The Countertop Chronicles

Merry Clayton doing the song she made famous for the Rolling Stones

Oh, a storm is threat’ning
My very life today
If I don’t get some shelter
Oh yeah, I’m gonna fade away

War, children, it’s just a shot away
It’s just a shot away
War, children, it’s just a shot away
It’s just a shot away

Ooh, see the fire is sweepin’
Our very street today
Burns like a red coal carpet
Mad dog
lost its way

War, children, it’s just a shot away
It’s just a shot away
War, children, it’s just a shot away
It’s just a shot away

Rape, murder!
It’s just a shot away
It’s just a shot away

Rape, murder!
It’s just a shot away
It’s just a shot away

Rape, murder!
It’s just a shot away
It’s just a shot away

The floods is threat’ning
My very life today
Gimme, get me to shelter
Or I’m gonna fade away

War, children, it’s just a shot away
It’s just a shot away
It’s just a shot away
It’s just a shot away
It’s just a shot away
I tell you love, sister, it’s just a kiss away
It’s just a kiss away
It’s just a kiss away
It’s just a kiss away
It’s just a kiss away
Kiss away, kiss away

Howard Stern had another great interview today, this time with one of his all time favorite musicians, Steven Stills.

While not as fluid and dynamic as his other interviews tend to be (Stills basically answered questions, but offered little more and the back and forth was limited, he also made clear real early on that he is painfully shy and that he started losing his hearing when he was 9) it was still fascinating to hear him discuss music, the history of CSN&Y, his stories of growing up in Florida, running around with Duane Allman and Jimi Hendix and performed a bunch of songs.

Anyway, it reminded me that I always wanted to pick up his relatively recent release Roll Tape – a demo he made one night in April 1968 that he assumed was long destroyed.

As Wikipedia points describes it

Stephen Stills was at a Judy Collins session in 1968, and when she was finished, Stills reserved a studio and recorded a tape of new songs. Stills left the masters in the studio, and they were almost discarded when the facility closed in 1978. Musician Joe Colasurdo, who was rehearsing there at the time, was told by the owner that he could cart off any tapes he wanted to before they cleared the place out. After seeing Stills’ names on several of the boxes, Colasurdo kept them safe until he could find a reel-to-reel machine to play them on.

Joe began attempting to get the masters safely back into Stills’ hands, an undertaking that took 25 years. In 2003, he was connected to Graham Nash after happening to meet a close friend of his. Nash received the tapes, passed them on to Stephen, encouraging him to release them.

I’ll just add that Crosby Stills & Nash wasn’t formed until July of 1968 when Graham Nash happened to meet David Crosby and Stephen Still’s at a party at Mama Cass Elliots place.

It is fantastic. The sound quality is unreal, and the songs on it – which became the foundation of CSN – are fantastic. Suite Judy Blue Eyes and Wooden Ships in particular really stand out.

As Roger Daltry once sang, I can’t explain.

On the day that Nike announced they were resigning from the U.S. Chamber because the nation’s business community expressed some concern over the pace at which the Obama Administration was seeking to destroy the U.S. economy via climate legislation. . . . .

Nike also announced that they were going to re-start the promotional relationship they once held with the dishonest and despicable dog torturing and puppy dog murdering Michael Vick.

So, let me get this straight – Is Nike’s message that exercising your constitutional rights to question the governments action is wrong, while brutally killing helpless dogs isn’t????

Like I said, someone help me here. I simply can’t explain this.

Next thing you know, we’ll have Whoopie Goldberg defending pedophiles who like to drug and then assfuck helpless 13 year old girls and claim that it isn’t really “rape-rape”

Of, wait. . . . . she did what?????

From Nutnfancy

It’s been awhile since we spent a Monday Morning listening to the Dead and talking guns, but this picture I stumbled upon motivated me to find a tune worthy of posting.

Mister Charlie
Lyrics by Ron “Pigpen” McKernan

I take a little powder
I take a little salt
I put it in my shotgun
and I go walking out

Chuba-chuba
Wooley-booley
Looking high
Looking low
Gonna scare you up and shoot you
Cause Mr. Charlie told me so

I won’t take you life
Won’t even take a limb
Just unload my shotgun
and take a little skin

Chuba-chuba
Wooley-booley
Looking high
Looking low
Gonna scare you up and shoot you
Cause Mr. Charlie told me so

Well you take a silver dollar
Take a silver dime
Mix em both together
in some alligator wine

I can hear the drums
Voo-doo all night long
Mr. Charlie tellin me
I can’t do nothin wrong

Chuba-chuba
Wooley-booley
Looking high
Looking low
Gonna scare you up and shoot you
Cause Mr. Charlie told me so

Now Mr. Charlie told me
Thought you’d like to know
Give you a little warning
before I let you go

Chuba-chuba
Wooley-booley
Lookin high
Lookin low
Gonna scare you up and shoot you
Cause Mr. Charlie told me so

Unfortunatly, I couldn’t find a good you tube of the Dead, but I’m sure you can groove just as well to Phil & Friends!

Nada. Zip. Zilch.

Sorry, but I’ve had little inspiration to blog for some time, as you can probably tell. Perhpas I should take a break. Or not. Or just say, watch your feeds. I’ll be back, I’ll be moved at some point.

I just don’t know when.

In the meantime, enjoy some Viola Lee Blues

It seems, that in addition to being a guitar god, Eric Clapton also fancies himself something of a gun nut. Luckily for some rich folks, his collection has grown too big and he needs to sell some guns off to make room for others.

Clapton has claimed that his passion has gotten out of hand in much the same way his guitar collection did. “It’s following the same pattern as when I collected guitars, cars and watches. I start out with a fairly broad spectrum, get obsessed and engulfed and finally narrow the collection down. I built a gunroom that can house a certain amount of guns and now I have to clear the decks for the new guns I have on order.”

Oh to have his problems.

And I think this comment, sums it up nicely

O-shit- Clapton is even cooler than I thought.

But enough of that, here’s some pictures (and yes, thats Eric playing guitar in the engraving)

Awesome!

Dave Stewart is a mad genius

Not only did he come out with a line of harmonically tuned vibrators – and played Somewhere Over The Rainbow with them on the Howard Stern show (you can listen here) –

but he has totally re-done the Eurythmics songs with full orchestration to replace the synthesizers.

Check it out. It blew me away

Here’s the video for the original Sweat Dreams. WHen this song came out – at the fawn of the MTV age, it was a musical revolution

You can also see him in the video for Tom Petty’s Don’t Come Around Here No More, a song Dave wrote (about the night Stevie Nicks broke up a long relationship with Joe Walsh and he ended up sleeping with her) on an album he produced. He’s on the giant mushroom at the start.

“A Naughty Librarian Vibe”

From a post originally published August 11, 2005

We also mourned, this weekend, the anniversary of the death of two truly fine guitar players. Saturday was the 13th Anniversary of Jerry Garcia’s passing.

Today, we mourn the sixth anniversary of Widespread Panic guitarist Michael Houser who died from pancreatic cancer August 10th, 2002.

For the geeks out there – this was his killer setup – complete with the “If Its Too Loud, Your Too Old” bumper sticker.

Over his last five or so years, he developed a problem with his leg that required him to sit down during performances. That is how most of Widespread Panic’s current crop of fans remember him.

I’ll keep the vision of his solitary figure standing on stage right, head hung down with his flop of hair covering his face – wailing away with a blistering Michael Bloomfield-esque riff behind whatever groove the band settled into.

Rest In Peace good buddy

No, there is no substitute for you

See the rest of the best South Park episode of Season 1 – indeed of all time – here.

Bigoted Anti Gun Massachussets Governor Deval Patrick is Sun Ra side man (sax man) Pat Patrick’s kid?!?!?!??!

I may just have to pass on his being a bigot.