman's show shortly after 9/11 wherein they play their great homage to the Big Apple.

Things Should Start to Get Interesting Right About Now

Rock Turtleneck Stocking Stuffer Suggestion #2: Bob Dylan, Tell Tale Signs

The holidays are a time of mirth but also of reckoning - a time to take stock in the passage of time, to take a good look at where you've been and where you might be going.

Tell Tale Signs, Volume 8 in Bob's Bootleg Series, takes a look at where Dylan has been, where he could have been, and where he was when we weren't looking, and the results are stunning.

It's further proof that Dylan’s third-act (or eighth-act or twelfth-act; or maybe it's all one big act) renaissance, which began with an epiphany during tour rehearsals with the Grateful Dead in 1987 (chronicled in his memoir Chronicles Vol. 1) and continues in full blazing force to this day, with genius albums, Grammys, an Oscar, a best-selling book, several films a satellite radio show and a Never-Ending tour, is even more accomplished and varied than previously thought.



Like many of the Bootleg Series editions, Tell Tale Signs is full of jaw dropping moments, where you think "how could this have possibly wound up on the cutting room floor?" Chief among these is a demo of "Most of the Time" which in its officially released version on 1989's Oh Mercy is decent but nothing earth-shaking. Yet the stripped-down Oh Mercy demo featured on Tell Tale Signs could have held its own on 1974's Blood on the Tracks:

"Most of the Time" Tell Tale Signs


Likewise, "Can't Wait" a relatively forgettable tune from the epic comeback Time Out of Mind, is shown here as a demo in B-flat and its late-night intensity makes it sound like something from John Lennon/Plastic Ono Band:
"Can't Wait" Tell Tale Signs


And an early demo of "Mississippi" recorded with just Dylan and TOOM producer Daniel Lanois has the haunting world-wearyness of a Sinatra saloon song. All my powers of expression and thoughts so sublime could never do it justice in reason or rhyme:

"Mississppi" Tell Tale Signs


Tell Tale Signs is one of those rare compilations that works well on its own as not merely a collection of songs, but as a total listening experience. If you know a Dylan fan who hasn't picked up Tell Tale Signs yet, well, they're not really a fan. But you should get it for them anyway. It has 26 examples of a great artist who has continued to work at full strength for an unprecedented amount of time, an artist who continues to break new ground almost fifty years into his career. I could go on and on but pick up a few copies of Tell Tale Signs and keep one for yourself. Someday baby, he won't be doing it anymore.

"Someday Baby" (alt version) Tell Tale Signs

Happy Keef Day

Keith Richards, born today in 1943 in Dartford, Kent. Happy 65th baby! Looking forward to your autobiography.

Keith Richards, "Run Run Rudolph"


Thanks to RT field reporter Dan Cassidy for the shoutout.

The Late Greats

Every time I've been to a concert at Madison Square Garden, I've usually had seats that were OK at best. I had decent ones for the "Bobfest" Dylan tribute in 1992, but when I saw R.E.M. on their Monster tour, I was practically in a different time zone. Same for when I saw the Grateful Dead in 1990.

But last night's show by Neil Young & Wilco settled the score in a big way, as my friends and I found ourselves on the floor, in front of the front-row seats about 15 feet from the stage and about two feet from Bourne Ultimatum actress Julia Stiles. With such a close vantage point, it was easy to forget one was watching a show with 15,000 others; it felt more like Irving Plaza than Madison Square Garden.

The first opening act was Everest, who seemed to be of the same alterna-rustic ilk as Band of Horses, Fleet Foxes and My Morning Jacket. They performed a very Last Waltz-like version of Dylan's "You Ain't Goin' Nowhere" where they were joined on backup vocals by members of Wilco and Neil's band.

Wilco gently opened the show with "You Are My Face" from their most recent record Sky Blue Sky and picked up intensity throughout, driven by the mind-boggling guitar stylings of Nels Cline. Norah Jones sat in on backing vocals for "Jesus, Etc." and Spencer Tweedy, son of Jeff, played drums on a rousing version of "The Late Greats," which may have been the high point of the evening.

Neil Young made the mavericky move of playing a wide assortment of hits, which is never a given for him. "Hey Hey My My," "Powderfinger," "Heart of Gold" and "Everybody Knows this is Nowhere" were just a few of the fan favorites that mighty Neil pulled out of the hat. Someone standing near me was kind enough to film a few songs and post them on YouTube:

"Heart of Gold," MSG 12/16.08


"Cinnamon Girl," MSG 12/16.08


Neil being Neil, he also played a mini-set of songs devoted to his latest passion: biodiesel fuel. He also did a great-sounding version of The Beatles' "A Day in the Life." At least it sounded good on the phone message my friend left me - I had to leave the late-running show to catch a train, and I still didn't get home until 2. As David Letterman used to say, I was tired - but it was a good kind of tired.

Fleet Foxes' White Winter Hymnals

Our annual holiday gift-giving guide is back: Rock Turtleneck Stocking Stuffer Suggestions. #1: Fleet Foxes

Now that we are in the full throes of the Yuletide season, let's start with the most Chistmassy new rock song in many a moon: “White Winter Hymnal” by Fleet Foxes.

Fleet Foxes, who hail from Seattle and record for Sub Pop, are the farthest thing from grunge. Rather, they embrace tradition, harmony and classic songwriting. They make a glorious, pastoral noise that evokes The Band, The Shins, My Morning Jacket, Fairport Convention, Van Morrison, CSN, Smile-era Beach Boys and Belle and Sebastian, with perhaps just a pinch of Air Supply.

With its round structure (as in the rounds you sing in elementary school), “White Winter Hymal” is ideal music for coming into the house with an armful of seasoned logs for the fire, with the missus (or mister) waiting with a hot toddy to warm both body and spirit.

Their self-titled debut has rightly found itself atop many best-of-2008 lists and is a treat from start to finish. It’s an ideal stocking stuffer for these chilly times. And if it's your own iPod you're interested in stuffing, iTunes has the entire record for $7.99.

Herewith, the video for "White Winter Hymnal," as spiritual and odd as the song itself.

Fleet Foxes, “White Winter Hymnal”

Let Me Take You Down: The Beatles' Best Singles

The 28th anniversary of John Lennon's assassination coincides almost perfectly with the closing of the latest Rock Turtleneck poll (see above right), wherein voters were asked to name their favorite Beatles single.

It wasn't enough that the Beatles were routinely releasing the best albums ever recorded. They would also put out the greatest 45s ever recorded, and leave those songs off the albums. The 45s in the poll each had a "Lennon" song and a "McCartney" song, even though there was much collaboration between the two. We will concentrate on the Lennon clips. They also happen to be great pieces of rock filmmaking in their own right.

4th Place (10%): "Rain"
Easily the most underrated Beatles song (as this poll shows), this B-side to "Paperback Writer" is the axis upon which the moptop era and late-period Beatles rests. Musically, it bursts with innovation, from Macca’s upper-register bass playing, Ringo’s masterful drumming and the backward vocal loops that take the tune out at the end. Lyrically, it is most evocative of the trippy dippy LSD experience. The Beatles at their coolest, still innovating yet as tight-knit as they were in the Hamburg days. Oasis should pay the Fabs royalties for taking their sound from this song and their fashion sense from this video.


3rd Place (12%): "Day Tripper"
This song was a jab at the dillentante drug taking habits of the London crowd. A day tripper was a casual weekend drug user, as opposed to Lennon, who was pretty much high on something or other through the whole sixties. As with its flip side "We Can Work It Out" the songwriting and singing duties were pretty evenly split here betwixt John & Paul.


2nd Place (15%): "Revolution"
On the counsel of their buttoned-up (in public anyway) manager Brian Epstein, The Fabs shied away from overtly political material until this one screamed out of the gate in ’68 as the flip side to Macca's mammoth, epic "Hey Jude." The live performance below, from The David Frost Show (aka Frost/Lennon) is ferocious. Interesting to note that the Beatles are content to just stand there and rock rather than prance about like an out-of-the-closet rooster ala Mick Jagger.


1st Place (63%): "Strawberry Fields Forever"
Forty years later, it is still hard to make sense of this song. Musically and visually, they are like a completely different group than they were even a year earlier. Along with "A Day in the Life" and perhaps "Norwegian Wood" this is probably Lennon's finest hour. As a single the wildly experimental, surrealistic "Strawberry Fields" is contrasted perfectly by "Penny Lane" which was as bold a step forward in its pursuit of the perfect pop single. Even more amazingly, the songs are united conceptually as LSD-tinged reflections of childhood memories. Producer George Martin has said many times that his greatest professional regret is issuing this single for it meant that he had to leave them off Sgt. Pepper, which, as great as it is, could have used them.

Cheers, John, RIP and TCB.

R.I.P., Odetta

I didn't know much about Odetta other than she was a famous folk singer from the civil rights era and a huge influence on young Bob Dylan. (The first thing that turned me on to folk singing was Odetta.” Said Dylan, who added he heard something “vital and personal.”)

But after hearing of her death this week at the age of 77, I've checked out a few YouTube clips and her voice and presence are incredibly powerful. Odetta sang at the 1963 March on Washington, where Martin Luther King, Jr. gave his "I Have a Dream" speech. (Dylan performed as well.)

She was expected to perform at Barack Obama's innauguration in January, but sadly that nice bit of closure was not to be.

To learn more about Odetta, check out an interesting biography/interview from the New York Times website here.

Odetta's legendary album Ballads & Blues is available for download here on Amazon.com for a mere $4.99 for 20 tracks. I just purchased it and suggest you do the same. RIP and TCB, Odetta.

"Water Boy" (this clip was shown in the Dylan doc No Direction Home)



Short clip from Newport Folk Festival (Song Title anyone?)


On the Tavis Smiley Show, 2003


"Amazing Grace" 2003 Philly Folk Festival

Elvis' 1968 NBC TV Special: The King of Comebacks

Only a week or so after The White Album's 40th anniversary comes another: today is the 40th anniversary of Elvis Presley's Elvis's '68 Comeback Special. Truly one of the epic moments in rock and television, it was broadcast on NBC on December 3, 1968.

First conceived as a Christmas special, Elvis and directer Steve Binder decided it was time to TC/CB - Takin' Care of the ComeBack. So they transformed the show from a syrupy TV yule-yawn to an occasion for the King to reclaim his throne - and his relevance to the new generation.

In 1968, Elvis was pretty much absent from the music business. Under the Dick Cheney-like grip of Col. Tom Parker, Elvis cranked out one godawful film after another - Harum Scarum, Clambake, Double Trouble. All the kids were grooving on the Beatles, Dylan, Hendrix, the Stones, the Cream and the Doors. Musically, Elvis was about as relevant as Kip Winger is now.

That all changed on December 3. The King came out of the gate with a vengeance and looked fantastic - and assured the audience that if they were looking for trouble, they had come to the right place:

"Trouble"/"Guitar Man" (Opening Number)


The show featured one dazzling performance after another. Perhaps the most famous part of the special is the "unplugged" pit session with his original Sun Records band, including guitarist Scotty More and bassist Bill Black.

"Heartbreak Hotel"/"Baby What Do You Want Me to Do" (Pit Session)


The King of old, the King who changed the world was back, picking up where he left off when he joined the Army.

"Baby What Do You Want Me To Do" (Smokin' Electric Version)


With his crown firmly back on that beautifully coiffed head of his, the King took it home with perhaps his greatest moment ever: "If I Can Dream" a song that seemed to encapsulate everything that had happened in the world in 1968 yet somehow found the courage to keep its head up and look forward to tomorrow.

"If I Can Dream" (Grand Finale)


The '68 Comeback Special was the highest-rated TV special of 1968, seen by 42% of the TV viewing audience. (Take that, Hannah Montana!) And it kicked off a commercial and creative resurgence that included hits like "Suspicious Minds," "In the Ghetto" and "Burning Love."

RCA has just released The Complete '68 Comeback Special: 40th Anniversary Edition, containing full video and audio footage. You'll have a Blue Christmas without it.

Happy 40th Elvis. TCB.

It's Miller Time (That's Mrs. Miller To You, Whippersnapper!)

A recent issue of Rolling Stone counted down the 100 Greatest Singers of All Time.

The list, created from a poll of musicians and music writers (Rock Turtleneck was inexplicably not invited to vote), was surprisingly evenhanded and interesting. Sitting at the top of the list was the well deserved though slightly bold choice of Lady Soul, Aretha Franklin. Soul music was very well represented in the upper regions of the list, with Ray Charles, Otis Redding, Sam Cooke, James Brown all very near the top.

I was very surprised that Paul McCartney, easily the most versatile white rock singer, didn’t make the top 10 (he was #11), though his soulmate Yoko Lennon landed at #5. Other white dudes in the top 10 were RT icons Elvis Presley and Bob Dylan.

And if someone could explain to me how Patti Smith can make the list (#83), but not Chrissie Hynde or Mama Cass Elliot, I would appreciate it. (Actually, please don’t.)

Michael Stipe, who was also surprisingly left off the list, praises Smith by saying “She was just real gutteral” he says, “Like all the body noises you make.” A singer that evokes coughing, burping, farting and puking? At only #83?

The biggest most glaring omission from the top 100 was surely, the most operatic, most boldly idiosyncratic interpreter of popular song the world has ever seen: Mrs. Miller.

They say good artists borrow and great artists steal. Well Mrs. Miller carjacked her material during her heyday in the late 1960s. Her sense of rhythm was nonexistent, her timbre was seizure-inducing, and her phrasing should have been illegal. But that didn't stop her from selling 250,000 copies in three weeks of her cheekily titled debut album Mrs. Miller's Greatest Hits. Sadly, she passed away in 1996.

Back in the 90s during the Lounge Music resurgence, a friend gave me a Mrs. Miller compilation called Wild, Cool & Swingin.’ Luckily it is still in print. Once you have heard her “interpret” “Yellow Submarine,” “Moon River,” “Monday, Monday” and “Memphis,” you won’t be able to remember the originals. In fact you won’t be able to remember much at all, except perhaps the phone number for Poison Control.

My iTunes lists Mrs. Miller as “Easy Listening” but it is very much the opposite. Like seeing the Grand Canyon or Chernobyl, no words can capture the experience of hearing Mrs. Elva Miller do her thing. You have to experience it yourself. Hence the video and audio clips below.

To learn more about this neglected artist, visit mrsmillersworld.com.

Mrs. Miller, "It's Magic"


Jimmy Durante & Mrs. Miller: "Inky Dinky Duet"


Mrs. Miller mp3s
Kick your next party into high gear - or clear the premises:
"Yellow Submarine"
"A Hard Day's Night"
"I've Got a Tiger by the Tail"
"Memphis"