Bowiesongs (C. O'Leary)

oh it's a pain in the head, that site. i'd rather not use it

yeah I get that everyone's gun-shy, but the "we get lousier, but slowly" Wordpress model seems more their speed

On Saturday, March 7th Jello Biafra suffered a hemorrhagic stroke caused by high blood pressure.



As per Jello:

sigh...if needs be, this outpost is still up: mastodon.social/@bowiesongs

only missing a John Lennon "actually, I think I am God" response

answers to Disc & Music Echo, Aug 1969: "What question would you most like to ask God?" Pete Townshend: "Who am I?" Scott Walker: "Why? That's all." Andy Fairweather-Low: "I wouldn't even know where to start. I'd probably end up asking if He liked the Rolling Stones."

Augie Meyers, Founding Member of the Sir Douglas Quintet and Texas Tornados, Dies - Best Classic Bands Augie Meyers, a founding member of the Sir Douglas Quintet who later re-teamed with that band's leader Doug Sahm to form the Tejano supergroup Texas Tornados, died on March 7, 2026.

Farewell to the great Augie Meyers, founding member and keyboardist for both the Sir Douglas Quintet and Texas Tornadoes and a genuine Lone Star legend.

yeah i had to basically teach myself (& had help w/ a few musician friends) when I started taking the DB stuff seriously in the early '10s

‘…With my pencil turning moments into life…’ When I wrote the following review, I stole forty minutes from helping my parents put shutters up in anticipation of Hurricane Frances, a soggy nuisance that inched towards the Palm Beach-Martin cou…

Every time it's Eno and Cale's birthdays I promote the hell out of WRONG WAY UP, a multicolored cuckoo clock of an album out of time in 2026 as much as in 1990. Cale's "Cordoba" ranks among his best. humanizingthevacuum.wordpress.com/2015/09/19/w...

YouTube video by ForARide John Cale 1983 Rockpalast

It's John Cale's birthday today.
I saw him play in Dublin last March & he was magnificent, in amazing shape, not what anyone would have thought seeing him in his hedonistic, booze- & cocaine-soaked 1983 state, a dead man walking.
This is an incredible live show, however:

youtu.be/Pu1im2Ia-JQ?...

Country Joe and the Fish, Electric Music For The Mins and Body

way sharper, weirder, & more outwardly psychedelic (& original) than the debut LPs by the dead, airplane, quicksilver, etc. going by first albums only, country joe & the fish might've seemed like the bay area's freak champs in '67 (though, to be fair, "surrealistic pillow" came out just before).

It really is a car movie!

There's a real charm when they're on the Death Star, just doing improv stuff, acting like 2 hicks walking through New York for the first time

A good way i found to appreciate it is to try to strip the 50 yrs of outgrowth & try to view it from POV of a someone who stumbled into a screening in 77 would. Robots land on random crap planet, mopey kid gets caught up in it, as does a charming crook, they wind up winning a battle by pure luck

Thinking about how one of Pete Seeger's last concerts was Obama's inauguration: a sense of, after everything he went through, "hey, look at us now, maybe it worked out?" The longer i live, the more i realize what a rare blessing that is.

living into a ripe old age and being survived by the sentiment that made you famous when you were young has to be a real double-edged sword here

Dogs in car, going to the park

First nice day in what feels like 3 weeks, and out on the town

you can trace a line of descent from this to Camper Van Beethoven (who covered "Porpoise") and other 70s-80s West Coast weirdo groups, and beyond

YouTube video by Country Joe and the Fish - Topic Porpoise Mouth

RIP "Country Joe" McDonald. Long reduced in the media to a single image (singing "Fixin to Die Rag" at Woodstock), he and his band made a lot of fun, eerie music as well, like "Porpoise Mouth": www.youtube.com/watch?v=snso...

Joseph 'Country Joe' McDonald Dead At 84 Joseph Allen “Country Joe” McDonald has died. The singer/songwriter who fronted counterculture folk-rock icons Country Joe And The Fish passed away last night, according to TMZ. McDonald wrote the Ber...

R.I.P. Joseph “Country Joe” McDonald, frontman of counterculture folk-rock icons Country Joe And The Fish. He wrote the Berkeley band’s most enduring songs including the Vietnam War protest anthem “I-Feel-Like-I’m-Fixin’-To-Die Rag” and “Not So Sweet Martha Lorraine,” a Hot 100 hit. McDonald was 84.

i think there's an element of "water always follows the path of least resistance" for music listening for a lot of people--it used to be putting on the radio, or buying a few compilation/soundtrack CDs, & now it's just the streamers

oh yeah, the canon's narrowed over the past few decades--you'd still hear My Generation a lot on '80s CR radio but not so much now (as per my v. limited experience of hearing CR radio in the 2020s, i.e., visiting my parents)

yes, US "classic rock" radio Who starts with Tommy, pretty much--once in a blue moon, they'll play "Happy Jack" or something but nowhere as much as, like, "Slip Kid" or even "Eminence Front"

It's essentially the same band + Adrian Belew. I consider it the canonical version of the song, pretty much

"Station"; the '78 live versions are at least the equal, & sometimes the better, of the orig.

I get irked at the snarky attitude of the "Wordlebot"

in somewhat less stupid terms, I know so many smart and talented underemployed, employed in other sectors they had to go to out of desperation, or unemployed people who I would LOVE to see get a chance to use their policy talents to Rebuild America. it would be cool if we could do that together!

i love "See Those Eyes" but yeah there's a hard drop-off otherwise

Altered Images debut LP

A good example of a record where, if you get a big fun single as a hook, you can do anything else you want for the rest of it. Here, a jittery, weird post-punk record w affinities to Siouxsie and Durutti Column and PiL

Neko Case, "Fox Confessor Brings the Flood" (rel 7 March 06)

20 yrs old now. & Neko singing one of my favorite songs from it, "Maybe Sparrow," on Letterman in June '06: www.youtube.com/watch?v=jbqy...