You’ll recognize this tune from Singin’ In The Rain. It’s from Broadway Melody (1929), featured here a while ago. You’d almost think this was choreographed by Busby Berkeley. It wasn’t, but it certainly points in that direction.
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My buddy Dennis and I saw and heard Bob Dylan and Elvis Costello Tuesday night. “Live on stage!” as the ticket says. The seats weren’t cheap, but the second row never is.
Costello was in fine form for his 45-minute warm-up to Dylan, and his voice was in stunningly good shape. Dylan’s voice, sorry to say, wasn’t in such good shape. But still, he put on a great show, with an eclectic selection of songs, and an absolutely top-notch band.
Dylan has been bitten by the marketing bug, because the ticket came with this promo badge and a lanyard to wear it…
…and also part of the package was — to my astonishment — a real, working, totally analog pocket watch in a leather pouch!
Circa 1974, John Lennon went on a year-long bender with Harry Nilsson that Lennon later called his “Lost Weekend,” a reference to the 1945 movie. Most famously the two were thrown out of The Troubadour nightclub, but there was also an altercation outside of Ciro’s, as seen in these photos. Is that David Geffen with them?
[Note: The photo was mislabeled in the source material I used as having been taken outside of Ciro’s. Nicola Brown clarifies: Just wanted to clarify that in the photo of John Lennon and Harry Nilsson outside the Troubadour, the third person in it isn’t David Geffin, it is my ex-husband Louis Maiello aka James Oliver. He just happened to be there and he actually convinced John to go back to his house that night to chill out. Harry had been kicked out of the Troubadour for heckling the Smothers Brothers who where on stage that night.]
Harry wasn’t a nice guy when he was drunk (neither was John), and he was often drunk. But he had his good side.
Thanks to the blog called AM, Then FM that I just found tonight, I know there’s a documentary called Who Is Harry Nilsson (And Why Is Everybody Talkin’ About Him)? that hasn’t yet made it to DVD. Despite the difficulty of being a friend of Harry’s, Harry had a lot of friends, and seeing their famous faces in this trailer for the documentary has me looking forward to seeing it.
It’s interesting seeing the Smothers Brothers among the people interviewed about Harry, because Lennon and Harry were thrown out of the Troubadour for heckling the brothers.
In a post about Grace Kelly in the movie The Swan I asked who the boy was that played her younger brother. It was Van Dyke Parks, first a child actor, but best known for his musical collaborations with Brian Wilson.
Van Dyke’s lyrics have been characterized as being obscure, most famously the line “columnated ruins domino” in “Surf’s Up,” a song that was originally a centerpiece of the SMiLE album that Wilson abandoned, but finally completed and released in 2004.
Here is “Surf’s Up” as recorded for the Beach Boys album of the same name in 1971. Another great example of the virtues of Vinyl Music. Rubber Soul.
[audio:http://www.dograt.com/Audio/SEP07/SurfsUp.mp3]Still smarting from the loss of the Petula Clark blog, it falls to me to carry on. Here is some more of Pet in Goodbye, Mr. Chips.
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On October 1, a big Bob Dylan CD collection is being released. On October 2, D. F. Rogers and I will be seeing Dylan in concert, appearing with Elvis Costello. Dylan has always been forward thinking, and being in the middle of watching Battlestar Galatica on DVD, I’m right with him on this important warning.
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