Outlaws’ lead guitarist and vocalist Hughie Thomasson passed away at his home outside Tampa earlier this month.
According to Wikipedia, Thomasson’s signature voice and style of guitar playing were defining characteristics of the band’s sound. Thomasson’s guitar sound was characterized by the use of the Fender Stratocaster played in a quasi-country style mixed with fluid, often quick blues runs. Known as “HT” he was nicknamed “FLAME” and is in the Fender Hall of Fame.
In October 1975, Outlaws performed a short set at the Record Plant, a recording studio in Sausalito to promote an upcoming show at Bill Graham’s Winterland in San Francisco. Thirty two years later the band still sounds good to my ears.
“There Goes Another Love Song” and five other tracks, including “Green Grass and High Tides” are available for download at the band’s website.
“Joy is the goal of existence, and joy is not to be stumbled upon, but to be achieved, and the act of treason is to let its vision drown in the swamp of the moment’s torture.” -from Atlas Shrugged
The New York Times Business section is marking the 50th anniversary of the publication of Atlas Shrugged by Ayn Rand.
Rand celebrates industry and the power of individual contributions. To her, these are the central engines working for good in the world.
The novel begins in a time of recession. To save the economy, the hero, John Galt (an inventor of a revolutionary new motor powered by ambient static electricity), calls for a strike against government interference. Factories, farms and shops shut down. Riots break out as food becomes scarce.
Rand said she “set out to show how desperately the world needs prime movers and how viciously it treats them†and to portray “what happens to a world without them.â€
The book was released to terrible reviews. Critics faulted its length, its philosophy and its literary ambitions. Both conservatives and liberals were unstinting in disparaging the book; the right saw promotion of godlessness, and the left saw a message of “greed is good.†Rand is said to have cried every day as the reviews came out.
According to the article, Rand’s fans include many captains of industry. James M. Kilts, who led turnarounds at Gillette, Nabisco and Kraft, said he encountered “Atlas†at “a time in college life when everybody was a nihilist, anti-establishment, and a collectivist.†He found her writing reassuring because it made success seem rational.
British writer J.G. Ballard describes his work environment:
On the desk is my old manual typewriter, which I recently found in my stair cupboard. I was inspired by a letter from Will Self, who wrote to me on his manual typewriter. So far I have just stared at the old machine, without daring to touch it, but who knows? The first drafts of my novels have all been written in longhand and then I type them up on my old electric. I have resisted getting a computer because I distrust the whole PC thing. I don’t think a great book has yet been written on computer.
Ballard has worked at the desk pictured above for the past 47 years.
Two of Ballard’s novels–Crash (1973) and Empire of the Sun (1984)–have been made into Hollywood films.
American designer, architect and filmmaker Charles Eames–who together with his wife Ray, was responsible for many classic, iconic designs of the 20th century–appeared on the Arlene Francis “Home” show on NBC in 1956. It’s neat to see Eames on TV, but this episode is also an odd reminder of how square things were in 1950s America.
Heather Browne wrote about a number of bands at Monolith Festival–Brian Jonestown Massacre, Art Brut, Earl Greyhound, Spoon, Clap Your Hands Say Yeah, Kings of Leon, Hot IQs, etc. She also has some nice things to say about White Rabbits.
We saw these guys on Saturday afternoon on the indoor WOXY.com stage with about 12,482 people all crammed into a very small space. It was hot and I couldn’t get any pictures worth crap. But I loved the sounds emanating from the White Rabbits. The band had a disproprotionately high number of short guys wearing dapper suits in it, and I thought that it was fronted by Fred Savage at first, which was awesome.
Thankfully, I got to see this group at SXSW in Austin last March. NME called White Rabbits the third best band at South By last spring. Pretty high praise. Maybe third best “emerging” band. Whatever the case, I’m listening to Fort Nightly, the debut record from White Rabbits for the first time today.
Obscure Sound says this ska-influenced indie release “will most likely be considered as one of the breakthrough debuts of 2007.”
The NYC six-piece writes great songs that merge rhythmic intensity with grandiose melodrama in a seamless and inventive package.
White Rabbits moved from Columbia, MO to a shared living/performance loft space in Brooklyn last year. Say Hey Records CEO Aaron Romanello saw the band perform when they first moved to New York. He signed them and hooked them up with producer Chris Zane (Shy Child, Asobi Seksu, Les Savy Fav).
MySpace is a place for music discovery. It took me awhile to get past some of the gaudy graphics, but when I finally did, I realized this is where musicians place “ads” for themselves and also interact with fans.
Not everyday, but frequently enough I happen upon an artist I find particularly intriguing. It happened earlier this summer with St. Louis bluesman, Boo Boo Davis. And it happened last night when I clicked over to Larkin Grimm’s page on MySpace. Her music is somehow soothing to me, but what I truly enjoyed was reading her lyrical bio.
Larkin Grimm was born in Memphis, Tennessee four years after Elvis died. Her parents were members of a community of energy healers called The Holy Order of MANS. When this cult disbanded, the Grimm family moved to the Appalachian Mountains so that Larkin’s father could devote himself to the practice of learning old time fiddle tunes and her Mother could carry on her mission of bringing light to the world through singing hippie values to the children of her hillbilly friends. It was a sweet existence. The water was pure. The air was clean. The food was delicious. There was a spirit of oneness in that Appalachian valley, but soon the exhaust and consumption of the nearby cities began to creep up into the mountains and Larkin, nearly a grown woman, took off with bitterness and anger in her heart trying to find the source of this pollution, to search and destroy. She charmed her way into elite institutions of higher learning – Yale, Harvard, and Brown – and she was mega grossed out by the “education” they were selling. So she hitchhiked across Alaska, staring down bears and grizzly old men, she ducked in and out of communes and cults of many kinds, she sang songs to hipsters in fashionable cities, she spent days locked in mental institutions and in jail cells, fell in and out of love, in and out of consciousness, in and out of sobriety and society, just searching for the answers. And every time she thought she knew the answer, she wrote a song about it, and sang the song until she realized she didn’t really know. And Larkin is somewhere searching still, and if you believe in her, someday soon she will find the answer and sing it for you. !
I picked up The Historical Conquests of Josh Ritter on iTunes yesterday. It’s Ritter’s fifth album and his latest release on V2 Records (August 21, 2007).
The singer-songwriter from Moscow, Idaho began writing songs while attending Oberlin College. He eventually changed his major from neuroscience and graduated in 1999 with a self-created American History through Narrative Folk Music major. His work has been compared to Bob Dylan’s and Leonard Cohen’s. I also hear Bright Eyes’ and Harry Chapin’s influence.
The Arctic ice cap has collapsed at an unprecedented rate this summer and levels of sea ice in the region now stand at record lows, scientists have announced.
Experts say they are “stunned” by the loss of ice, with an area almost twice as big as the UK disappearing in the last week alone.
So much ice has melted this summer that the Northwest passage across the top of Canada is fully navigable, and observers say the Northeast passage along Russia’s Arctic coast could open later this month.
If the increased rate of melting continues, the summertime Arctic could be totally free of ice by 2030.
According to The New York Times Sunday Magazine, the above clip of Paul Potts made Rick Rubin cry. Rubin, a legendary producer, is now co-head of Columbia Records, a Sony-owned label. Paul Potts is one of Rubin’s first projects at Columbia.
The feature reveals some interesting things about Rubin, like the fact that he’d never heard of Simon Cowell before. Even better, Rubin has never gone to work in an office, nor will he now. I love how exceptional talent simply redefines boundaries in the pursuit of more elegant solutions.
