Bob Dylan’s best songs – It Ain’t Me Babe – #46

March 31, 2013 Egil 1 Comment

You know, It Ain’t Me Babe was on the radio the other day and it never really occurred to me how different it was as a hit to how it was in my repertoire.
~Bob Dylan (to Adrian Deevoy, Oct 1989)

Save for a faux-reggae arrangement ten years on—one of the absolute highlights of the Renaldo and Clara film—the song has usually relied on the sparsest of acoustic accompaniments in live performance, often serving as a set closer, which tempts one to suggest it addresses the audience—specifically that element that wants the man to stay the same. That ain’t him.
~Clinton Heylin (Revolution in the air)

@ #46 on my list of Dylan’s 200 best songs. Recorded on June 9th, 1964 @ Columbia Studios – NYC. This was the one & only recording session for “Another Side of Bob Dylan”

“It Ain’t Me Babe” is a song by Bob Dylan that originally appeared on his fourth album Another Side of Bob Dylan, which was released in 1964 by Columbia Records. The song, along with others on the album, marked a departure for Dylan as he began to explore the possibilities of language and deeper levels of the human experience. Within a year of its release, the song was picked up as a single by artists who were forging the folk rock movement, including The Turtles and The Byrds.
Wikipedia

Go ’way from my window
Leave at your own chosen speed
I’m not the one you want, babe
I’m not the one you need

Spotify:

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Great albums, List, Live, MC5, Rock

30 Best live albums countdown: 22 – Kick out the Jams by MC5

March 31, 2013 Hallgeir 3 Comments

MC5-1969-Kick-Out-The-Jams

“And right now, right now, right now it’s time to… kick out the jams, motherfuckers!”

Let’s continue with my countdown of 30 the best live albums ever, at 22 I have MC5‘s ferocious Kick Out The Jams.

I was into punk when I grew up, and not metal. There were two camps in our little town when I grew up. When us punk fans listened to Detroit music, we listened to The Stooges. When the metal kids listened to Detroit music, they listened to Kiss. MC5 were something in the middle, to me they are the ancestors of both punk-and metal music. Their attitude was punk and their riffs were the inspiration of many metal bands. Together with Detroit sparring partners The Stooges, The Motor City Five were truly an anomaly in the peace-and-love hippy climate of 1967.

Kick out the Jams (1970):

And they looked great!
MC5 bare chested

…and the borders between the genres have blurred since my childhood, I now like good music no matter what genre or where it comes from.

On new years eve in 1968, MC5 recorded this earthquake , this thunderstorm, Kick Out The Jams. Not everyone’s new year, but the followers of Zenta, The religion of MC5. To us who have no religin or who has other beliefs and follows the ordinary calendar, it was recorded at the Grande Ballroom in Detroit on the Halloween weekend, 30. and 31. October. It was released in February 1969, through Elektra Records.

I know, they were a special group of people…
MC5 Concert Poster

MC5 was formed by their time, the Vietnam War and the social changes, this was garage rock with a rage not known to anybody before (and very rarely since). The guitars acted as assault weapons in their war against conformity.

John Sinclair (poet) was instrumental in leading the MC5 into creating the soundtrack for the new party The White Panther Party, which had the fitting slogan: “Rock’n Roll, dope and fucking in the streets”.

Video where John Sinclair is reading the liner notes from the album:

This was danger caught on vinyl!
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Blues, Music Calendar

Today: Eric Clapton is 68

March 30, 2013 Egil

I am, and always will be, a blues guitarist.
~Eric Clapton

“I found my God in music and the arts, with writers like Hermann Hesse, and musicians like Muddy Waters, Howlin’ Wolf, and Little Walter. In some way, in some form, my God was always there, but now I have learned to talk to him.”
~Eric Clapton

….Paul Simon writes great songs. George Harrison great songs, a lot of people, Eric Clapton produces wonderful music.
~Bob Dylan (Press Conference, July 1981)

Robbie Robertson inducts Eric Clapton Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in 2000:

Layla:

Birth name	Eric Patrick Clapton
Also known as	Slowhand
Born	March 30, 1945 (age 68) Ripley, Surrey, England, UK
Genres	Rock, blues rock, psychedelic rock, hard rock
Occupations	Musician, singer-songwriter, record producer, artist
Instruments	Vocals, guitar, piano, mandolin
Years active	1962–present

Eric Patrick Clapton, CBE, (born 30 March 1945) is an English guitarist and singer-songwriter. He is the only three-time inductee to the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame: once as a solo artist, and separately as a member of The Yardbirds and Cream. Clapton has been referred to as one of the most important and influential guitarists of all time. Clapton ranked second in Rolling Stone magazine’s list of the “100 Greatest Guitarists of All Time” and fourth in Gibson’s Top 50 Guitarists of All Time.

In the mid-1960s, Clapton departed from the Yardbirds to play blues with John Mayall & the Bluesbreakers. In his one-year stay with Mayall, Clapton gained the nickname “Slowhand”. Immediately after leaving Mayall, Clapton joined Cream, a power trio with drummer Ginger Baker and bassist Jack Bruce in which Clapton played sustained blues improvisations and “arty, blues-based psychedelic pop.” For most of the 1970s, Clapton’s output bore the influence of the mellow style of J.J. Cale and the reggae of Bob Marley. His version of Marley’s “I Shot the Sheriff” helped reggae reach a mass market. Two of his most popular recordings were “Layla”, recorded by Derek and the Dominos, another band he formed, and Robert Johnson’s “Crossroads”, recorded by Cream. Following the death of his son Conor in 1991, Clapton’s grief was expressed in the song “Tears in Heaven”, which featured in his Unplugged album.

Tears in heaven (live 1999, NYC)

A recipient of seventeen Grammy Awards, and the Brit Award for Outstanding Contribution to Music, in 2004 Clapton was awarded a CBE at Buckingham Palace for services to music. In 1998, Clapton, a recovering alcoholic and drug addict, founded the Crossroads Centre on Antigua, a medical facility for recovering substance abusers.

Wikipedia

John Mayall’s Bluesbreakers – All Your Love:

Album of the day

Slowhand (1977)

Other March 30:

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Cover versions

Norah Jones sings Bob Dylan, Happy Birthday Norah

March 30, 2013 Hallgeir 3 Comments

Happy birthday Norah Jones!

Wikipedia:

Norah Jones is the daughter of Indian sitar player Ravi Shankar and Sue Jones. She is also Anoushka Shankar’s half-sister.

In 2002, she launched her solo music career with the release of the commercially successful and critically acclaimed album Come Away with Me, a fusion of jazz, pop, and country music, which was certified diamond album, selling over 26 million copies. The record earned Jones five Grammy Awards, including theAlbum of the Year, Record of the Year, and Best New Artist. Her subsequent studio albums, Feels Like Home, released in 2004, Not Too Late, released in 2007, the same year she made her film debut in My Blueberry Nights, and her 2009 release The Fall all gained Platinum status, selling over a million copies and were generally well received by critics. Jones’ fifth studio album, Little Broken Hearts, was released on April 27, 2012.

Jones has won nine Grammy Awards and was 60th on Billboard magazine’s artists of the 2000–2009 decade chart. Throughout her career, Jones has won numerous awards and has sold more than 50 million albums worldwide. Billboard named her the top jazz artist of the 2000–2009 decade.

We really like Norah Jones, we especially like it when she does Country music and of course when she sing the songs of our hero Bob Dylan. We have trawled the web to find some of her great cover versions.

Lets start with a duet, here she sings I Shall Be Released with the man himself, Bob Dylan:

Forever Young at a celebration of Steve Jobs
Live Apple Event, October 19, 2011:

“I know he really liked Bob Dylan”

I’ll Be Your Baby Tonight done very well by the birthday woman, Norah Jones:

Norah Jones covers Just Like a Woman at Dylanfest. May 28, 2010 at the Bowery Ballroom:

Every Grain Of Sand at Dylanfest 2011:

Heart of Mine (Spotify):

– Hallgeir

Elvis Presley, Music Calendar, The Best Songs

Today: Elvis Presley recorded Always on my Mind in 1972

March 29, 2013 Hallgeir

Always on my Mind is seldom considered among the best of Elvis’ 70’s output, but if you ask me it’s at the top of the list. The recording sessions was great, it included Burnin Love and For the good times. I almost cry when I listen to it, it embodies everything, everything I love about Elvis, heartbreak, slow ballads, emphathy and true feelings. What a voice!

Peter Guralnick writes in his book Careless Love:

The trouble was, he (Elvis) wasn’t interested in cutting a hit record. “He was trying to get something out of his system.”

…

On the second night Felton finally got his way, but he was under no illusion that Elvis was doing it for any other reason than to indulge his producer. With encouragement from Joe Esposito and Jerry Schilling, and with Charlie pounding away on acoustic guitar, they got a good, energetic version of “Burning love”, the song Felton had brought to the session, but it was tossed off in six quick takes, in almost throwaway style, and everyone could see that Elvis’ heart wasn’t really in it. They kept working till four in the morning but got only one more song that night and two the following night, including “Always on my mind”…

Elvis seems very wore down after his divorce from Pricilla and in no mood for Rock’n Roll, but he really let it all out in this great ballad.

Maybe I didn’t love you
Quite as often as I could have
Maybe I didn’t treat you
Quite as good as I should have
If I made you feel second best
Girl I’m sorry I was blind

Always on my mind recorded by Elvis:

The feeling embodied in that song is tremendous, how a man can put this much feeling into a song is hard to conceive!

Here’s another version recorded by Elvis on the 29th of March in 1972:

From Wikipedia:

“Always on My Mind” is an American country music song by Johnny Christopher, Mark James and Wayne Carson.

Elvis Presley recorded his version of “Always on My Mind” on March 29, 1972, a few weeks after his February separation from wifePriscilla. The song was released as the B-side of the “Separate Ways” single, which reached Gold status in the U.S for sales of over half a million copies. It was listed as a double sided hit reaching number 16 on Billboard magazine’s Hot Country Singles chart in November 1972. In the UK “Always on My Mind” was the hit song and “Separate Ways” was the B-side.

Other Mar-29:

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