Sunday, January 10, 2010

the elusive maestro of woodstock




Injecting just a little warmth into "Creep in the Cellar" this frosty afternoon. Kermit the Frog.

Or. Everybody's favourite commonwealth daddy.

His only #1 hit single; featuring the vocal talents of James Taylor and Linda Ronstadt. You can beat on Taylor all you like. Personally, I admire a lot of his songs. To say nothing of his wrangling Carly Simon into bed. What a sinewy doll.


NEIL YOUNG: HEART OF GOLD
from "Harvest" LP (Reprise) 1972 (US)

9 comments:

ib said...

Yeah ? well Michael O'Donohue can gargle on my balls.

You can't beat the Muppetts. Or Sesame Street for that matter.

In my opinion, they collected up all that Woodstock shit and modeled it into the RIAA. But. They forgot to lend them guns. Over here we were entrapped by the IRA; another bunch of fuckers with Muppett credentials and a severe shortage of legitimate ammunition.

Neil wasn't so bad. Or even Roger Daltrey. Fuck 'em.

The CIA / RIAA, I mean.

The Muppetts were alright. The only thing on commercial broadcasting to sound remotely like a cross-dressing act betwixt Neil Young and Lou. And the New York Dolls.

All detractors should immediately sign up to "I love Lucy" on automated subscription.

On the other hand. I confess I preferred the Banana Splts.

Your driver said...

I like the Muppets just fine and Neil has proven to have a real live heart of gold. The thing about O'Donoghue was that he was the only genuinely angry man with a public voice in America in the '70's. He was head writer for the original Saturday Night Live TV show and he regularly subjected the nation to comedy routines involving ramming long, sharp needles into the eyes of the Mormon Tabernacle Choir or fantasies of himself having sex with Mamie Eisenhower (The late president's widow) in front of an international satellite TV connection, "So even people in Taiwan can see us." He was a genuinely twisted motherfucker at a time when the entire nation was drowning in niceness. Punk came along and sort of rendered him redundant and he slipped back into show bizness obscurity. He was so angry that his brains exploded, literally, and he died of a cerebral hemorrhage at age 54. He kept me alive until I heard The Clash.

ib said...

Shit! They just robbed my return.

What I was saying was vaguely this:

You are wholly right. In as much as we didn;t get 'Saturday Night Live' until well into the '80s; on the back of "The Blues Brothers".

I detested "The Blues Brothers". John Belushi and Dan Ackroyd too. Chevy Chase and all the rest of those fuckers.

Don't get me wrong. I like sight gags. Laurel and Hardy; Harold Lloyd; Iggy Stooge; Norman Wisdom.

Did you know... Joe Stalin awarded George Formby the highest Soviet accolade then available ? Seriously. Even that old frosty cunt was susceptible to a sense of humour it seems.

Well. I once thought Sid (Vicious) the funniest cunt imaginable. Johnny Thunders too. Kurt Cobain.

I have long ago forgotten my point, if I ever sharpened one.

I remain fond of Peter Cook. Hunter Thompson and a few others. I am struggling. I think my own brains exploded years ago, but - of course - I am merely drawn to posturing.

On balance. And this is subject to therapy. I still think Oliver Hardy was a fucking genius.

Oh. And that fuck out of "Curb Your Enthusiasm". Funny.

Funnier than most.

Your driver said...

by the time SNL made it to Scotland it was no longer funny. O'Donoghue had been fired and the original cast had mostly gone on to other things.

About The Blues Brothers. It's pretty funny if you understand that it is a pretty accurate picture of Chicago in the '70's. The Nazis really did have a big brick building located at the very clear line between black and white neighborhoods. The Black side of the building was painted with a huge swastika and the words "N*****s Beware!". On the White side of the building was an American flag and the words "White Power!" The city was fantastically corrupt but it also had the largest police force in the world. It was easy to imagine a multi car accident involving nothing but cops, as shown in the final scene. I once stood on a corner and realized that the majority of the cars driving past me were cop cars. Hard to describe how racially segregated the city was too. It was actually fairly daring for two white boys to embrace some aspect of Black culture. Unfortunately what's come of that is millions of white boys appropriating Black culture. There were also plenty of cute in jokes. The "Curl up and Dye" beauty salon where Carrie Fischer worked was a real place. I went past it on my way to work in the steel mill every day. Ultimately the Blues Brothers is another piece of failed '70's crap, but it did have some moments.

I'm still waiting for my scene by scene analysis of "My Name Is Joe." When attempting to translate your blog into Glaswegian as Beer suggests, I always imagine you talking like the characters in that movie.

said...

One word...Mighty Boosh!

@eloh said...

I left you and Jon a little note back at "Creep in the Cellar".

I'm constantly late to the party here lately.

Your driver said...

@eloh, Keep up dammit. We're spittin' diamonds here!

Anto said...

The funniest shop name ever is a carpet shop in finglas called lino duchy

said...

There's a flooring shop in San Jose called Linoleum Dick's