In Life, Keith puts to rest the crazy stories of him getting his blood exchanged and snorting his father’s ashes.
I like Keith’s plain-spokenness. He doesn’t merely call a spade a spade, he calls it a sh** shovel. His most memorable comment was calling the late Hugh Hefner a pimp.
Toward the end of his autobiography, Keith talks about being a voracious reader: his favorite subject is naval history. He also talks about cooking traditional English fare: he even offers a recipe for bangers and mash! This is not the image of Keith Richards that the media has crafted.
Keith and Patti Hansen have now been married for 39 years: they will celebrate forty years of marriage on December 18, 2023 (also Keith’s 80th birthday).
Altogether, an entertaining read!
Citation: Richards, K., & Fox, J. (2012). Life. Phoenix.
Loretta Lynn with her guitar with custom fretboard
I put together this short four-song playlist in tribute to Loretta Lynn, who died at age 90 on Tuesday, October 4, 2022.
Here’s the playlist:
Coal Miner’s Daughter: what’s a holler?
These Boots Are Made For Walking: you’ll forget about Nancy Sinatra (or not, now since I reminded you). Good God – I mistook Loretta Lynn for June Carter Cash on the album cover.
You Ain’t Woman Enough (To Take My Man): Loretta deals with a hussy. What’s a hussy? A hussy is a woman who’s got her mitts on your man – and believe me, I’ve had to deal with one.
You Ain’t Woman Enough (To Take My Man): a great send-up by k.d. lang and Roseanne Cash.
On February 9, 1964, The Beatles made their U.S. debut on the Ed Sullivan TV show – and popular music hasn’t been the same since!
My parents, brother, and I were attending a dance performance – was it the Tamburitzans from Duquesne University? 🤔 Who knows? 🤷 All I was thinking about was getting home in time to see The Beatles. I overheard someone else mention The Beatles as we left the hall. I remember the buzz and excitement in anticipation of the event.
Even today, hearing the opening chords of I Wanna Hold Your Hand fills me with happiness. 🥰
Thanks to my interest in Syd Barrett, I’m expanding my music horizons to include other British musicians. Lately, I got interested in Pete Doherty, someone who is also English in his orientation, has poetic sensibility, and is renowned for his drug use: for Syd, it was LSD and cannabis and later Mandrax (Quaalude); for Pete, it was heroin and cocaine. Pete claims he’s been clean since 2019.
I’ve had fun watching videos featuring Pete Doherty and his band The Libertines. As I learned, Pete Doherty was co-frontman of The Libertines: the other co-frontman being Carl Barât. Bassist John Hassall and drummer Gary Powell rounded out the Libertines. Pete and Carl have had a tumultuous friendship: Carl kicked Pete out of The Libertines for his drug use and Pete burgled Carl’s home.
The Libertines (L to R): John Hassall, Carl Barât, Gary Powell, and Pete Doherty
The interplay between Pete Doherty and Carl Barât is fascinating to watch: it almost borders on homoeroticism.
Pete Doherty (left) and Carl Barât (right)
Here for your viewing (and listening) pleasure is a playlist that I assembled of videos featuring The Libertines:
I’ve updated this post Top Ten #Christmas Songs Written by Jews from December 24, 2018 to include a Spotify playlist that you can embed in your website or blog or share it via social media.
Top Ten #Christmas Songs Written by Jews.
Also, I’ve updated the link to the article (which had moved):
What a couple of days! Yesterday, my husband had to be taken to the emergency room. While he was discharged later in the evening, he’s felt weak all day today and has been lying down in the recliner. He also said that he had a fever, which he attributed to the booster shot that he received yesterday.
Anyhow, here’s the #MusicMonday feature:
Mike Nesmith of The Monkees AKA The Pre-fab Four died on Friday, December 10, 2021. While he was with The Monkees, he challenged Don Kirshner to let them play their own instruments on their recordings (he succeeded).
What’s lesser known is that Mike Nesmith was a songwriter in his own right. My friend Ann is fond of his song Joanna. He also penned Different Drum, which he tried to pitch for The Monkees, but the control freak producers of the TV show rejected it.
The Stone Poneys featuring the youthful Linda Ronstadt recorded Different Drum, which peaked at No. 13 on the Billboard Hot 100 chart in 1967.
You and I travel to the beat of a different drum Oh, can’t you tell by the way I run Every time you make eyes at me? Whoa You cry and moan and say it will work out But honey child I’ve got my doubts You can’t see the forest for the trees
Morning Dew is one of the most iconic songs of 1960s folk and protest music. Canadian folk singer Bonnie Dobson wrote Morning Dew: amazingly, it was the first song she ever wrote.
“…I saw a film called On the Beach, and it made a tremendous impression on me,” she said. “[Really] it was a kind of re-enactment of that film in a way where, at the end, there is nobody left, and it was a conversation between these two people trying to explain what’s happening. It was really the apocalypse, that was what it was about.”
Fred Neil rearranged “Morning Dew” for his 1964 Elektra album Tear Down the Walls. Two years later, Tim Rose recorded the song for his debut album based on Neil’s arrangement. Rose took advantage of a loophole in US copyright law and tricked Bonnie Dobson out of full credits and some publishing royalties to her song (he did the same sh** with Hey Joe, which both Jimi Hendrix and The Byrds covered).
Tim Rose
In 1998, Bonnie Dobson heckled Tim Rose as he performed at London’s Half Moon music venue about stealing her song. She took legal action against Rose and was at last credited as the sole author of “Morning Dew”.
Bonnie Dobson felt that she reclaimed her song when Robert Plant invited her to sing it at his concert. She said that “[Robert] gave me back my song that night.”
In 2018, Morning Dew was inducted as a song into the Canadian Songwriters Hall of Frame.
Morning Dew | Canadian Songwriters Hall of Fame. Canadian Songwriters Hall of Fame. (2018). Retrieved 25 October 2021, from https://cshf.ca/song/morning-dew/.
Roger Keith “Syd” Barrett is one of the most renowned casualties of Rock ‘n’ Roll. At the cusp of stardom with Pink Floyd in 1967, he had a major breakdown. He was 21 years old. His behavior became erratic (to say the least) and he left Pink Floyd or was dismissed.
Syd Barrett in May 1967, before his collapse.
Syd’s mental collapse continues to be a source of speculation and fascination 54 years later and 15 years after his death at age 60 in 2006. Was it the onset of schizophrenia? Was it autism, as suggested in The Interesting Case of Syd Barrett? Was it LSD, or the more dangerous DOM, as suggested by Men on the Border? Was it temporal lobe damage, as suggested in Julian Palacios’ biography Syd Barrett & Pink Floyd: Dark Globe? Or was it just the sixties, man? Our interest in Syd’s mental collapse isn’t merely voyeuristic, it’s also about making sense about what happened.
Rob Chapman de-emphasizes Syd’s drug use, which makes it harder to make sense of what happened to Syd. Syd’s gifts at songwriting left him. His singing left him. His guitar playing left him. His mental health left him. I wept as I read about Syd’s deterioration.
But Chapman makes an interesting point: A rock star’s peak creativity lasts for a very short while: after that, he or she becomes redundant. And being redundant was Syd’s major fear.
Today’s #MusicMonday video is Martha and the Vandellas’ classic Dancing in the Streets, as performed on The Ed Sullivan Show on December 5, 1965. Crisp video, color (was this colorized from B & W?), and I love the yelllow gowns that Martha and the Vandellas wore.
Martha and the Vandellas perform Dancing in the Streets on The Ed Sullivan Show
Berry Gordy sidelined stronger singers like Martha Reeves and Gladys Knight to promote baby mama Diana Ross. 😠
It’s a Beautiful Day was a band formed in San Francisco, California in 1967, featuring vocalist Pattie Santos and violinist/vocalist David LaFlamme and his wife Linda.
Although It’s a Beautiful Day was one of the notable San Francisco bands to emerge from 1967’s Summer of Love, it never achieved the success of Grateful Dead, Jefferson Airplane, and Santana.
It’s A Beautiful Day’s eponymous debut album was released by Columbia Records in 1969. The track “White Bird” attracted FM radio play attention, but nationally, it bubbled under Billboard’s Hot 100 chart, peaking at number 118. 😔
It’s a Beautiful Day – White Bird
This live version of White Bird features a jam and is much more energetic than the studio recording. It was recorded July 7, 1970 at Tanglewood – Lenox, MA, the summer home of the Boston Symphony Orchestra.
Life by Keith Richards
Cold Cream 'n' Roses 
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