Shock Horror!!!

BOB DYLAN, for years my number one Desert Island Artiste du Disque (there is more info contained in the grain of his voice, more pixels packed in the thwack of his lonesome guitar than, oh, I dunno, just about anyone since Skip James, Bukka White, Bob Nolan, Joseph Spence, Chester Burnett, Blind Willie Johnson, Roscoe Holcomb, and Ukulele Ike...sans guitar, one would have to name Caruso--Dylan thought so too, in "Don't Look Back"--Nervous Norvus, John McCormack, Sir Harry Lauder, Charles Trenet, Doodles Weaver, William Burroughs, Gordy McRae, and T.S. Eliot)...

Yep--THAT Bob Dylan, best damn singer/songwriter/song 'n dance man ever, recently played 2-count them-2 tracks by Captain Beefheart and the Magic Band on his XM Satellite Radio Show;

namely, "Click Clack" on a show whose thema was Trains, and just a coupla weeks ago Bob spun "Ice Cream for Crow" (sporting slide by yrs truly) on his show, the rubric of which was "Birds" (come to think of it he coulda played "Golden Birdies", or even "Peaches, instead--glad he didn't!!)

Here's Dylan's playlist for that show:

Monday 4 August 2008 - The theme was 'Birds'

The Rooster Song - Fats Domino
Cooing To The Wrong Pigeon - Merrill Moore
Bluebird - Buffalo Springfield
Chicken - Mississippi John Hurt
The Coo Coo Bird - Clarence Ashley
Bird On The Wire - Leonard Cohen
When The Red, Red Robin Comes Bob, Bob Bobbin’ Along - Al Jolson
Buzzard Pie - Rudy Green His Orchestra
Daffy Duck’s Rhapsody - Mel Blanc
Ice Cream For Crow - Captain Beefheart The Magic Band
Great Speckled Bird - Roy Acuff his Crazy Tennesseans
Night Owl - Tony Allen The Champs
Wings Of A Dove - Blues Busters
Shake A Tail Feather - The Five Du-Tones

and here's what Dylan said about selection number 10, comin' right off Mel Blanc's "Daffy Duck Rhapsody":

"Mel Blanc did a lot of voices - our next artist just did one - but it's a heck of a voice. Don Van Vliet was born in Glendale, California - he stopped performing in the 80's to focus on his painting. He's a really good painter but I wish he'd made more records. [tangent about the Corvids - crows and rooks etc] Here's a song that goes as straight as the crow flies - Captain Beefheart and 'Ice Cream for Crow'..."

(I wish he'd made more records too...which is why I skated in 1984, after Don rejected Virgin's offer to record the followup to "Ice Cream for Crow"...)

In any case, this public acknowledgment and testimonial by one American Master to his fellow Peer 'o the Realm was (beef)heartening news indeed...

and it makes me love Dylan all the more...

(btw, I introduced a 24 year old Jeff Buckley to the awesome majesty and mysteries of Bob's "Farewell Angelina" after the original demo surfaced on Columbia Legacy's "The Genuine Bootleg Series Vol. One"-- there is a recording circulating of Jeff and I jamming on this song live on Nick Hill's "Music Faucet" program on WFMU well worth tracking down--our version came out once upon a limited edition double cd giveaway for FMU subscribers titled "They Came, They Played, They Blocked the Driveway", it was Jeff's first time on the radio ever, the studio lights were darkened, the incense was glowing, the triangles tingling... and we were burning)...

More Beefheartiana: MOMA has a show on now through the fall of great music videos from their collection, and you can see the aforementioned "Ice Cream for Crow" vid (which I singlehandedly got Mary Lee Bandy at MOMA to include in the museum's permanent collection back in 1982) (yes), as well as other delights by Devo, Laurie Anderson etc. (and for my readers who live out of the city,and have never seen "Ice Cream for Crow", here 'tis in all its glory on Youtube:http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iqRHr5pEIFU)--btw, the Coen Brothers are obviously big Beefheart fans, as they shamelessly copped the tumbling tumbleweed imagery (shades of Bob Nolan) from this vid at the beginning of "The Big Lebowski" (which also featured "Her Eyes are a Blue Million Miles" on its soundtrack)...

And finally-- Dusty Wright and CultureCatch.com have come out with a terrific podcast about "Beefheart Night at the Knit: A Tribute to Don Van Vliet" http://www.culturecatch.com/vidcast/captain-beefheart which took place last April 9th at the Knitting Factory NYC, and featured Beefheart poetry readings and reminiscences by Lee Ranaldo, Glenn Kenny, Kurt Loder, Alan Vega, Giorgio Gomelsky, Danny Fields, Felice Rosser, Jamie Cohen, Peter Warner, Mike Edison, Billy Altman, and others, and on video, contributions from David Lynch and Anton Corbijn--the live music centerpiece came in the form of 2 sets by Fast 'n Bulbous, the Captain Beefheart Project, which I co-lead with Phillip Johnston, previewing material from our forthcoming second album on Cuneiform--and a surprise appearance by the fabulous Robyn Hitchcock after midnight, which you can view here: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VEWjKfxKRC4

Speaking of Lee Ranaldo: what a great guy!-- it was at Lee's urging that I up and recorded several of my instrumental solo guitar arrangements of the 30's Shanghainese pop of Chow Hsuan and Bai Kwong after he and his lady Leah Singer heard me perform several at a Chinatown wedding party for my friends Kenny Hurwitz and Mi-Ling Tsui--and the result was my 2001 album "The Edge of Heaven--Gary Lucas Plays Mid-Century Chinese Pop" (http://garylucas.com/epk/), perhaps my most successful album (to date) :-)

Lee and his band Sonic Youth were on fire last night at the closing of the McCarren Pool outdoor concert venue in Williamsburg where I attended in the co. of my pal Bob Strano--Sonic Youth one of the greatest high modernist bands of all time, true originals--Kim Gordon, Thurston Moore, Steve Shelley, Lee and co.--what a glorious din of ecstasy they make, strings in the earth and air, best enjoyed sitting on a barbed wire fence, chiming celestial harmonics commingle savage discordant feedback and cool lyrics, heard a snatch of my fave "Kiss Me in the Shadow of a Doubt", they closed with an alternately langorous and rabid "Expressway to Your Skull", what a tight ensemble, iconic stage moves, great irreverent treatment of guitars as non-sacrosanct sound carriers (mere planks of wood strung with razor wire)...yeah!! Aaron formerly of Tonic was on the mix and it sounded GOOOD in such a cavernous concrete laden setting, clips projected behind the group were from Crosby Stills and Nash live in Big Sur and Woodstock :-) Most fun I've had with my clothes on in some time...

Just back from a family reunion and some musik bidness in Prague (yes I am an honest to goodness card-carrying Bohemian by my father's patrimony) where Caroline and I had a lovely dinner with Czech UN ambassador Martin Palous (who commissioned my arrangements for solo guitar of Czech classical music for the 14th Anniversary of the Velvet Revolution at the Czech Embassy in DC) and Pavel Zaichek, poet and leader of the fierce Czech underground band DG-307 http://www.myspace.com/dg307, their 1997 album "Siluety" is a classic filled with demonic glissando'ed cello drones and dark incantatory lyrics, he's planning to bring them to NYC this fall--miss at your own peril...

The next night I met up with my old friends the Czech artist David Nemec (daughter of Dana Nemecova, who was an original jailed dissident along with Vaclav Havel as a signer of the famous Charter 77 document which heralded the eventual Velvet Revolution) and Richard "Faust" Mader, producer guitarist and leader of Czech underground band Urfaust with whom I recorded the seminal prog rock opus "The Ghosts of Prague" (now available on iTunes) in '96, and with whom I made a series of provocative concerts and tv appearances the length and breadth of that country (for sheer sonic mayhem czech out this 5 part Youtube series filmed at the old crumbling former Yiddish theater The Roxy in Prague's Starometska, featuring me, Faust, Czech avant-vocalist supreme Mirka Krivankova, and percussionist/English horn player Jan Cambal improvising live, beginning here http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CrcHeIk3GPg)

Lots more to relate, but 'twill have to wait, Caroline is making "I want to go out and have waffles at Le Petit Abeille" noises now...


xxLove


Gary

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Posted By Gary Lucas to Gary Lucas at 8/31/2008 08:56:00 AM