Don't talk back.

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A great groove:  At this very moment, I am hearing, for the first time in my life, "Tramp," not by Otis Redding and Carla Thomas, but rather the original version by Lowell Fulsom, who wrote the song and recorded it first.

We lost Lowell four years ago last Thursday, but he's very much alive in these headphones. Go, Lowell! No wonder the hip-hop DJs sample this one so heavily.
posted by Jack Bog at 2:13 AM | link

 
Long time gone:  It's been entirely too long since I last posted here.

Back when I started this and another weblog, I was still marvelling at how easy it was to start a blog, or any number of them. It took a while for me to figure out how hard it is to do a good job with more than one, or even with one, for that matter. My partner Fred also appears to have hit some bumpy spots in the road, which have taken him out of the action. So it has been up to me to keep yakkin', and, well, I haven't been up to the task.

Not that there hasn't been enough on-topic material to keep track of. We've had the death of Maurice Gibb of the Bee Gees, Phil Spector's arrest on murder charges, and whatever it is that's going on with Billy Joel. These news items all could have, and perhaps should have, inspired some remembrances and other observations here. But, as comedian George Wallace once said, I've been busier than a one-legged man in an ass-kicking contest.

I haven't been away from the music all this time. In fact, I managed to DJ a dance party a few weeks ago, an experience that I managed to write about in my main weblog. And I've been cooking up a post about a familiar name from the '60s and '70s for a while now, but it's a "working" hour or so away from being ready. My goal is to get it up here within the next few days.

In the meantime, there's been plenty to read. The Sunday New York Times has suddenly begun to run lengthy front-page profiles of some of the legends of early rock and R&B. So far they've covered Bo Diddley (still bitter), Chuck Berry (grateful despite some hard knocks), and B.B. King (somewhere in between). They make for some interesting reading, but you'll have to do some painless registration stuff when you get to the Times site.

Finally, a note about a recent internet search phenomenon. Apparently someone has come up with a parody of the Leiber and Stoller/Coasters classic "Yakety Yak," the namesake of this blog. Legions are asking Google to find the song using the key line "Yakety Yak -- bomb Iraq." It's not on this page, folks. Try here.

I hope to see you back here in a few days.
posted by Jack Bog at 10:31 PM | link