I ain’t f%#$ing dead yet!!!

Sorry I haven’t been around for so long. My life has just become pretty busy lately, as some of you must have guessed. I need to devote so much time for my baby and for my wife… without needing a constraint effort on my side, they’re pretty cool to hang out with. While listening to a lot of music you got through the Net …

 

Okay very very very quick review of the stuff I’ve been listening to and I might post one day. If some of you have requests, you can throw them in. Who knows? Maybe one day I will get the rhythm of posting every FOUR weeks!!! And I might have exhausted all the 200 ideas I have in stock for you… including a compilation. I know it’s kind of lame for a blogger. I guess THIS is really the true blogger weakness. You got to have to make others listen to your compilations. I know that every blogger who read that phrase thought something like: “of course, asshole” but… you just proved I’m right.

 

So I started to cook a compilation I will try to get ready within the week… So I’ll try to post next Friday night or something like that.

 

So quick reviews:

-         Just got the beautiful box set of Creedence Clearwater Revival for the very nice price of 46$ - thank you amazon second hand’s sellers – and I’ve been obsessed with… just about everything. The last singles of the 1^st CD are astonishing, Green River is a true first masterpiece just as good as Willy and the Poor Boys and Cosmo’s Factory, the first two albums have their moments, Pendulum – which I had and never listened to before – has even more moments that the first two albums put together and would deserve a complete approval by the fans and at least a 4 ½ from allmusic. ;)

-         I’ve been listening to Grinderman a lot. And I think I am going to look for the Boys Next Door CD. And I am looking for the new Nick Cave album that is said to be coming up in Autumn.

-         Amy Winehouse! Of course, who can live without her? Her album is simply the greatest album of the XXIst century. Okay, maybe I am getting a LITTLE BIT over my head. But seriously, you listen to that album and you listen to that album, and you listen to that album again and you started to get weird ideas, such as “mmmh, maybe it’s going to be just as good in twenty years.” And then you realize, when is the last time you really thought that about an album lately? I’m talking about the ones aged over thirty, here.

-         Big surprise: The Damned: Strawberries. The first three good songs are unbelievable, just plain perfect. After that, I don’t know why, no other seem to stick in my brain. Anyway, who cares, for afar, it sounds not bad at all. But you are so exhausted after the first three tracks that you don’t seem to really care anymore.

-         Of course, the Stooges album is atrocious.

-         And the Dinosaur Jr is pleasant. But so without surprise that I went straight to an old Husker Du… old albums I’ve heard are going to be remastered. It’s funny how I can’t seem to care about the price if the sound is that different between let say the latest edition of Funhouse and the one before. Speaking of : the next thing I’m going to buy Tuesday is Sly Stone’s reissues box set. I mean : people are talking of a better version of these masterpieces? Just how good can it get? No, really, joke aside, I want to know. So maybe, one of these days. Although I think I saw it in other blogs. Just as the Nick Drake new unreleased songs coming out which I am listening to right now as I am writing this and it is pretty fucking good. Oh oui, c’est du bon, c’est même de l’énorme. Dirais-je pour mes amis les français.

 

A propos, je veux pas faire mon lourd mais s’il vous plait ne votez pas Sarkozy ! Please don’t vote Sarkozy !

Je suis super sérieux. Vraiment, ce type est une menace. Plus ça avance et plus je me documente sur lui et plus j’ai peur !

Donc regardez un max d’infos : son portrait dans Wikipedia et les articles en lien,

http://fr.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nicolas_Sarkozy

(surtout les articles en lien qui viennent bien démonter la méthode d’enfumage avec laquelle cet article a été écrite – mais vraiment, je vous assure qu’il n’y a pas à chercher loin. C’est peut-être ce qu’il y a de désespérant.

regardez sur youtube le montage « le vrai sarkozy », bon ca part un peu en couille a la fin mais tout le reste est vrai et c’est je pense surtout cela qu’il faut retenir !

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dLbLLoqFOOo

 

Et puis vous voulez vous marrer un coup, vous regardez le débat bayrou/royal en ligne, ca se regarde tres bien, ca se regarde sans faim.

http://fr.news.yahoo.com/presidentielle/chats.html

 

Alors certes ils ne sont pas bien malins et ils en font parfois/souvent des caisses mais quand on écoute ce qu’ils disent, ça sonne un peu juste, ici et là. Non ?

 

Désolé – Sorry – big concern at the moment. L

 

Right,  back to my review:

I’ve been listening to Edith Piaf – also got a gigantic 20 CDs box sets. Or rather 19 since my father who was supposed to bring asked me if he could copy the CDs. I said of course. I mean, the guy worked in computers. 15 years ago. But still. He worked in computers for 25 years. So copying discs, not complicated. He turns out he forgot one. And his first reaction was : there were only 19 to begin with and I have to find a way to prove it so I can return it and get a new, full one! Anyway…

 

I’ve been listening to Bob Marley. Man, the first CD of the Songs of Freedom boxset: good stuff. And the second one is even better. And third and fourth the top. It’s amazing how he was constantly good. The first songs are amazing and it just keeps on going better. I mean, on the last album : Could you been loved? AND Redemption Song?!

 

And I have listened to Mary Weiss, just a little and I liked it a lot. But I am so scared it wasn’t a good surprise, I haven’t listened to it again since.

The last Keren Ann is amazingly Mazzy Star like.

 

The Plastiscines are very quickly annoying.

 

The Klaxons seem to be a better surprise than the Arctic Monkeys.

 

And the Soft Boys ARE a great band. It’s funny, it’s the kind of music which isn’t exciting at all but still remains fascinating. I’ve never experienced that before. A strange feeling. I’ve heard some like The Fall for that.

 

And the first CD of the Brenda Lee anthology is a lot of fun. The second has nothing but ballads so it becomes quickly boring.

 

One that got better when he got older: Elvis. I am so much more a fan of what he did in the 70’s. Waaaayyyyy too much ballads in the 50’s. Okay, it’s all great stuff but I find that he was a great singer and therefore a great “easy-listening” singer. And yes, he was a great rocker as well but I can enjoy a voice just as much as I can enjoy my rock’n’roll… which usually I go look for in the Damned. Or Bob Dylan. Yes, I still listen to the 1975 live. What an awesome album. But pretty much he did was incredible. So…

 

Anway, let’s move on to what brings us tonight:

the big white whale of the moment.

The bootleg that everybody is looking for right now… or dreaming of looking for: the bootleg of the first version of the first Velvet Undergound album. Since there was a perfect transcript of the whole story, I will paste it now here and I will let you listen to it and stop bothering you.

 

Enjoy and sorry again for being such a lazy bastard because it doesn’t take so much time, just a full hour. Sometimes 1h½. Thank you to everyone for the nice comments congratulating me. Thank you very much, it was pretty cool. It’s nice to know that hour is not just peeing in the wind – to translate literally one of my favorite French expressions!

 

And I wish I had more links to give you tonight, including the re-uploads of the Martha and the Vandellas. Which I will definitely do. But probably not so soon.

 

In the meantime keep checking the comments for some little brother sharers are giving some nice addresses now and then. But maybe more often than one could think.

 

While we’re at it, I would like to talk about something I was listening for a while and I still do some times to times, it’s the compilation offered by my good friend (who I swear I don’t forget but I haven’t answered a mail in a billion years, I have about 100 e-mails to answer to. And yours is definitely in the top ten), my good friend Michelcharles for the double compilation of his favorite band: the J-Geils Band. And his compilations are sure very good to listen to. The first one is all the covers that the Band played (and recorded) played by the original artists. And the second one is the Band’s versions of those songs. And he got a nice rotation going around, very pleasant to listen to. So Michelcharles, if you please, that would be an honor to host your compilations on my blog.

 

So, here we go, thank you everybody, I’ll try to be more regular in my posting, here we go, the first Velvet Underground in its first version. (my opinion: pretty impressive but you mostly want to go back to the first one because it’s better. But you know it so well, you go to the other version – this one. And you realize it’s definitely something you can listen to more than twice.

 

Enjoy,

 

The Mike.

 

 

http://www.megaupload.com/?d=TDYWXTPJ

 

 

Forty years after it was made, the Velvet Underground's first recording was purchased for 75 cents at a Manhattan

flea market.  It has thus become a financial success in cyberspace on eBay. Warren Hill, a collector from

Montreal who discovered the 12-inch, bought the acetate LP four years ago (2002) at a flea market in Manhattan's

Chelsea neighborhood for 75 cents. The recording turned out to be an in-studio acetate made during Velvet

Underground's first recording over four days in April 1966 at New York's Scepter Studios. The record reportedly is

only one of two in existence; the other is privately owned, with rumors circulating around the world about who the

owner is. The studio recording — considered lost — is the first version of an LP that the artist Andy Warhol

shopped to Columbia Records as a ready-to-release debut album by his protégé band, according to Eric Isaacson of

Mississippi Records in Portland, Oregon. Isaacson helped Hill decipher the nature of his lucky find. "We cued it

up and were stunned — the first song was not 'Sunday Morning' as on the 'Velvet Underground & Nico' Verve LP, but

rather it was 'European Son' — the song that is last on that LP, and it was a version neither of us had ever

heard before!" writes Isaacson. "It was less bombastic and more bluesy than the released version, and it clocked

in at a full two minutes longer. I immediately took the needle off the record, and realized that we had something

special." Columbia had rejected the album due to it's sexual and drug related themes, but the Velvet Underground

went on to worldwide success, leaving its musical stamp on hundreds of other bands. How the LP got to the flea

market is a mystery. But once Hill and Isaacson discovered what they had, they photographed the album and made a

digital backup copy of the music. They also decided to put it up for auction through Saturn Records, of Oakland,

California, which represented Hill for the 10-day eBay auction that began Nov. 28, with first online bids blazing

to $20,000 (€15,000). Note:  The first eBay auction went badly wrong - with the final $155,000 bid being a hoax. 

The album is now back in auction for a second time with pre-approved bidders.

 

01. European Son

02. Black Angel’s Death Song

03. All Tomorrow’s Parties

04. I’ll Be Your Mirror

05. Heroin

06. Femme Fatale

07. Venus In Furs

08. I’m Waiting For My Man

09. Run Run Run