Vital Viewing (What a Way to Make a Living Edition)

 

1946-2026

 Dolly Parton explains the above look and more to the last person you'd think would be interviewing Dolly Parton (but he's welcome to nonetheless), 60 Minutes' Morely Safer:

Yes, it's true, during her long career Dolly was never afraid to show a bit of...

Get it?

While I'm sure Dolly got a nice check for putting her name on that product, the in-some-ways secret of her success was her musical artistry, a musical artistry that ultimately transcended the self-professed silliness. Here are two of my favorite examples:

I'm not sure which is closer to the stratosphere, Dolly's wig or Porter Waggoner's pompadour.

Finally, though Dolly insisted she patterned her look after the town tramp, some in the LGBTQ community can be excused for wondering if she got her inspiration elsewhere:

She didn't seem to mind the comparison.

 

Vital Viewing (Lost Causes Edition)

 

There's nothing worse than the end of a romance.

Except for maybe war, debilitating illnesses, natural disasters, famine, molestation, homelessness, political corruption, environmental destruction, genocide, etc.

But I digress:

Oh, so sad! Is there any way a positive spin can be put on this?

Tomorrow is another day.

1939-2026

Quips and Quotations (Everybody's Learning How Edition)

 

1942-2025

I wasn't aware those early songs defined California so well until much later in my career. I certainly didn't set out to do it. I wasn't into surfing at all. My brother Dennis gave me all the jargon I needed to write the songs. He was the surfer and I was the songwriter.

--Brian Wilson

(Looks like surf's down--Kirk)

Different Folks

 

Time out for some old school DEI:

Sly Stone 1943-2025

Vital Viewing (Twangbanger Edition)

1938-2024

Guitarist Duane Eddy became an early rock and roll star solely on the strength of his electrifying guitar instrumentals. As Eddy himself once said "One of my biggest contributions to the music business was not singing."

He wasn't much of a talker either:

 In the above interview, Eddy mentions a big swordfish he had caught, but I bet it wasn't as big as the one caught by...

...Jerry Lewis.

But I digress. Here's one of Eddy's biggest hits:

Eddy came out with "Rebel-Rouser" in 1958, yet the above video looks like it's from about ten years later, if that one girl whose hair is dancing as much as her feet is any indication. Shows you just how well Eddy's sound fit into a musical era quite different from the one in which he emerged. I mean, I can't imagine Bill Haley or Carl Perkins in such a raucous 1960s setting.

Composer Henry Mancini fit in with both the 1950s and 1960s, mainly because his audience wasn't composed primarily of teenagers. After all, parents were still spending money on records, if not quite as much money as were their kids. Yet as someone whose music would one day be categorized as "easy-listening", Mancini was one of the more forward-looking composers of his era. No more so than when he came up with the opening jazz-and-rock-tinged theme to the 1950s TV detective show Peter Gunn. Duane Eddy must have taken notice, as he recorded his own version in 1960 that charted at #27. However, the story doesn't end there. In 1986, he re-recorded the song with the British alternative synth-pop band Art of Noise, and that version was a worldwide hit. Watch and listen as Eddy and his advant-garde friends perform the Gunn theme in front of a live audience in Nashville:

Noir rocks!

Quips and Quotations (What Happens in Vegas, Stays in Vegas Edition)

 

We experienced music in the same visceral way. Music ignited a fiery pent-up passion inside Elvis and inside me. It was an odd, embarrassing, funny, inspiring, and wonderful sensation. We looked at each other move and saw virtual mirror images. When Elvis thrust his pelvis, mine slammed forward too. When his shoulder dropped, I was down there with him. When he whirled, I was already on my heel.

--Ann-Margret

Elvis Presley confided in me soon after he did Viva Las Vegas with Ann-Margret that he was considering marrying her. I'm not implying that anything untoward ever occurred between them, but they had marvelous chemistry. But soon after that, I think he might have had it read to him from a review, he heard Ann-Margret described as "a female Elvis," and Elvis reacted negatively. To his mind, it was vaguely homosexual! Whether that's what cooled his feelings for Ann-Margret or not, I don't know.

--Bobby Darin

Quips and Quotations (Gathering Moss Edition)

...just none of them were articulate on this intellectual level...I mean, they just didn't articulate on this level.

--Jann Wenner, when asked why there are no women or persons of color in his upcoming book of interviews with rock musicians.

It was this--the radical conventionality of Rolling Stone--that was Jann Wenner's most important innovation. When he stamped the whole package with a psychedelic logo designed by poster artist Rick Griffin--the curled ligatures and looping serifs unmistakable signifiers of dope-peddling head shops on Haight-Ashbury--he instantly legitimized and mainstreamed the underground.

Wenner had never been, exactly, a revolutionary. He wanted to overthrow the establishment by becoming the establishment. The establishment, meanwhile, wanted a taste of the new fame and glamour that Rolling Stone was charting.

Pincered between disco and punk, Wenner defaulted to what did sell: Hollywood celebrities and 1960s-era rock icons of the kind he had been putting on the cover since 1967.

Wenner's biases and machinations--his success--had made him the gatekeeper of the history of rock and roll. And the next step was to build an institution out of it--literally, an edifice--over which he could preside...he was fashioning himself into the architect of rock's shining city on the hill: the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame.

It was a man’s magazine, though women read it; it was a white magazine, though African Americans were fetishized in it.

--Joe Hagan, Sticky Fingers: The Life and Times of Jann Wenner and Rolling Stone Magazine

 

In the future the pantheon will be decentralized.

--Richard Brody

Quips and Quotations (Nowhere to Go but Up Edition)

 

...the perception of the song's meaning got a little bit changed for a lot of people. It's a very spiritual song. 'Dream Weaver' is really a song whose lyrical content is about the consciousness of the Universe: God moving us through the night – delusion and suffering – into the Higher Realms

--Gary Wright

1943-2023

Vital Viewing (Gulf Coasting Edition)

 

1946-2023

Soft rock? Folk rock? Country rock? Given the laid-back imagery his songs often evoked, a cynic might contend that Jimmy Buffett's musical specialty was in fact slacker rock, but that would be unfair.

 

Like the rest of us (above), Buffett worked hard for the money:

Whether it be eight hours in a factory, an office, or a recording studio, a person at the end of their shift feels pretty exhausted, at which point they could use some...

...PROTEIN!!!

And once your stomach is filled, there's nothing like a...

...little after-dinner drink:

How about a twelve-step program as an encore?

 

Next quarter maybe.

Let's let Buffett speak for himself:

As you just saw, the above clip had to do with a show in California, but that's not the state most readily identified with Jimmy Buffett. Nor was it his native Mississippi. Instead, it's this place:

OK, I know what you're thinking...

...but don't blame Buffett, a lifelong Democrat.

Vital Viewing (Pushing the Encycle Edition)

 

Remember this?

Sinead O'Connor's confession to Dr. Phil:

Now let's hear what one-time Saturday Night Live bandleader G.E. Smith has to say about the whole brouhaha:

Well, of course Smith is going to defend O'Connor. Those hedonistic show biz types all stick together. But what about the damage done to the Roman Catholic Church?

It somehow survived.

In fact, at times the Roman Catholic Church's survival skills are damn near miraculous.

But back to Sinead:

She could have been singing about herself.

1966-2023

Quips and Quotations (Know the Brill Edition)

 

I wanted to write for Broadway.

--Lyricist Cynthia Weil, who with husband Barry Mann wrote over 80 songs that charted on the Billboard Top 100, and 25 or so that reached the Top 40, including this one that reached No. 1 in 1965:

As for wanting to write for the Great White Way, Weil at least got to write ABOUT the Great White Way, this song reaching No. 9 in 1963:

1940-2023

Quips and Quotations (Better Be Good to Her Edition)

 

 And I won’t stop until I get that respect. I may not ever get it completely, because my life has been too hard so far. But I’ve gotten a taste of what that respect is probably like, and I like it. I may not be able to get that class, because I didn’t act my life, I lived it. I am Tina Turner. I am raunchy. But I know I’m a lady and that deep inside of me there’s a craving for class. I know I’m accepted, but what I always wanted was the principal’s daughters’ world. And maybe that was my lesson in life...Maybe I had to learn something from wanting that and then not being able to have it.

--Tina Turner

  

1939-2023

Photo Finish (Everyday People Edition)

 

Then we saw the blanket--“Oh my lord, that’s us!”

--Nick Ercoline, unaware for an entire year until the album came out that photographer Burk Uzzle had snapped a picture of him and his girlfriend--later his wife--Bobbi at some point during the famous 1969 three-day music festival. Bobbi Ercoline, 73, died last week after a year-long illness. 

Quips and Quotations (Counterculture Coiffure Edition)

 

1941-2023

I come from a school of people, folk singers, and the tradition there is troubadours, and you're carrying a message. Admittedly, our job is partly just to make you boogie, just make you want to dance. Part of our job is to take you on a little voyage, tell you a story. But part of our job is to communicate the way a town crier did: It's 12:00 and all is well, or it's 11:30 and the whole Congress is sold. It's part of the job.

--David Crosby

Establishment bitch!

Quips and Quotations (What Hath Ben Franklin Wrought Edition)

 

1944-2023

I was interested in the electric guitar even before I knew the difference between electric and acoustic. The electric guitar seemed to be a totally fascinating plank of wood with knobs and switches on it. I just had to have one.

--Jeff Beck

Someone told me I should be proud tonight... But I'm not, because they kicked me out... They did... Fuck them!

--Jeff Beck, upon being inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame with the rest of the Yardbirds.

 We have a love-hate relationship. He loves me and I hate him

--Jeff Beck, speech inducting Rod Stewart, who sang lead on "You Shook Me", into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame.

    

Jeff could channel music from the ethereal. His technique unique. His imaginations apparently limitless.

--Jimmy Page

Quips and Quotations (Fleetwood Forget-Me-Not Edition)

I sang and played keyboard, so I was virtually a statue at the back of the stage. I’m not complaining about that; I enjoyed that role.

--Christine McVie

1943-2022