Bon Iver & The Roots - Perth @ Jimmy Fallon 2/9/12

Woody Guthrie Serenades New York City (1943)

In 1943, the modern-day troubadour and national treasure, Woodrow Wilson “Woody” Guthrie, was about to publish his now-classic, semi-fictionalized autobiography, Bound for Glory, in which he wrote vibrantly about his childhood, his love of American folk songs, and his epic travels as a freight car-hopping hobo.
While Bound for Glory would introduce Guthrie to a much broader audience than that which knew him only through his music, he was already something of an underground folk hero to what, in retrospect, feels like the early stirrings of the counterculture of the 1960s. A politically engaged — and occasionally enraged — artist, Guthrie crafted wrenching tales of loss and struggle, as well as paeans to romantic love and national pride, into some of the most enduring American music ever made. (At the time the pictures in this gallery were made, Guthrie had written and performed, but not yet published, the song that more than a few people believe should be the national anthem; namely, the simple, celebratory gem, “This Land Is Your Land.”)
Guthrie, an Oklahoma native, had a strong connection to New York City. It was where he lived at various times in the 1940s, and made his first real recordings; where he wrote “This Land Is Your Land”; where he befriended and collaborated with other politically minded artists like Pete Seeger; and where his devotees — including the likes of Bob Dylan and the great Phil Ochs — later ignited their own Guthrie-inspired folk scene.
On assignment for LIFE in 1943, photographer Eric Schaal followed Guthrie as he gave impromptu performances around New York — in bars, on the stoops of brownstones, on the subway. Engaging, charming, and at ease, the Woody Guthrie in these photos is exactly where he most liked to be: among the people, guitar in hand.
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(Thanx Tony!)

Spaceboy - This one's for you!!!

“What day is it,?" asked Pooh.
"It's today," squeaked Piglet.
"My favorite day," said Pooh.”

Now let's get out of here and get up to some mischief!!!

:)

Einstürzende Neubauten - Palast Der Republik (4/11/04)

This performance was filmed on November 4, 2004 at the Palast der Republik in Berlin, the former Parliament building and symbol of the no longer extant DDR (East Germany). Einstürzende Neubauten found the steel skeleton of the ruins of the Palast a congenial location for their architectural-musical fantasies and field studies. Accompanied by a 100 member choir, recruited from the supporters of the www.neubauten.org Internet project, they played in and with the building in their inimitable, almost literally building-collapsing fashion. Contains previously unreleased songs, band commentary and more.

Nick Cave and the Bad Seeds - Hurricane Festival (Sheessel Germany June 19th 2009)

With the magnificent Ed Kuepper on guitar!

Bonus:

Nick Cave & The Bad Seeds - God Is In The House

The Scale Of The Universe

Rolling Stones 'Wild Horses' Studio Playback

Mick Jagger, Keith Richards, Charlie Watts, Mick Taylor and Jim Dickinson are listening to a recording of their Song Wild Horses. Taken from the documentary 'Gimme Shelter' from Charlotte Zwerin, Albert and David Maysles about the Rolling Stones and the Altamont Free Concert in 1969.
(Thanx Stan!)

Testet ölt- I (2012)

Testet ölt is an experimental rock band from Temerin (Vojvodina, Serbia), whose real psychedelic potential can be felt live since 2011. The lineup: Lenkes - guitar; Stupar - drums; Czini - keyboard.

(Thanx Ákos!)

♪♫ The Birthday Party - Fears of Gun/Dead Joe

Australia's link to secret Iraq prisons

Downer rubbishes Iraq 'black site' claims

Oops, My Facebook Friend Just Joined AQ

Erica Chenoweth: Confronting the myth of the rational insurgent

Hallelujah for Leonard Cohen

Leonard Cohen has a new album out: Old Ideas, his 12th, and his first in seven years. He's 77 now, and if you know Cohen you know his age will get its due in the new songs. The title, of course, has a double meaning, the second being that these songs are ideas about getting old. His life is his wellspring, and life has amounted to a long and singularly winding road for this troubadour.

Born in Montreal in 1934 of Polish and Lithuanian Jewish parents, Cohen was first a modestly successful poet. He learned guitar to pick up girls and got into songwriting partly because he was tired of being poor. His first album, Songs of Leonard Cohen, came out in 1967, when he was 32. Probably it got green-lighted in the wake of Bob Dylan's success, when Dylan had demonstrated to record executives that you could make highly personal, elusively poetic, scraggly sounding records that the public would buy. Of course, Dylan was riding a folk wave when he emerged in the early ’60s, and Cohen caught that wave too.

I'd like to compare those two, in the process of looking back over Cohen's life and songs. He and Dylan have been working for decades without any visible connection or competition. In practical terms there is no competition, because Dylan has been by far the more visible and influential artist. But if Cohen has always sung in the shadow of Dylan, in the quality of the work I suggest he has been in nobody's shadow.

A long career has done Cohen well by me, and I imagine a lot of listeners. In the ’60s and ’70s, I liked a few of his songs well enough, though I found the voice and the tunes not as striking as Dylan's brassy honk and his unforgettable melodies in the folk days. "Blowin' in the Wind," "Mister Tambourine Man," any number of Dylan songs seemed timeless, as if they'd evolved through many voices over many years. (Some, including "Blowin' in the Wind," were based on traditional tunes.)
Cohen didn't do that, probably couldn't do that. He was never the tunesmith Dylan was, and in the early years his voice actually made Dylan's sound pretty good. Cohen sang in a tenor you could call "reedy" if you wanted to be nice, "nasal" if you didn't. They're both mediocre guitar players; any number of high-school students could play rings around them. Cohen's melodies tended to start at the bottom of his range, ascend toward the top of his range—which was not very far—then descend and screw around in the lower region for the rest of the verse. His early hit "Suzanne" is a case in point...

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