Cheers to the Royals

With the royal wedding betwixt Prince William and the lovely commoner Kate Middleton on many a mind, it seemed like a good time to remind the world what real royalty looks like, courtesy of the following picture sent to the RT offices by contributor at large Dan Cassidy.


Without knowing exactly where and when this picture was taken, it's quite obviously from the 70s. Bob Dylan holds court with Paul and Linda McCartney and Cher and then-beau Gregg Allman. Dylan's wife Sara sits in the background, looking for a way out. I'm guessing it's an LA nightclub, perhaps after a Wings show. Lord knows what they talked about but I'm guessing after a few cocktails it went something like this:

Bob: I wrote "Blowin' in the Wind."
Paul: I wrote "Yesterday." "Hey Jude" too.
Gregg: I wrote "Whippin' Post."
Cher: I wrote "Half Breed."
Bob: That song your ex wrote sounds just like me - what's it called again?
Cher: "I Got You Babe?"
Bob: You know what I should have gotten, babe? Royalties.

Cheers to Kate and William. I will not be rising with the Beefeaters for the betrothal but I hope it is smashing and brilliant, babe. Let's send out a long-distance dedication across the pond with Sonny & Cher's brilliant Dylan rip "I Got You Babe."


CORRECTION: One of RT's legions of readers correctly pointed out that I had Sara Dylan and Cher backwards in this photo. Of course this completely changes the meaning of the photo, but as the man said, Don't Look Back.

Need More Mumford? Check Out Their Dharohar Project EP

A few weeks ago, I was telling my friend Indy Chandrachud how much I was enjoying Mumford & Sons' Sigh No More, but how I needed more Mumford, right this very minute.

Indy, a very sage and learned man who left his native India to devote his life to junk mail, told me to look no further than the iTunes Store, where I could find one of the most satisfying collaborations between Indian & Western musicians since The Beatles traded their Rickenbackers for Rishikesh.


The Dharohar Project is a live, four-track EP recorded by the trio of Mumford & Sons, the folk artist and Mumford touring buddy Laura Marling, and The Dharohar Project, described on Marling's website as a "traditional Rajasthani folk collective." Last July, they recorded a show for the iTunes Festival at the Roundhouse in London. Unlike a lot of group jams, like the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame all-star finales, this was not a clusterf*ck and actually resulted in some fine, fascinating music.

This track, called "Devil's Spoke/Sneh Ko Marg," manages to incorporate all three artists and somehow seems to give them each a 33 1/3 influence on the track.


"To Darkness," meanwhile, features the distinctive, yearning vocals of Marcus Mumford backed with haunting, evocative Indian wind instruments.


Take a stand for global brotherhood and get this fine EP for a measly $3.96, less than a Venti Vindaloo Latte at Starbucks.

Buy The Mumford & Sons/Laura Marling/Dhoarohar Project EP on iTunes here

For fine Indian cuisine, visit Indy Chandrachud's world-famous food blog Adhi Potoba

Happy Easter: Mumford & Sons Roll Away Your Stone

Today Rock Turtleneck celebrates Easter Sunday with Mumford & Sons' "Roll Away Your Stone."

It seems appropriate not only because the title of the tune refers to Jesus Christ coming back from the dead but because, with their timeless songs and fiery intensity, Mumford & Sons is quickly gaining a deity-like status in the music world.


To paraphrase the esteemed theologian Jeff Spicoli, "What these Mumford dudes are saying is 'Hey! We need to rise up from our waking slumbers and roll away our own stones — pronto — or we'll just be bogus, too - yay?.'"


Mumford & Sons' breakout record Sigh No More is already a classic, one of the best LPs by anyone in recent years. Their songs are rooted in chords and harmonies that are tied to this mighty earth and will remain long after we have all returned to the soil.

Since the stone in question is presumably in a cave, let's go out with the English lads' video for "The Cave," the tune the boys performed so memorably on the Grammy Awards this year. Is it just me or is the video a not-so-subtle nod to the Beatles films Help! and Yellow Submarine?


Happy Easter!

Buy Sigh No More on iTunes here

Dowd Think Twice, It's Alright: Maureen Dowd's Misguided Dylan Column

On Sunday, the New York Times columnist Maureen Dowd wrote a column called “Blowin’ in the Idiot Wind” criticizing Bob Dylan’s first-ever concerts in China.

Dylan should be ashamed of himself, wrote the redheaded firebrand, because he allowed his set list to be pre-approved by the Chinese government, and because he did not play his protest-era anthems “Blowin’ in the Wind” and “The Times They Are A-Changin’”. As she wrote, "He sang his censored set, took his pile of Communist cash and left."


While I am opposed to censorship as well, and greatly admire Ms. Dowd's razor-sharp pen, It amazes me that 50 years later, the media establishment still look to Dylan — and seemingly, only Dylan — to break down the walls of oppression in this world, something which he has repeatedly said was never a goal of his. Besides, it's easy to see without looking too far that protest songs don't really change things much.

MLK, Gandhi and all those cats knew that real change is made within the system. Dylan, by letting the Chinese pre=screen his song selection, knows he has five or six hundred other musical trojan horses from which to choose, many with more barbed lyrics than the anthems Dowd pined for. He played some of these tunes in China, including “Gonna Change My Way of Thinking,” “Ballad of a Thin Man” and “All Along the Watchtower.” His setlists were perfectly representative of anything one would find at any stop on his never-ending tour.

Besides, anyone who has seen Zimmerman live in the past 20 or so years knows he drastically arranges his songs in concert, and his singing often borders on the incomprehensible. Add the fact that it's in a foreign language and suddenly his song selection doesn't seem so crucial.

Perhaps he did in fact play "Blowin' in the Wind," in Beijing, only with new lyrics and a different arrangement. (Here’s a nice, straight-ahead version from the 1971 Concert for Bangladesh)

İzleyin:

The so-called “protest” genre makes up a tiny fraction of the Dylan oevere. The only people who think of Dylan as a Protest Singer are those who never made it past Bob Dylan’s Greatest Hits. Go into records like John Wesley Harding, Blood on the Tracks and Time Out of Mind to hear Dylan rail against false prophets, dying love and bodily decay, among many other things.

By insisting that Dylan has compromised himself or his brethren by going easy on his most obvious material playing seems awfully oppressive in itself. One wonders if a 1965 Dowd column would have said Dylan had "broken creative new ground in selling out" when he abandoned his acoustic for a Stratocaster at the Newport Folk Festival.


Dylan played a stately version “The Times They Are A-Changin’” not long ago at a command performance for the Obamas at the White House. It is my guess that he would have avoided these tunes in China anyway, simply because they were expected of him.

Watch the full episode. See more In Performance at The White House.

Perhaps the Pulitzer Prize-winning Ms. Dowd should familiarize herself with a line in another Dylan protest-era classic (which he did play in China) “A Hard Rain’s A-Gonna Fall”: “I’ll know my song well before I start singin.’” Ooh snap!
Bob Dylan - A Hard Rain's a-gonna fall

Vezi mai multe video din muzica

Talking Heads Don't Worry About the Government (And Neither Should You)

With the US government on the brink of a shutdown, a soupcon of sardonic sarcasm is in order. What better than “Don’t Worry About the Government” from Takling Heads' genius debut LP ‘77?

“Don’t Worry About the Government” is not about games of budgetary Chicken per se; rather, it seems to be a comment on what people today refer to as the Nanny State, where the government caters to your every need to lull one into a false sense of security, not unlike an apartment building that has every convenience to keep your dishes clean and the air at just the right temperature and humidity level, and where relaxation is the most desirable state of man.

I see the states, across this big nation
I see the laws made in Washington, D.C.
I think of the ones I consider my favorites
I think of the people that are working for me

Some civil servants are just like my loved ones
They work so hard and they try to be strong
I'm a lucky guy to live in my building
They own the buildings to help them along

It's over there, it's over there
My building has every convenience
It's gonna make life easy for me
It's gonna be easy to get things done
I will relax along with my loved ones

Here are David, Tina, Chris & Jerry doing the tune on the Old Grey Whistle Test, a repository for many of the best filmed performances of late 70s/early 80s legends.


I am not going to get up on a soapbox to take sides but will point out that if the government does indeed shut down, all government employess, such as people who work in parks and municipal offices, will stop getting paid, as will the unemployed. But the paychecks of the members of Congress will continue to clear as always. So don't worry.

More importantly, Talking Heads ‘77 is one of the great debuts of all time. Get it on iTunes here.

Unhappy Kurt Day: Cobain 17 Years Later

The 12 hours or so of euphoria I felt after watching my alma-mater UConn Huskies take the national championiship in Men's basketball dissipated in an instant when a friend reminded me it was the 17th anniversary of the suicide of Kurt Cobain.

Suddenly the grimness of that horrible day came flooding back - the grey Seattle sky, the curt (pardon the expression) news reading of MTV's Kurt Loder, the endless loop of Nirvana's eerie Unplugged performance. Suddenly it was 1994 all over again.

Then I realized that today, April 5, is the anniversary of Cobain's actual suicide, based on witness testimony and forensic evidence. As Nirvana fans know all too well, Kurt's last days are filled with unsolved mystery and tragedy. The day we all heard the news was April 8, when the Cobain's electrician saw one of Kurt's Converse All-Stars peeking out through the window of the room above their suburban Seattle garage and instead of calling 911, called the local radio station.

Thus Kurt Day is the grunge version of Martin Luther King Day, which is always celebrated on a Monday, regardless of when January 15th falls on the calendar. Or something like that.

Unlike the life of MLK, Kurt's crippling depression, drug addiction and seemingly inevitable suicide are not events to celebrate.

What is worth celebrating is the fire in his sprit that created the best rock music of my generation. People talk about the titans of classic rock and say "they don't make 'em like that anymore." Well, occasionally, they do, and with Kurt, they did. Just as a pure rock & roll singer, his power and vulnerability put him right up there with Lennon, Jagger, Plant, et al.


I had the good fortune to catch Nirvana live at the New York Colliseum in the fall of 1993, the same weekend they filmed their Unplugged show. One could feel the greatness and the foreboding in the air right from the start of their opener "Radio-Friendly Unit Shifter":


As the show ended with wails of feedback that sounded like the worst storm you ever heard, I remember thinking that there was no way this could last. But I never expected things to end the way they did. (You can read a fine account of this show written by friend and fellow attendee Doug at his great new site All Exits Final here.)

RIP and TCB KC, you are missed. Let's go out with Nirvana's funny-but-not live-in-the-studio cover of Terry Jacks' "Seasons in the Sun."


Get yer Nirvana on iTunes here

Radiohead Brilliantly Experiment with Sucking on New LP King of Limbs

Radiohead has taken perhaps their most brilliantly challenging move yet with their new LP King of LImbs: flat-out sucking.

Rock Turtleneck met up with Thom Yorke in a macrobiotic think tank not far from his English country manor.

“We felt like we’d done everything at this point... Mingus-inspired jazz, acoustic electronica, sweeping operatic themes, gangsta polka, hip-hop dubstep, you name it” said Yorke. “But every time we tried to alienate our fan base further, a haunting melody or increidble guitar break would draw them back in. It was very frustrating.”

Our goal of making a record that was unenjoyable in an uninteresting way from start to finish - something that flat-out sucked - had thus far eluded us. With King of LImbs, we’ve done it.”

"We took all the elements people love about Radiohead - guitars, drums, humans, melodies and lyrics, and tossed them in the proverbial dumpster, so only the songs remained," recalled Yorke as he sucked on a lemon. "Then we threw those out, too."

Yorke sent the band home and went on holiday himself, and dispatched his young daughter to program the rhythm tracks using a prototype of Apple’s $4.99 GarageBand iPad app.


“Radiohead is in a position now where if we make a record people hate, it’s the fan’s fault, not ours," said Yorke. "If you don’t like it, it’s only because you are not willing to put in the ear-time to break down our cachophonous polyrhythms and anti-melodic nods to realpolitik flyers from the Russian Revolution.”

Sure enough, the record is being hailed as a masterpiece by drinkers of Radiohead’s hard-to-swallow Kool-Aid.

“It’s pure genius plain and simple” said Todd Wanker of the Radiohead-worshipping music site Pitchfork. “By making the worst album of their career, they’ve made the best album of their career. Thom Yorke could make an album of him flossing and it would be brilliant. In fact I think he flosses thorughout much of "Feral,"


"Then instead of giving away a great album for free like they did with In Rainbows, they overcharged for a shitty one. If that’s not post-millenial irony, I don’t know what is,” he said with a self-satisfied smirk.

“Let me explain to you why thiis record is brilliant - how much time do you have?” said Wanker, who has no spouse, pets or friends and makes his living tweeting about microblogging.

Buy King of LImbs on iTunes here