Talkin’ About My Revolutions

AIMEE MANN
3rd Annual Christmas Show 2008 [no label, 2CD]
Live at the Keswick Theatre, Glenside, PA, December 13, 2008. Very good FM broadcast.

Here’s the third Aimee Mann Christmas Show, thanks to rockcat who shared the tracks on the Dime site. This is what rockcat noted:

“WXPN tried (somewhat unsuccessfully) to edit/mute the chorus of “The Immaculate Conception of the Hanukkah Fairy” which goes “She’s a mother-fuckin’ Hanukkah Fairy” with some abrupt cuts. It is presented here exactly as it was broadcast. In the future, I may re-up this show with the edits restored (from another source). This isn’t the only time in the show that XPN attempted to censor foul language… including the several lyrics of “Long Shot”. All too often, they were too slow on the edit button, so all they really succeeded in doing was to butcher the song(s).

Note: Readers who object to strong language might want to skip this.

Disc 1
01 – WXPN intro
02 – show intro (Dance of the Sugar Plum Fairies)
03 – Calling On Mary [AM]
04 – Paul F. Tompkins intro & banter
05 – Sleigh Ride [AM & PFT]
06 – Nelly McKay (wearing a big red corset) intro & banter
07 – Sleigh Ride (cont’d) [NMK-sung in high voice]
08 – Grant-Lee Phillips (in snowman costume) intro & banter
09 – Sleigh Ride (cont’d) [GLP]
10 – Aimee banter & film introduction
11 – ~ Film pt.1 (The Ghost of Christmas Past) [GLP, Michael Penn, PFT]
12 – Paul F. Tompkins comedy routine #1
13 – Snow Miser, Heat Miser [AM, PFT, GLP, NMK]
14 – Paul F. Tompkins comedy routine #2
15 – I’ll Be Home For Christmas [AM]
16 – Christmastime [AM & NMK]
17 – Take Me Away [NMK]
18 – Nelly with Rudolph toy
19 – A Christmas Dirge [NMK]
20 – The Christmas Song (Chestnuts Roasting on an Open Fire) [AM]
21 – ~ Film pt.2 (The Ghost of Christmas Present)

Disc 2
01 – Wise Up [AM]
02 – Save Me [AM]
03 – Aimee introduces Amos Lee
04 – Winter Wonderland [AM & AL]
05 – Christmas In Prison [AL]
06 – Baby I Want You [AL]
07 – Paul F. Thompkins introduces “Willie Nelson” (Grant-Lee Phillips)
08 – Voices Carry [as sung by "Willie Nelson" and AM]
09 – ~ Film pt.3 (The Making Of The Christmas Movie) w/Michael Cera
10 – Aimee introduces Grant Lee Phillips
11 – You’re a Mean One, Mr. Grinch [GLP & AM]
12 – An Old Fashioned Christmas [GLP w/AM]
13 – Winter Glow [GLP]
14 – banter
15 – “The Hanukkah Fairy” (Morgan Murphy) appears
16 – The Immaculate Conception of the Hanukkah Fairy [MM]
17 – ~ Film pt.4 (The Ghost of Christmas Future) w/John C. Reilly & Michael Cera
18 – Freeway [AM]
19 – Dear John [AM]
20 – Long Shot [AM]
21 – ENCORE BREAK & Station IDs
22 – Christmas (Baby Please Come Home) [ALL, including GLP in a Rudolph costume]
23 – station outro

Click here for the tracks.

Seth Gordon’s Four Christmases is meant to be your romantic comedy for the yuletide season but as Critic After Dark Noel Vera says, “I want to offer four constructive suggestions that might help improve the film (if any of you are even halfway sentient you’d want to improve this with a can of gasoline and a lit match).”

aw Four Christmases, about a couple (played by Vince Vaughn and Reese Witherspoon) forced to spend the holidays with their four divorced parents (Robert Duvall and Sissy Spacek as Vaughn’s parents; Jon Voight and Mary Steenburgen as Witherspoon’s) and yes, it’s bad, yes it’s an almost complete waste of time (more on that “almost” later), and yes I can’t recommend it to anyone unless they’re some kind of Yuletide masochist willing to accept this as their only alternative to an eggnog enema (given a choice, I’d need a minute to think about it).

Click here for the article.

JACK BRUCE, VERNON REID, JOHN MEDESKI, CINDY BLACKMAN
Tony Williams Lifetime Tribute 2008 [no label, 2CD]
Live at the Motion Blue, Yokohama, Japan. December 14, 2008. First show. Very good audience recording.

From December 14-19, 2008, this awesome quartet performed the Tony Williams Lifetime Tribute at Yokohama and Tokyo in Japan. As Lifetime fans know, three of the tracks came from the group’s influential debut album, Emergency! (1969): Beyond Games, Emergency and Where.

Thanks to catpochi who recorded and shared the tracks on the Dime site. As catpochi noted: “This was recorded on the first row and center.”

Disc 1
Track 101. Opening
Track 102. Introduction
Track 103. Vuelta Abajo
Track 104. Beyond Games
Track 105. Emergency

Disc 2
Track 201. Where
Track 202. There Comes A Time

Click here for the tracks.

RORY GALLAGHER
BBC Concerts 1971-72 [no label, 1CD]
Live at the Paris Theatre, London, August 12, 1971 and January 13, 1972. Very good soundboard, taken from master reels.

At his peak in the early ’70s, guitarist Rory Gallagher was probably the most recorded rock artist at the BBC of his time. Some of Gallagher’s performances were collected on the (official) BBC Sessions double album.

Then there is the unofficial Alternate BBC Sessions and, shared especially among the fans, is this 13-track CD of Gallagher at the Paris Theatre in 1971 and 1972. In 1972, Rory Gallagher’s Live! In Europe album earned the guitarist platinum sales and Melody Maker’s “Musician of the Year” Award.

As these tracks show, Rory Gallagher was clearly a guitar hero and his winning Melody Maker’s Musician of the Year Award was no fluke – he actually beat both Eric Clapton and Jimmy Page.

BBC John Peel Sunday Concert, Paris Theatre, London, August 12, 1971
Track 01. Hands Up
Track 02. For The Last Time
Track 03. In Your Town
Track 04. Just The Smile
Track 05. Laundromat
Track 06. It Takes Time

BBC In Concert, Paris Theatre, London, January 13, 1972
Track 07. John Peel Introducing Rory
Track 08. Used To Be
Track 09. I Should’ve Learned My Lesson
Track 10. Out Of Mind
Track 11. Could’ve Had Religion
Track 12. Crest Of A Wave
Track 13. Messin’ With The Kid

Click here for the tracks.

When Jaco Pastorius made the bass the lead instrument, it also meant a different way of music making. For a start, the bassist can really strut his stuff.

JACO PASTORIUS
From Paris To New York [Megadisc, 1CD]
Live in Paris, France, December 19, 1984; live in New York, April 30, 1985. Very good soundboard.

But when he was on form, Jaco Pastorius was spectacular. On the December 19, 1984 set in Paris, Pastorius had Rashid Ali on drums, each egging the other on (in a good way). Pastorius could have been in a good or jokey mood – he “sampled” The Sound Of Music and Burt Bacharach’s Alfie, besides giving his own rendition of Jimi Hendrix’s Purple Haze. The Megadisc CD also includes Fannie Mae [who would have guessed the name would be so infamous in the second half of 2008], a track from New York, April 30, 1985, with Jimmy Page on guitar.

Track 01. Improvisation
Track 02. Amerika
Track 03. Improvisation – Purple Haze
Track 04. Blackbird
Track 05. Donna Lee
Track 06. Slang
Track 07. Fannie Mae
Track 08. Continuum
Track 09. Fannie Mae (with Jimmy Page)

Click here for the tracks.

US Federal Reserve chairman Ben Bernanke is limited in his understanding of the current financial crisis by his “monetarist” bias. He believes that the only way to fight credit contraction is by flooding the financial system with liquidity. But this remedy focuses more on reducing the symptoms rather than curing the disease. Mike Whitney explains.

Ever since the two Bear Stearns hedge funds defaulted 17 months ago triggering a global financial crisis, the Federal Reserve has been busy putting out one fire after another. Fed chief Ben Bernanke has slashed interest rates to .25 per cent, handed out billions in emergency funding to teetering insurance companies and mortgage lenders, and provided US$8.3 trillion in loan guarantees to keep the financial system from collapsing.

Unfortunately, nothing the Fed has done has either stabilized the markets or stopped the contagion from spreading to the broader economy where consumer spending has fallen sharply, unemployment has skyrocketed, manufacturing has slipped to a 30-year low, and housing prices have plummeted.

Click here for the article.

The Mumbai attacks have been dubbed ‘India’s 9/11′, and there are calls for a 9/11-style response, including an attack on Pakistan. Instead, the country must fight terrorism with justice, or face civil war, says writer Arundhati Roy.

We’ve forfeited the rights to our own tragedies. As the carnage in Mumbai raged on, day after horrible day, our 24-hour news channels informed us that we were watching “India’s 9/11.” And like actors in a Bollywood rip-off of an old Hollywood film, we’re expected to play our parts and say our lines, even though we know it’s all been said and done before.

As tension in the region builds, US Senator John McCain has warned Pakistan that, if it didn’t act fast to arrest the “bad guys,” he had personal information that India would launch air strikes on “terrorist camps” in Pakistan and that Washington could do nothing because Mumbai was India’s 9/11.

Click here for the article.

Dec 15, 2008: Trumpeter David Weiss of the New Jazz Composers Octet – a friend and colleague of Freddie Hubbard – provides corrected information of Hubbard’s hospitalization for a heart attack:

“Freddie did not collapse, he was having trouble breathing and was taken by ambulance to Sherman Oaks hospital on Wednesday, November 26. He did have a heart attack. He was unconscious for a couple of days, induced by his doctors who thought the treatment they were giving him would cause him too much pain if he was conscious. He has been awake for around two weeks now. He is still hooked up to breathing apparatus but again is conscious and coherent. He is getting stronger every day but has a ways to go.”

Source: http://www.washingtoncitypaper.com/blogs/blackplasticbag…

GRATEFUL DEAD
with John Fogerty and Neil Young
Dead Moon Rising [Tuff Bites, 1CD]
Live at Polo Field, Golden Gate Park, San Francisco, CA, November 3, 1991. Very good soundboard except some digital noise at the end of Track 4 and beginning of Track 5 and on Track 6 (1:37 to 2:18).

One does not think of long jams when it comes to John Fogerty and Creedence Clearwater Revival. Fogerty’s is all three-minute swamp rock whereas The Dead can go on and on and on. But this show had a lot of good vibes and the fun of performining alongside each other clearly showed.

Fogerty stuck to his tunes and The Dead were gracious enough not to meander. Even Neil Young didn’t stretch as much as he could have.

Track 01. Hell In A Bucket
Track 02. China Cat Sunflower/I Know You Rider
Track 03. Wang Dang Doodle
Track 04. Born On The Bayou*
Track 05. Green River*
Track 06. Bad Moon Rising*
Track 07. Proud Mary*
Track 08. Truckin’/The Other One/Wharf Rat
Track 09. Sunshine Daydream
Track 10. Forever Young (Neil Young on vocals and guitar)
Track 11. Touch Of Grey

* With John Fogerty (of Creedence Clearwater Revival)

Click here for the tracks.

A common saying in murder movies is that the killing gets easier after the first kill. But what if murder is the ultimate aphrodisiac? Yasuharu Hasebe’s Assault! Jack The Ripper features a pastry chef who uses sex to ease the tension after each kill. Stephen Tan reviews.

Tamaki Katsura is the new waitress at the restaurant. After fending off an amorous customer, she picks on pastry chef Yutaka Hayashi as someone she can bully. There is a downpour when the restaurant closes and Katsura asks Hayashi for a ride home in the company car. Along the way, they stop to give a ride to a woman standing in the rain. However, the woman turns out to be mentally unbalanced. She strips off her top and rubs icing cream (that’s in the car) over her chest.

Click here for the article.