We have found four shows by The Jam (2), The Style Council and Paul Weller solo, they are all very, very good! I shouldn’t pick one of them but the greatest revelation is The Style Council’s set at the Roskilde Festival in 1985, it is just so good, they often get a bad rap but this proves that they were a great live band!
A short but sweet set from The Jam in Paris in 1981:
The Jam at Bingley Hall in 1982, an effing great show!
The Style Council – Live Roskilde Festival 1985:
From Paul Weller’s solo career we have chosen a great set from 2010 in Sidney were he mixes old Jam/Style Council stuff with his solo material:
Great new video with Gary Oldman and Marie Cottilard brings a religious feast to a halt in this, kind of not safe for work, video.
Bowie as a Christ like figure sings from a stage in a church while women without too many clothes dance around – until one of them, played by Marie Cotillard, develops stigmata.
“The lyric was all to do with the dual combination of drugs and girls. This song was a very instant thing, a definite high point.”
– Mick Jagger
“I’ve got a new one myself. No words yet, but a few words in my head – called Brown Sugar – about a woman who screws one of her black servants. I started to call it Black Pussy but I decided that was too direct, too nitty-gritty.” – Mick Jagger (1969, The True Adventures of Rolling Stones by Stanley Booth)
Brown Sugar is the opening track and lead single from their 1971 album Sticky Fingers. Rolling Stone magazine ranked it #495 on their list of the 500 Greatest Songs of All Time and at #5 on their list of the 100 Greatest Guitar Songs of All Time.
The group sings the lyric with all the enthusiasm of tongue-wagging dogs swooping onto a prime rib, leading up to one of the band’s strongest shout-along choruses. As on other Stones classics of the period like “Honky Tonk Women” and “Bitch,” beefy horns start to duel with the buzzing electric guitars in the instrumental break; few if any other groups have used guitars and horns as deftly in unison. The crowning embellishment is the final choruses, which vary the melody and tempo so that the group sings and make a high-pitched exclamation in a rhythm that very much resembles that of a sexual climax.
It is credited, like most of their songs, to Mick Jagger and Keith Richards, but the song was primarily the work of Jagger, who wrote it sometime during the filming of Ned Kelly in 1969.
Brown Sugar from the fantastic concert film Ladies and Gentlemen (1972):
This version of the song features Mick Jagger on vocals, Keith Richards and Mick Taylor on guitar, Charlie Watts on drums, Bill Wyman on bass, Nick Hopkins on piano, Bobby Keys on saxophone, and Jim Price on horns.
Brown Sugar, Lyrics:
Gold coast slave ship bound for cotton fields,
Sold in a market down in new orleans.
Scarred old slaver know he’s doin alright.
Hear him whip the women just around midnight.
Ah brown sugar how come you taste so good
(a-ha) brown sugar, just like a young girl should
A-huh.
Drums beating, cold english blood runs hot,
Lady of the house wondrin where it’s gonna stop.
House boy knows that he’s doin alright.
You should a heard him just around midnight.
Ah brown sugar how come you taste so good
(a-ha) brown sugar, just like a black girl should
A-huh.
I bet your mama was a tent show queen, and all her boy
Friends were sweet sixteen.
Im no schoolboy but I know what I like,
You should have heard me just around midnight.
Ah brown sugar how come you taste so good
(a-ha) brown sugar, just like a young girl should.
I said yeah, I said yeah, I said yeah, I said
Oh just like a, just like a black girl should.
I hate to see that evening sun go down I hate to see that evening sun go down ‘Cause, my baby, he’s gone left this town
Released in 1929, St. Louis Blues is a short film featuring blues legend Bessie Smith and an all-African-American cast. Songwriter W.C. Handy was the musical director of the film. To my knowledge it is Bessie Smith’s only known film appearance.
Bessie Smith – St. Louis Blues (Smith’s performance):
The power and pure feeling in her singing voice as she belts out the title track of the movie St. Louis Blues is incredible.
Wikipedia:
“Saint Louis Blues” is a popular American song composed by W. C. Handy in the blues style. It remains a fundamental part of jazz musicians’ repertoire. It was also one of the first blues songs to succeed as a pop song. It has been performed by numerous musicians of all styles from Louis Armstrong and Bessie Smith to Count Basie, Glenn Miller, Guy Lombardo, and the Boston Pops Orchestra. It has been called “the jazzman’s Hamlet“. Published in September 1914 by Handy’s own company, it later gained such popularity that it inspired the dance step the “Foxtrot”.
The version with Bessie Smith and Louis Armstrong on cornet was inducted in the Grammy Hall of Fame in 1993.
The Movie, St. Louis Blues (it’s a two-reel short).
Bessie Smith finds her gambler lover Jimmy messin’ with a pretty, younger woman. He leaves and this makes Bessie to pour herself a drink and sing the title song. It is a small but entertaining movie. Well worth your time. Continue reading Video of the day: St. Louis Blues by Bessie Smith→
