I've just found out that Dennis Hopper has lost the battle with cancer he's been so visibly fighting the last year or so. He was a true one-off and there are so many wonderful scenes in I recall in which he featured. Here are two tribute clips that should appeal to Carnival Saloon regulars.
This first is testament to both Hopper's temperament and the Johnny Cash Show's left-field booking policy.
Dennis Hopper recites Rudyard Kipling's If
Dennis Hopper appeared in some of my favourite films. His mad cackle in Apocalypse Now is engraved on my brain. Yet the moment that returns to me most often is his objection in Blue Velvet to the lager that reaches the parts other beers cannot reach in favour of "PABST BLUE RIBBON!".
A moment from Blue Velvet
Like I said, a true one-off. He was one of the last of dying breed.
Listening to episode four on my walk to work on Tuesday I heard this remarkable track. Apparently in 1953 Jay-Dee Records boss Joe Davis got The Blenders to make this sweary version of their single Don't Play Around With Love.
Hearing that reminded me of the notorious (and far filthier) alternate take of the Lucille Bogan track Shave 'Em Dry. This was recorded with Josh White in 1935. Prepare yourselves.
It's been a fantastic week for 6 Music. On Monday Jarvis Cocker and Adam & Joe won at the Sony Awards. Even more notable is this morning's news that the station now has more than a million listeners each week - a whopping 50% increase on last year. That average weekly listening hours have also increased from 5.5 to 7.7 hours is testament that new listeners are really enjoying what they hear and aren't just dipping in out of curiosity because they've heard about 6 Music in the news.
That news, of course, is that my bosses at the BBC have declared, in the Strategy Review published in March, that 6 Music should be axed.
The BBC Trust ends its public consultation about this proposed closure on Tuesday 25 May. That's less then two weeks away. While joining Facebook groups and signing petitions all help raise awareness of 6 Music's perilous plight, there is only one way to guarantee that your thoughts about the station will be heard by the people able to grant it a reprieve. That's by completing the BBC Stategy Review online survey.
Don't rant. Don't rave. And don't be put off by all of the questions - you don't have to answer every one. Simply tell the Trust why you value 6 Music and why the reasons put forward to axe it make little sense.
Jarvis Cocker was typically eloquent on the subject when Nick Wallis interviewed him after his Sony win.
Related Links BBC 6 Music - listen to every show online Love 6 Music - excellent resource The Joy of 6 Music - testimony from musicians on why the station shoud be saved
A few weeks ago my friend Pete Marsh alerted me to a wonderful podcast called Tony Tost's America and since then I've been devouring its archives. If you're missing Bob Dylan's Theme Time Radio Hour, this is the place to discover shining nuggets of American musical gold.
During episode three my ears pricked up when I heard this oddity: Johnny Cash hawking Folgers coffee.
According to Folgers' official site, also the source of the MP3, their jingle was written in 1984 but I've no idea when Johnny recorded his version. Anyone ideas?
This weird discovery seems the perfect opportunity to share another java-related Johnny Cash curio - this seemingly inebriated duet with Ramblin' Jack Elliott from Cash's 1966 album of 'humorous' material Everybody Loves A Nut.
It is rare indeed that I will be enticed on to a dance floor. Yet anyone who has seen me at the monthly London club night Uptight will know that it only takes a few bars of Jonathan Richman's Roadrunner or an early REM track to get me under the disco ball. The music you hear at Uptight is so great that when Jo and I thought about who would DJ at our wedding there was no question who we'd ask.
This Saturday (24 April) the last ever Uptight takes place at the Albany on Great Portland Street. After 10 years of spinning everything from Donna Summer to Spacemen 3 my pals Wayne Gooderham, his brother Marc and Gary Rose are hanging up their headphones.
I have lots of fond memories of Saturday night's in the Albany's basement. Most notably perhaps when my friend John Barner thought he could become Christina Ricci's friend by lighting the pint-sized actress's cigarettes.
To mark Uptight's passing I've asked Wayne to share some of his essential Uptight tunes. For one week you can download the whole lot together, all nicely tagged with artwork etc. The link is at the bottom of the post. If you like what you hear get down to the Albany on Saturday night. I'll be the one punching the air to Born To Run.
"Not only one of the best things The Fall have done in recent years, but one of the best things they’ve done period. But don’t bother with the album version though. It’s the Peel session version yer wantin’." Find it on The Complete Peel Sessions| The Fall Online
"Obviously the studio version is perfect and the live '66 version has its own ragged charm (to put it mildly), but the live '74 version from Before The Flood is more fun for the dance floor: sing-a-long-an-alienation." Find it on Before The Flood| Bob Dylan official site
"His finest three minutes. A perfect pop song with a bridge that lesser talents would have settled for as a chorus. Industrial Motown sez I." Find it on Viva Hate| Morrissey official site
One of the many ways my life will be poorer if the BBC axe 6 Music is that as well as being exposed to less new music I won't discover as much great old music either. On Gideon Coe's show last Wednesday I heard Roy Harper's cover of Bob Dylan's Girl From the North Country for the first time. Gid played a beautiful version Harper recorded for the BBC in 1974. This is how it appears on the album Valentine.
Hearing it sung by an Englishman brings the song full circle. Dylan wrote it at the start of 1963 during his first trip to Europe. He'd recently met Martin Carthy in London who'd taught him English folk songs like Lord Franklin (whose melody and some lyrics Dylan later used for Bob Dylan's Dream) and Scarborough Fair.
Carthy recalls the first time he heard Girl From the North Country: "Bob came down to The Troubadour and said, 'Hey, here's Scarborough Fair' and he started playing this thing. And he kept getting the giggles, all the time he was doing it. It was very funny. I think he sang about three or four verses and then he went. 'Ah man ah,' and he burst out laughing and sang something else... It was delightful, lovely. 'Cos I mean he... he made a new song... I took it as an enormous compliment, to the song and, if you like, to me... It was a great thing to have done."
Girl From the North Country holds the unique position in the Dylan cannon of being the only song he's recorded for two different studio albums. It first appeared on The Freewheelin' Bob Dylan in 1963.
Second-time round Dylan recorded it as a duet with Johnny Cash as the opener to Nashville Skyline in 1969. This clip is from the first episode of Johnny Cash's TV show, filmed at the Ryman Auditorium in Nashville, in June 1969.
Seeing the short-haired, timid Bob sat on that hokey stage, it's hard to imagine the wired and spindly Dylan that shocked English audiences with his electric guitar just three years before.
MP3s are posted for a limited time with the aim of encouraging visitors to discover music they've never heard. If you like what you hear please buy more from the artist and go to their gigs. I always post links to purchase next to an MP3 link. If you represent an artist or a label and would prefer that I remove a link to an MP3, please email me at carnivalsaloon @ gmail.com and I will immediately delete the file.
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