As we have been mentioning the last couple of months, September is stocked with a ton of great releases and next Tuesday in particular comes the mother-load with a staggering
As we’ve previously mentioned, next month legendary gospel and soul singer Mavis Staples will release her highly anticipated new album You Are Not Alone, which was produced by Wilco front
We’re eagerly anticipating You Are Not Alone the new album from legendary gospel and soul singer Mavis Staples, which is being produced by Wilco front man Jeff Tweedy. The album,
Any Major Dude Will Tell You is the third track on the 1974 Steely Dan album Pretzel Logic. Here’s a funny excerpt from Blinded by the Lyrics…
“Okay, friends, break out your Steely Dan decoder rings. Starting with the release of their debut album Can’t Buy A Thrill back in 1972, no group has trafficked in more oblique, head-scratching, and just plain weird lyrics than Steely Dan. Case in point: Have you ever seen a squonk’s tears?, an enigmatic line from “Any Major Dude Will Tell You” off the Pretzel Logic LP.’
What on earth is a squonk? As they used to say on the old Laugh-In television show, “Look that up in your Funk & Wagnalls!” Actually, don’t both bother, because the word squonk is not found in any dictionary.
It turns out that squonk is a piece of jabberwocky, a completely made-up word referring to a mysterious animal, that due to its abject homeliness, spends most of its time crying. Credit for coining squonk goes to William T. Cox, who introduced the word in his oddly named book Fearsom Critters of the Lumberwoods, with a Few Desert and Mountain Beasts. To quote from Mr. Cox’s volume: “The squonk is of a very retiring disposition, generally traveling about at twilight and dusk. Because of its misfitting skin, which is covered with warts and moles, it is always unhappy; in fact, it is said, by people who are best able to judge, to be the most morbid of beasts.”
Two years after Steely Dan introduced listeners to the mythical squonk in “Any Major Dude Will Tell You”, Genesis included the song “Squonk” on their A Trick of the Tail album, wherein Phil Collins sang: Stop your tears from falling / The trail they leave is very clear for all to see at night.
The Contestants:
God Street Wine: The earliest recording on the Live Music Archive of God Street Wine performing this cover dates back to 1990. So when GSW played it last Friday, it was a good 20 years since that night at The Wetlands. Resident GSW expert ScottyB pointed me in the direction of the performance below from 1994. Man, the way they perform the intro makes it sound more like The Grateful Dead than Steely Dan. Source: 9-16-1994
[audio:https://glidemag.wpengine.com/hiddentrack/wp-content/uploads/2010/07/gswdude.mp3]READ ON for the scoop on the rest of this week’s contestants…
As we previously reported, Primus will return to the road this summer for their first headlining tour in four years. The quirky funk-rock act is wasting no time in lining
Yesterday, we published a post about the start of Neil Young’s Twisted Road solo tour. At these performances, Neil has been opening with My My, Hey Hey (Out of the
If I had to choose a theme to this edition of Last Week’s Sauce, I suppose it would “legends”. Booker T. and Leo Kottke are undoubtedly legends in my mind. And Wilco, well Wilco is one of the premiere bands on the scene right now and they are legends in the making. Galactic? OK probably not, but they do have one of The Neville Brothers playing with them and that helps.
[Thanks to Patrick for this week’s photo]
And we continue to take all the selected tracks, normalize them, create some simple fades and put it into one easy to download MP3 for you. Click here to download Last Week’s Sauce Podcast #5
Artist & Title: Booker T. – Green Onions, Born Under A Bad Sign, Potato Hole
Date & Venue: 2010-04-02 Varsity Theater, Minneapolis MN
Taper & Show Download: perks
Leading off this week we’ve got legend Booker T. Jones. There are three songs here and he wrote all of ’em. Well, he co-wrote Born Under A Bad Sign, but Green Onions is all his. The third track is the title-track from his newest album. Booker T. next plays at the San Francisco Jazz Festival on April 23rd.
[audio:https://glidemag.wpengine.com/hiddentrack/wp-content/uploads/2010/04/bookersauce.mp3]Video of Green Onions from the same show:
READ ON for tracks from Galactic, Leo Kottke, and Wilco…
While you might not think of the middle of March as “Festival Season”, we’ve got audio from two separate festivals this week in our audio & video recap of what’s been going on recently. Jam In The Dam returned to The Melkweg in Amsterdam after taking a year off in 2009, while moe. had their first festival of the year up in Rutland, VT for the appropriately titled snoe.down.
[Thanks to OtherOneK for this week’s photo]
We also check in with Widespread Panic as they played their first live shows of the year and we listen in on some of the acoustic mini-sets that Wilco has been throwing into the three-hour shows they’ve been playing. We lead off with a gorgeous Neil Young cover and also have some audio and video from Orchestra Morphine’s most recent gig.
And we continue to take all the selected tracks, normalize them, create some simple fades and put it into one easy to download MP3 for you. Click here to download Last Week’s Sauce Podcast #4
Artist & Title: Cowboy Junkies – Don’t Let It Bring You Down
Date & Venue: 2010-03-23 Space, Evanston IL
Taper & Show Download: darktrain
As Neil Young says on 4 Way Street, this next song is guaranteed to bring you right down. It’s called Don’t Let It Bring You Down. The Cowboy Junkies perform a fantastic rendition of it. Cowboy Junkies next play April 15th in Buffalo NY.
[audio:https://glidemag.wpengine.com/hiddentrack/wp-content/uploads/2010/03/cowboysauce.mp3]Video from a very intimate gig in Davenport. Read more about it here:
READ ON for tracks from Les Claypool, moe., Orchestra Morphine, Widespread Panic and Wilco…
Just when we thought that the Take-Away Shows couldn’t get any better, the gorgeously-shot video site managed to post a brand new episode this week featuring none other than Wilco.
There are some artists who have no qualms selling tickets to their shows for whatever the market will bear. Yet, there are a select few who do their best to keep prices under control, regardless of whether they could make an extra few million dollars by charging an extra $10 or $20. This week’s B List looks at eight major bands that could charge more for ducats but don’t.
While none of these bands are “pulling a Fugazi” – a group who famously did their best to keep prices to $5 per show – these acts are clearly leaving money on the table and should be applauded for doing so.
8. Ben Harper – Average Ticket Price = $33.82
When Ben Harper put together his latest band – Relentless7 – he played a number of shows at intimate venues as a warm up before the group tackled more high-profile gigs. Ben’s fanbase is extremely loyal and passionate. If he wanted to charge $50 a ticket for these smaller shows, no one would’ve batted an eye. Yet most ticket prices for these shows were under $20. A classy move by a classy artist.
7. Vampire Weekend – Average Ticket Price = $26.97
Over the past two years Vampire Weekend has blown up beyond anybody’s expectations. Despite ridiculous demand for tickets to their shows, VW has kept average ticket prices under $30 leading to sell outs across the country.
READ ON for six more fan-friendly artists…
