Waiting For The Man

“I’m Waiting for the Man” is a song by American rock band the Velvet Underground. Written by Lou Reed, it was first released on their 1967 debut album, The Velvet Underground & Nico. The lyrics describe a man’s efforts to obtain heroin in Harlem.

In various reviews, it is described as “tough garage rock”, “proto-punk classic”, and “one of the all-time classic rock songs”, with renditions by a number of artists.

In 2004 Rolling Stone magazine ranked the song at number 159 on its list of the 500 Greatest Songs of All Time. It was moved to number 161 in 2010, and finally re-ranked at number 81 in 2021.

The magazine noted:

The Velvets mixed R&B rhythm-guitar workout, blues-piano stomp and dreamy art drone, as Reed deadpans a story about scoring $26 worth of heroin in Harlem. “Everything about that song holds true,” said Reed, “except the price.”

In December 1966, David Bowie’s manager, Kenneth Pitt, acquired an acetate of the then-unreleased The Velvet Underground & Nico and presented it to Bowie. Upon hearing “I’m Waiting for the Man”, he went to his band at the time, the Buzz, and told them they were going to learn it: “We learned ‘Waiting for the Man’ right then and there and we were playing it on stage within a week.” He later recalled in an 2003 interview with Vanity Fair: “Amusingly, not only was I to cover a Velvets song before anyone else in the world, I actually did it before the album came out. Now that’s the essence of Mod.”

Bowie first attempted to record “I’m Waiting for the Man” in the studio during the sessions for his 1967 debut album, and later properly recorded it with another band, the Riot Squad, on April 5, 1967. In his book Rebel Rebel, Chris O’Leary notes the subpar quality of the recording, writing that it “sounded as if they were making do with what they’d found in a school music room.” This version later appeared on the Riot Squad compilations The Last Chapter: Mods & Sods (2012) and The Toy Soldier EP. In this version, Bowie misinterpreted the song’s subject matter, containing the line “I’m just looking for a good friendly behind” instead of “I’m just looking for a dear, dear friend of mine”. Tony Visconti later told biographer Nicholas Pegg: “A very young David Bowie didn’t yet know that ‘the man’ in Harlem parlance meant the drug dealer. So he naturally assumed it was a gay encounter involving money.”

Bowie performed “I’m Waiting for the Man”, often titled as “Waiting for the Man”, for BBC radio shows in 1972 (one recording appearing on 2000’s Bowie at the Beeb) and frequently on the Ziggy Stardust Tour (one recording appearing on 1994’s Santa Monica ’72). He would further perform it on the 1976 Isolar Tour and the 1990 Sound+Vision Tour. While his 1967 recording followed Reed’s original chord structure, Bowie made subtle changes to his live performances. He performed the song with Reed at his 50th birthday bash in 1997. David Buckley writes that Bowie’s 1977 song “‘Heroes'” was influenced by Reed’s writing.


https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/I%27m_Waiting_for_the_Man

Has Anyone Ever Written Anything for You

Between 1971 and 1978, Joe Walsh was married to Stefany Rhodes. The couple had a daughter named Emma, born in the first year of their marriage. When Emma was just three years old, Rhodes had a car accident which caused Emma to suffer from fatal head injuries. She was pulled out of the life support unit the same night, and her organs were donated. After this tragic incident, Walsh suffered from severe trauma, and the couple decided to break up.

To cope with Emma’s loss, Walsh began to use drugs and alcohol, and he wrote a song as a tribute to his daughter titled ‘Song For Emma.’ He also built a memorial fountain to Emma’s name in North Boulder Park, where Rhodes was taking Emma to at the time of the tragic car accident. Later on, when his relationship with Nicks began, Walsh shared this incident with Stevie. She was deeply affected, and went on to write ‘Has Anyone Ever Written Anything for You’ for Walsh, who is a former resident of Olivenhain!

Natalie Back On Tour!

Our daughter Natalie leaves tomorrow to start the next leg of the Karol G tour, which begins in Mexico City on February 8th. They have shows in Latin/South America over the next three months, then they go to Europe for another two months!

https://www.karolgmusic.com/tour-dates/

They did two shows in Medellin, Colombia (Karol G’s home town) in early December:

Joe Jackson

Filmed at Paradiso in 2019:

Paradiso is a Dutch music venue and cultural centre located in Amsterdam. Originally a nineteenth-century church used by the “Vrije Gemeente” (Free Congregation), it was squatted by hippies in 1967, seeking to turn it into a leisure club. The city officially opened it as a youth entertainment center in 1968, quickly becoming a focal point for the counterculture movement and associated with the era’s rock music. Paradiso also became one of the first places where soft drug use and sales were tolerated. Over time, it has diversified its programming to include lectures, plays, classical music, and crossover artists. Some of the world’s biggest music acts, including AC/DC, Adele, David Bowie, Madonna, Nirvana, and The Rolling Stones, have performed at Paradiso. Key performances include Pink Floyd’s 1968 concert, Glen Matlock’s last gig with the Sex Pistols in 1977, and The Rolling Stones’ semi-acoustic concerts in 1995, which Keith Richards claimed were the band’s best live shows.

Jim Ladd, RIP

Those who were in the LA area during the 1970s and 80s came across DJ Jim Ladd who played free-form radio for decades. I remember listening during the night that John Lennon died, and he played a memorial set that gave me a new appreciation for Lennon – and music in general! But Jim’s favorites were the Doors, which he played several times a night. When we did the concerts at CSUF, our first big outdoor show was with The Robbie Kreiger Band (sponsored by Miller Lite), and he played this song:

Shane McGowan, RIP

A good old Irish Christmas song this week, in honor of Shane McGowan – who was born on December 25, 1957!

Hat tip Richard!

The Pogues were an English or Anglo-Irish Celtic punk band fronted by Shane MacGowan and others, founded in King’s Cross, London, in 1982, as Pogue Mahone—an anglicisation by James Joyce of the Irish phrase póg mo thóin, meaning “kiss my arse”. Fusing punk influences with instruments such as the tin whistle, banjo, cittern, mandolin and accordion, the Pogues were initially poorly received in traditional Irish music circles—the noted musician Tommy Makem called them “the greatest disaster ever to hit Irish music”—but were subsequently credited with reinvigorating the genre. The band later incorporated influences from other musical traditions, including jazz, flamenco, and Middle Eastern music.

The band started off playing in London pubs and clubs, and became known for their energetic, raucous live shows. After gaining wider attention as an opening act for The Clash on their 1984 tour, and shortening their name to the Pogues—to circumvent BBC censorship, following complaints from Scottish Gaelic speakers—they released their first studio album, Red Roses for Me, in October 1984.

In 1987, the Pogues’ arrangement of the folk song “The Irish Rover”, a collaboration with the Dubliners, reached number one in Ireland and number eight in the UK; the two bands performed the song on Ireland’s The Late Late Show and the UK’s Top of the Pops. Later in 1987, the Pogues released the Christmas single “Fairytale of New York”, co-written by MacGowan and Jem Finer and recorded as a duet between MacGowan and Kirsty McColl, which reached number one in Ireland and number two in the UK. The song remains a perennial Christmas favourite in the UK and Ireland; in December 2022, it was certified quintuple platinum in the UK, having achieved three million combined sales.

It was reported in July 2023 that MacGowan was hospitalised in an intensive care unit. Following treatment for an infection, he was discharged from St. Vincent’s University Hospital in November 2023. On 30 November 2023, after receiving last rites, MacGowan died from pneumonia at his home in Dublin with his wife by his side; he was 65.

Following MacGowan’s death, Tom Waits wrote on X: “Shane MacGowan’s torrid and mighty voice is mud and roses punched out with swaggering stagger, ancient longing that is blasted all to hell. A Bard’s bard, may he cast his spell upon us all forevermore”.[83]

Nick Cave called MacGowan “the greatest songwriter of his generation, with the most terrifyingly beautiful of voices”. Bruce Springsteen said the “passion and deep intensity of [MacGowan’s] music and lyrics is unmatched by all but the very best in the rock and roll canon… I don’t know about the rest of us, but they’ll be singing Shane’s songs 100 years from now”.

When Bob Dylan performed a concert in Dublin in 2022, he paid tribute to MacGowan while onstage, describing the former Pogues frontman as one of his “favourite artists”.

Paul Simon said MacGowan was “that kind of artist that needed to burn very brightly and intensely. Some artists are like that. They produce work that we treasure but they pay for it with their health – their bodily health and their mental health. That was Shane”.

https://www.loudersound.com/news/shane-macgowan-victoria-clarke-pogues

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