Folks, I'm thrilled to announce that I'm now doing a weekly show on WFMU's Rock 'n' Soul Ichiban . It streams to your computer, mobile device, internet radio, as well as the tinfoil you've attached to your skull LIVE on Wednesday nights from 8-10PM EST. Or, you can listen to the ARCHIVE at your convenience anywhere, anytime. You can hear my first show from January 25th > HERE < and more as they're added weekly. I'm still working out the kinks and the mic breaks from show #1 are a little rough. [...]
by Polly Bresnick Etta James, who passed away last week, could not only sing with searing soul that simultaneously strikes fear and sorrow and strength into the hearts of anyone who hears her voice, but she also bridged the gap between R&B and Rock & Roll back when people were still impressed by that kind of feat, way back when a band of light-skinned black girls was called the "Creolettes," way back when the song title "Roll With Me Henry" was so suggestive for a fourteen-year-old girl to sing, that the title was changed for [...]
Today we celebrate five years of the Boogie Woogie Flu, and while this strange endeavor may be limping along at a limited capacity, we are, still here. And, what better way to celebrate this miraculous event than to listen to the the b-side of James Brown's 1978 smash hit, "The Spank." JB's own version of "Love Me Tender," because, after all, it's Elvis' Birthday too. Happy Birthday Elvis from all your friends in Fluville. Download: "Love Me Tender" mp3 [...]
When Howard Tate died on December 2, 2011, most obituaries for the great soul singer mentioned the name of another man who'd passed on in July of this year. Jerry Ragovoy (September 4, 1930 – July 13, 2011) was a songwriter, producer, pianist, and the studio Svengali behind Tate's career masterpiece, the 1967 Verve album originally issued as Howard Tate and later retitled Get It While You Can . Arguably, Ragovoy never made a better album in his career. In fact, Rags didn't make that many albums: Much of his most influential music appeared on singles released [...]
by Dave the Spazz "Don't ever let them operate on your back. That's how we lost Jeff Chandler." --Don Van Vliet 1 Today's Hanukkah's Jew answers to the name of 1950s movie star Jeff Chandler. My Aunt Penny used to swear that Chandler was her cousin from the old neighborhood; however, his absence from any and all family functions caused some concern at the time that Aunt Penny might be full of shit. Claiming familial ties to Jeff Chandler was just schlubby enough to be true so I believed her. Aunt Penny's son David [...]
by Nicole Audrey Spector How a guy who once pulled over the car upon espying a black glitter rosary on my neck (I was 12 and the rosary was from Claire's Accessories) was ever impelled to give the world a self-declared "Christmas Gift" is ironic. Yet my dad, in making A Christmas Gift For You From Phil Spector was hardly a grinch won over. I don't exaggerate when I say that he'd rather have a tick burrowed in his ear than a sentimental Christian on his back. Or a sentimental Jew for that [...]
by Polly Bresnick I'm half Jewish, half Christmas. Jew-ISH. My family lights the menorah when we remember to, usually uncertain of which night we're on, and we mumble out the prayer that even my father barely remembers, with a crescendoing finale of SHALL HANUKKAH! Or is it with a "Ch-"? Does it have an "h" at the end? (I'm barely "culturally Jewish," which is to say that I'm not really religious at all.) In grammar school I learned that, for Hanukkah, kids traditionally received eight presents — one on each of the holy, candle-lit nights. Also, [...]
by Ariella Stok It was a classically Semitic combination of chutzpah and horniness that led Lawrence Ira Kahn, a white Jewish kid from Brownsville, Brooklyn to become Larry Harlow, a king of salsa, a musical movement that combined Cuban son with New York bebop, and served as much to fuel the dance floors of nightclubs numbering in the hundreds during its heyday in the early 1970s, as to define the cultural voice of New York's influx of Latino immigrants—mostly Puerto Rican, Cuban, and Dominican—that began in the 1950s. Harlow not only was the leader of one of the [...]
Dedicated readers of the Boogie Woogie Flu (which is to say, you people, with too much time on your hands) who could tell you right off that if (1) "Good Rockin' Tonight" (2) "Rocket 88" (3) "Rock Around the Clock" (4) "That's Alright, Mama" and (5) "Maybellene" have anything common, it's that, at one time or another, some music critic (which is to say, someone with too much time on his or her hands) has put them forth as candidates for "first rock and roll song." Now, [...]
by Jesse Jarnow There's no real sport in arguing the semeticism of David Berman, who named his band the Silver Jews, and very publicly rediscovered Judaism himself after becoming sober around 2004. "Ain'tcha heard the news? Adam and Eve were Jews," he'd sung on 2005's Tanglewood Numbers. When the 15-year running outfit started to perform live for the first time in 2006, Berman brought them to Israel, where he was filmed at the Wailing Wall, wearing tefillin and weeping. One doesn't have to go hunting for it. Unlike Bob Dylan or Lou Reed or Neil [...]
by Ben Greenman Phil Ochs was born five months before Bob Dylan and died sixteen months before Elvis Presley, and that tells you all you need to know about him, and that tells you nothing. Ochs was an earnest activist, and a rebel, and a satirist, and a town crier, and a crack-up. He built and dismantled personae with such rapidity that it's sometimes difficult to find the real person who, in theory, provided the foundation on which those personae were built and dismantled. Born in Texas, raised in Ohio, gifted musically and culturally omnivorous, [...]
We now interrupt our regularly scheduled programming, to bring you a message from Boogie Woogie Flu contributor and friend of Fluville, Scott Schinder... Excuse the interruption, but I just wanted to call your attention to my Kickstarter campaign to launch my long-threatened garage rock book, which I've been researching on and off for several years, and which I'm planning to have published in 2012. The fact that a serious book chronicling the '60s garage explosion doesn't already exist is mystifying to me, so I think that this project is overdue. I'm also offering some [...]
In April 1964, the Stones released their debut record in the UK, it would appear in a slightly different form in the US six weeks later. Recorded at the tiny Regent Sound studio in London, these would be their last recordings (aside from a few stray tracks) made in England until 1966's Between The Buttons . It's an amazing debut, and again is comprised almost entirely of covers. It opens with Bobby Troup's "Route 66," originally a hit for Nat King Cole, which they undoubtedly learned from Chuck Berry. Keith transposes Johnny Johnson's piano riff to the [...]
Between June of 1963 and February of 1964 The Rolling Stones released three singles, one EP, and a couple of other tracks on a compilation. All in the UK, and all before the release of their first LP. All but two those songs were covers. The trajectory of their career couldn't yet have been imagined, but they were on one for sure. Firstly, they wanted to be the the best blues band in London (they were), and by the time they started recording, they wanted to share their love of American Blues, Soul, and R&B with a larger audience. They [...]
"Uncle Sam needs you, Boy I'm a gonna cut your hair off Take this rifle, Kid Gimme that gui-tar Yea-ah..." Today, on the 4th of July, when we Americans do what we do to celebrate the signing of the Declaration of Independence (eat meat, drink beer, and blow shit up), let us pause and reflect on the glory that is "The All American Boy." In 1958, when Bobby Bare was about be inducted into the Army and [...]
For the past year and a half, I've been hanging out with some of my friends about once a month to record a podcast called the Radio Free Song Club. I'm there as a photographer, but the others assembled are songwriters, musicians, sound engineers and visiting guests. It's hosted by Nick Hill (formerly of the Music Faucet on WFMU) and singer-songwriter Kate Jacobs. Dave Schramm is the bandleader, and is joined by a semi-rotating band known as The Radio Free All Stars, which includes David Mansfield, JD Foster, Jeremy Chatzky, Paul Wieselman, Andy Burton, Paul Moschella, Ted Reichman, [...]
"The youth was gone, and he looked like an old man, freshness erased by some unknown blackboard cleaner. It was a new day for John Lee. There had always been a smile on his lips and a chuckle rolling over his vocal chords, ready to be exposed with only the slightest provocation. The daytime was gone from his eyes. All that remained was the night." Gil-Scott Heron, from The Vulture , 1970. by Drew Huebner Gil-Scott Heron wrote "The Bottle" in the [...]
Bob Dylan is seventy today. Here's seventy versions of his songs. I was hard pressed to narrow it down to seventy , so that's something and I think it's enough. You get the picture, these are the songs that folks will still be interpreting in another seventy years. Happy Birthday Bob. ************* Download: "Please Mrs. Henry" mp3 by Peter Laughner, 1972. unreleased radio session "Million Dollar Bash" mp3 by the Fairport Convention, 1969. available on Unhalfbricking [...]
flour toilet tissue (pink) broccli 2 frozen potatoes small onions (few) a loaf of bread (Colonial) manayaise (Miracle Whip) lettuce 1 chicken (cut up) 2 pds thick sliced (Hunlas) bacon and One Mint Julep Download: "One Mint Julep" mp3 by Ray Charles, 1961. arranged by Quincy Jones available on Genius + Soul = Jazz ********* Ray Charles photo by Joe Adams
Boogie Woogie Flu
Watch: Trailer for Dave Grohl’s documentary, Sound City
Childish Gambino - "Heartbeat" (Official Music Video)
First Aid Kit – Emmylou
Hardwell Bootleg Pack 2012
James Blake – Live Album
