Steven Rubio's Online Life

music friday: marianne faithfull

We saw her a couple of times in the early-80s ... as I said elsewhere today, "She looked like she sounded, a tough cookie who'd been to a few too many rodeos. She radiated star power." For people of our age, she was an icon, and then she was an icon for a second time.

In 1978, the Rolling Stones released Some Girls, their last great album. In 1979, Marianne Faithfull released Broken English. I thought at the time there was delicious irony in the fact that, even then, I knew the Stones would never again release an album as good as the one Marianne had just put out there. I was right.

music friday: opening acts

We've seen Pink 8 times, I think, and since she became a top-level headliner, she's done a good job of picking opening acts. Here are a few we've seen:

The Ting Tings 2009:

The Hives 2013:

Julia Michaels 2019 (she had the advantage of singing a song called "Pink":

music friday: sector 27

Tom Robinson was a big deal in the punk era with The Tom Robinson Band. His next group was called Sector 27. They released an album in late 1980, and it was a good one, although it didn't get much chart attention. Robinson later left the band, and they never made another album. We saw them in January of 1981. I liked the show because Robinson was engaging ... I had gotten to meet him and TRB at a club date at one point ... but he had laryngitis that night, so it was a bit disappointing. The rest of the band looked very young. Bass player Jo Burt was Robinson's principal collaborator, but I mostly noticed guitar player Stevie B. Danny Kustow was the lead guitarist for TRB, and I was much enamored with his playing. He was fairly traditional in the rock tradition. Stevie B was jagged, not out of place in the music of 1980.

Here is Sector 27 with "Where Can We Go Tonight?":

And "Not Ready":

And a taste of Danny Kustow, who died in 2019:

music friday: howlin' wolf

One of the true titans of American blues. It's impossible to pick the best from Wolf's enormous output. His recording of Willie Dixon's "Little Red Rooster", among others, got the attention of The Rolling Stones, whose version of the song hit the top of the British pop charts. When the Stones appeared on the U.S. television series Shindig!, they helped get their inspiration on as a guest, performing "How Many More Years" for all the American teenyboppers:

As I say, you can't pick just one of his recordings, but I admit I'm partial to this one:

One more:

Howlin' Wolf died on this date in 1976.

music friday: the avengers

I'm repeating myself, I'm sure, but as this blog closes in on its 23rd birthday, I'm running out of fresh material. On January 14, 1978, I saw The Avengers as one of the opening acts for the Sex Pistols concert. The next day, our daughter was born. Fast forward quite a few years, and my daughter says she was hanging with someone I might know of, said she used to be a punk rocker, her name was Penelope. Penelope Houston, I said? Well, next time you see her, tell her your dad saw her in concert the day before you were born.

Here's the full set by The Avengers.

music friday: 2004

Where did that come from?

music friday: bluesky 60s

Another steal from my daily Bluesky music posts. I'm up to 1973 now ... here are the three songs that closed out the 1960s. First, 1967:

1968:

And 1969:

music friday: billie eilish

Look who turned up on Tiny Desk:

And a few of my favorites she didn't sing on NPR:

music friday: "shout"

I've started posting a video of a song a day on Bluesky, and today I am up to 1959.

Rarely has a popular song been so perfectly troublesome to a certain group of people, because "Shout" has overwhelmingly clear roots in black gospel music. "Shout," needless to say, is rather secular.

Probably to most famous version, over the years, is this one, a modern staple everywhere a crowd needs to be driven into a frenzy:

music friday: "the ghost of tom joad"

On this date in 1995, we saw the first of two Bruce Springsteen shows on his Ghost of Tom Joad tour. It was only the fourth show of the tour. He opened with this song on both nights, seen here on The Tonight Show:

Rage Against the Machine recorded a powerful cover of the song in 1997. Many years later, Rage guitarist Tom Morello joined the E Street Band for several live performances when Steven Van Zandt was unavailable, resulting in what you might say is Bruce covering one of his own songs. Morello made quite an impact, and this is the version I go to now. It turned up on recordings in 2008, they played it at the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in 2009, Morello rejoined the band in 2013 where the song featured again, and finally, it turned up on Bruce's 2014 album High Hopes. Here is one of the live performances:

Morello surprised Bruce at the time: